Adnyamathanha language

Aboriginal language of South Australia

The Adnyamathanha language (pronounced /'//ɑː//d//n//j//ə//m//ʌ//d//ə//n//ə/), also known as yura ngarwala and other names, and Kuyani, also known as Guyani and other variants, are two closely related Australian Aboriginal languages. They are traditional languages of the Adnyamathanha of and the Kuyani peoples, of the Flinders Ranges and to the west of the Flinders respectively, in South Australia. As of the 2016 Australian census, there were around 140 speakers of Adnyamathanha, making it an endangered language; there have been no speakers of Kuyani recorded since 1975. The first bilingual dictionary of the language was published in November 2020. The name of the witchetty grub comes from Adnyamathanha.

While R. M. W. Dixon classifies Adnyamathanha and Guyani as a single language, Ethnologue, Glottolog and AIATSIS treats them as separate languages, L10: Adnyamathanha

Estimates of the number of people who speak Adnyamathanha are variable, though it is a severely endangered language. According to Oates (1973) there were only 30 speakers, around 20 according to Schmidt in 1990, 127 in the 1996 Australian census, and about 140 counted in the 2016 census. Dorothy Tunbridge, a linguist from Canberra and author of Flinders Ranges Dreaming visited the area in the 1980s. Both contributed much to knowledge of the language, but neither recorded all of the words that were known to local speakers. In November 2020 the first ever bilingual Adnyamathanha/English dictionary and grammar was published, with translations from and to each language. Compiled by Terrence Coulthard and his wife Josephine, the 400 page Adnyamathanha Culture Guide and Language Book includes descriptions of cultural practices, songlines (muda), the Adnyamathanha kinship system and social history. Terrence, an Adnyamathanha speaker, had been collecting information on the culture and language for 40 years, building on the earlier work by Schebeck and Tunbridge. named by 19th century English botanist John Lindley as Capparis mitchelii.

Adjnjamathanha and Guyani have the same phonemic inventory.

While the closely related Guyani retains word initial stops, Adnyamathanha has undergone systematic lenition of stops in this position. Former has become , former and probably also have become , and former has disappeared entirely.