Mingginda or Minkin is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

Australian Aboriginal language The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intellig ...

, perhaps a

language isolate Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families. Korean and Basque are two of the most common examples. Other language isolates include Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, and Haida in North America. The num ...

, of northern Australia. It was spoken by the Mingin people in the area around Burketown, on the southern coast of the

Gulf of Carpentaria The Gulf of Carpentaria (, ) is a large, shallow sea enclosed on three sides by northern Australia and bounded on the north by the eastern Arafura Sea (the body of water that lies between Australia and New Guinea). The northern boundary is ...

, in an area that contains the headwaters of the Leichhardt River. The classification of Minkin is uncertain, primarily due to a lack of data. It has been suggested that it may have been related to the Yiwaidjan or Tankic language families. Evans (1990) believes it has been demonstrated to be a Tankic language, more distant than the others are to each other; this is accepted in Bowern (2011).Bowern, Claire. 2011.
How Many Languages Were Spoken in Australia?
, ''Anggarrgoon: Australian languages on the web'', December 23, 2011
corrected
February 6, 2012)

Vocabulary

Minkin data reconstituted by Evans (1990): :

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Minkin Language Tangkic languages Extinct languages of Queensland Language isolates of Australia