Gamilaraay language

Gamilaraay Language

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Gamilaraay language

The Gamilaraay or Kamilaroi (see below for other spellings) language is a Pama-Nyungan

Pama-Nyungan languages

The Pama-Nyungan languages are the most widespread family of Indigenous Australian languages, containing 160 of 228 identified languages.The Pama-Nyungan family was identified and named by Kenneth Hale, in his work on the classification of Native Australian languages....
language of the Wiradhuric

Wiradhuric languages

The Wiradhuric languages, or Central inland New South Wales, are a family of Pama-Nyungan languages of Australia. There are three languages:...
subgroup found mostly in South East Australia. It was the traditional language of the Kamilaroi

Kamilaroi

The Kamilaroi or Gamilaraay are an Indigenous Australian people who are from the area between Tamworth, New South Wales and Goondiwindi, and west to Narrabri, Walgett and Lightning Ridge, in northern New South Wales....
people, but is now moribund—according to Ethnologue

Ethnologue

Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christianity linguistics service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, primarily to provide the speakers with Bibles, in their native language....
, there were only 3 speakers left in 1997. However, there are thousands of people of mixed descent both within the native populations as well as immigrant populations, who identify themselves as Kamilaroi.

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Encyclopedia

The Gamilaraay or Kamilaroi (see below for other spellings) language is a Pama-Nyungan

Pama-Nyungan languages

Wiradhuric languages

Kamilaroi

Ethnologue

Classification

Pama-Nyungan
Pama-Nyungan languages

The Pama-Nyungan languages are the most widespread family of Indigenous Australian languages, containing 160 of 228 identified languages.The Pama-Nyungan family was identified and named by Kenneth Hale, in his work on the classification of Native Australian languages....

Central New South Wales group

Wiradhuric
Wiradhuric languages

The Wiradhuric languages, or Central inland New South Wales, are a family of Pama-Nyungan languages of Australia. There are three languages:...

Gamilaraay
Wiradhuri
Ngiyambaa
Ngiyambaa language

The Ngiyambaa language is a Pama-Nyungan languages language of the Wiradhuric languages subgroup. It was the traditional language of the Wangaaybuwan and Wayilwan Indigenous Australians of New South Wales, Australia, but is now moribund; according to Tamsin Donaldson by the 1970's there were only about ten people fluent in Wangaaybuwan, whils...

Name

The name Gamilaraay means gamil-having, gamil being the word for "no". Other dialects and languages are similarly named after their respective words for "no". (Compare the division between Langues d'oïl
Langues d'oïl

Langues d'o?l is the linguistic and historical designation of the Gallo-Romance languages originating from the northern territories of Roman Gaul, which today make up northern France, part of Belgium, and the Channel Islands....
and Langue d'oc in France, distinguished by their respective words for "yes".)

Spellings of the name, pronounced () in the language itself , include:

Camilaroi
Kamalarai
Kamilaroi
Gamilaraay
Gamilaroi

Geographic distribution

Map of New South Wales As Occupied By the Native Tribes

Dialects

Yuwaalaraay
Yuwaaliyaay (Euahlayi)
Gunjbaraay
Gawambaraay
Wirayaraay (Wiriwiri)
Walaraay

History

Southern Aboriginal guides led the surveyor John Howe to the upper Hunter River above present-day Singleton in 1819. They told him that the country there was "Coomery Roy [=Gamilaraay] and more further a great way", meaning to the north-west, over the Liverpool Range (see O'Rourke 1997: 29). This is probably the first record of the name.

A basic wordlist collected by Major Thomas Mitchell in February, 1832 is the earliest written record of Gamilaraay.

The Presbyterian missionary

Missionary

A 'missionary' is a member of a religion who works to convert those who do not share the missionary's faith; someone who Proselytism. The word "mission" is derived from the Latin missioninimus...
William Ridley

William Ridley (Presbyterian missionary)

William Ridley was an England Presbyterianism missionary who studied Australian Aboriginal languages, particularly Gamilaraay language.Ridley was born in Hartford End, Essex, England....
studied the language from 1852 to 1856.

Phonology

Vowel

	Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....	Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....
High
Low

is realized as .

Consonants

	Peripheral Peripheral consonant In Australian Aboriginal languages, the peripheral consonants are a natural class encompassing consonants articulated at the extremes of the mouth: bilabial consonant and velar consonant....		Laminal Laminal consonant A laminal consonant is a Phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, which is the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue on the top....		Apical Apical consonant An apical consonant is a Phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the apex of the tongue . This contrasts with laminal consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the blade of the tongue ....
	Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the Soft palate)....	Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate . Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex consonant....	Dental Dental consonant In linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as , , , and in some languages....	Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the Dental alveolus of the superior teeth....	Post- alveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, placing them a bit further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate ....
Stop Stop consonant A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. The terms plosive and stop are usually used interchangeably, but they are not perfect synonyms....
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered soft palate in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the tongue....
Lateral Lateral consonant Laterals are "L"-like consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue, while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both sides of the tongue....
Rhotic Rhotic consonant Rhotic consonants, or "R"-like sounds, are non-lateral liquid consonants. This class of sounds is difficult to characterise phonetically, though most of them share some acoustic peculiarities, most notably a lowered third formant in their sound spectrum....
Semivowel Semivowel Semivowels, also known as glides or non-syllabic vowels, are vowels that form diphthongs with full syllable vowels. That is, they are vowel-like sounds that do not form the syllable nucleus of a syllable or mora ; they are not the most prominence part of the syllable....

Initially, and may be simplified to and .

Stress

All long vowels in a word get equal stress. If there are no long vowels, stress falls on the first syllable.

Secondary stress falls on short vowels which are two syllables to the right or to the left of a stressed syllable.

Grammar

Gamilaraay words in English

Several loanword

Loanword

A loanword is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept whereby it is the Meaning or idiom that is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself....
s have entered Australian English

Australian English

Australian English is the form of the English language spoken in Australia....
from Gamilaraay, including:

Common nouns
Anglicised form	Gamilaraay	Meaning
bindi-eye, bindii, bindies	bindayaa	The burrs of several plant species that stick in one's feet.
brolga Brolga The Brolga , formerly known as the "Native Companion", is a bird in the crane family. The bird has also been given the name "Australian Crane", a term coined in 1865 by well-known ornithology artist John Gould in his The Birds of Australia....	burralga	A bird species, Grus rubicunda.
possibly budgerigar Budgerigar The 'budgerigar' , is a small parrot belonging to the tribe of the broad-tailed parrots ; sometimes considered a subfamily . It is the only species in the Australian genus 'Melopsittacus' and sometimes isolated in a tribe of its own, the 'Melopsittacini', although it is probably quite closely related to Pezoporus and Neophe...	gidjirrigaa	A bird species, Melopsittacus undulatus.
Proper nouns
Anglicised form	Gamilaraay	Meaning
Kamilaroi Kamilaroi The Kamilaroi or Gamilaraay are an Indigenous Australian people who are from the area between Tamworth, New South Wales and Goondiwindi, and west to Narrabri, Walgett and Lightning Ridge, in northern New South Wales....	gamilaraay	The Gamilaraay people or language.
Placenames
Anglicised form	Gamilaraay	Meaning
Boggabri Boggabri, New South Wales File:Boggabri .JPGBoggabri is a small town on the Kamilaroi Highway in north-western New South Wales, Australia in Narrabri Shire Council, between Gunnedah and Narrabri....	bagaaybaraay	having creeks
Boggabilla Boggabilla, New South Wales Boggabilla is a small town in the far north of inland New South Wales, Australia in Moree Plains Shire.The name Boggabilla comes from Gamilaraay language bagaaybila, literally "full of creeks"....	bagaaybila	full of creeks
Collarenebri Collarenebri, New South Wales Collarenebri is a town with a population of 478 people in north western New South Wales, Australia. It is situated in Walgett Shire Council, on the Barwon River approximately 75 km northeast of Walgett and south west of Mungindi, New South Wales on the Gwydir Highway....	galariinbaraay	having acacia Acacia *Acacia* is a genus of shrubs and trees belonging to the subfamily Mimosoideae of the family Fabaceae, first described in Africa by the Sweden botanist Carolus Linnaeus in 1773.... blossoms

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