Австралиядағы Иваиджан тілі

Iwaidjan language spoken in Australia

Iwaidja, in phonemic spelling Iwaja, is an Australian aboriginal language of the Iwaidja people with about 150 native, and an extra 20 to 30 L2 speakers in northernmost Australia. Historically having come from the base of the Cobourg Peninsula, it is now spoken on Croker Island. It is still being learnt by children within the Northern Territory.

Iwaidja has three vowels, /a, i, u/. The following table shows the allophones of these vowels as described by Pym and Larrimore. Vowel Allophone Environment /i/ [iː] Occurs before laminal consonants. [e] Occurs word initially. [i] All other cases. /a/ [ai] Occurs before laminal consonants. [æ] Occurs following laminal consonants except utterance final. Free variation with [a] in this environment. [au] Occurs before /w/. Free variation with [a] in this environment. [a] All other cases. /u/ [ui] Occurs before laminal consonants. [o] Occurs following velar consonant. Free variation with [u] in this environment. [u] All other cases.

The Iwaidja languages are nearly unique among the languages of the world in using verbs for kin terms. Nouns are used for direct address, but transitive verbs in all other cases. In English something similar is done in special cases: he fathered a child; she mothers him too much. But these do not indicate social relationships in English. For example, he fathered a child says nothing about whether he is the man the child calls "father". An Iwaidja speaker, on the other hand, says I nephew her to mean "she is my aunt". Because these are verbs, they can be inflected for tense. In the case of in laws, this is equivalent to my ex wife or the bride to be in English. However, with blood relations, past can only mean that the person has died, and future only that they are yet to be born.

Yibadjdja (Kunwinjku exonym).