Bardi is a moribund Australian Aboriginal language. There are approximately 20 speakers out of an ethnic population of 380.

Classification

Bardi is a member of the Nyulnyulan language family

Nyulnyulan languages

The Nyulnyulan languages are a small family of closely related Australian Aboriginal languages spoken in northern Australia.The languages form two branches established on the basis of lexical and morphological innovation....

. It is a member of the Western branch of the family.

According to R. M. W. Dixon

R. M. W. Dixon

Robert Malcolm Ward Dixon is a Professor of Linguistics at The Cairns Institute, James Cook University, Queensland, and formerly Director of the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.In 1996, Dixon and another linguist, Alexandra Aikhenvald,...

 (2002), the following dialect

Dialect

The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...

s are mutually intelligible

Mutual intelligibility

In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is recognized as a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related languages can readily understand each other without intentional study or extraordinary effort...

 with Bardi:

• Jawi
  Jawi language
  Jawi is a nearly extinct dialect of the Bardi language of Western Australia, the traditional language of the Jawi people. There are no longer any known fluent speakers, but there may be some partial speakers....
  
  
• Nyulnyul
• Djabirr-Djabirr
  Djabirr-Djabirr language
  Dyaberdyaber is a Western Nyulnyulan language formerly spoken on the coast south of Beagle Bay in Western Australia....
  
  
• Ngumbarl
• Nimanburru
  Nimanburru language
  Nimanburru is a Western Nyulnyulan language formerly spoken on the eastern shore of the Dampier Peninsula in North-West Australia. There are no publications on the language, but archival records exist in the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies....
  
  

Ethnologue

Ethnologue

Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christian linguistic service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language and support their efforts in language development.The Ethnologue...

(206) treats all but Ngumbarl as distinct languages, and this view is supported by those linguists who have worked on the languages, including Claire Bowern and William McGregor. It is also the view of Bardi speakers.

There is considerable documentation of the Bardi language, but most of it is unpublished. The earliest work on the language dates from the 1880s, although that has been lost. The earliest records are from the very early 20th century. Gerhardt Laves spent some time on Sunday island in the late 1920s and recorded extensive textual materials, and steady documentation has progressed since the late 1960s.

External links

• Ethnologue report for language code:bcj (Bardi)
• Ethnologue report for language code:djw (Djawi)
• Ethnologue report for language code:nyv (Njul-Njul)
• Ethnologue report for language code:dyb (Djabirr-Djabirr)
• Ethnologue report for language code:nmp (Nimanburru)