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Noongar (), also Nyungar (), is an Australian Aboriginal language or dialect continuum, spoken by some members of the Noongar community and others. It is taught actively in Australia, including at schools, universities and through public broadcasting. The country of the Noongar people is the southwest corner of Western Australia. Within that region, many Noongar words have been loanword into Australian English, particularly names of plants and animals.
Noongar was first recorded in 1801 by Matthew Flinders, who made a number of word lists.
It is generally agreed that there was no single, standard Noongar (or Nyungar) language before European settlement: it was a subgroup (or possibly a dialect continuum) of closely related languages, whose speakers were differentiated geographically and, in some cases, by cultural practices. The dialects merged into the modern Noongar language following colonisation. A 1990 conference organised by the Nyoongar Language Project Advisory Panel recognised that the Noongar subgroup included at least three distinct languages. This was highlighted by the 2011 Noongar Dictionary, edited by Bernard Rooney, which was based on the Yuat (Juat) variety, from the northwest part of the Noongar subgroup area.
The highlighted area of the map shown here may correspond to the Noongar subgroup. The subdivisions shown correspond to individual varieties. In modern Noongar, these varieties have merged. There is controversy in some cases as to whether all of these varieties were part of the original Noongar subgroup. Some may have been distinct languages and some may have belonged to neighbouring subgroups.
Many linguists believe that the northernmost language shown, Amangu, was not part of the Noongar subgroup, was instead a part of the Kartu languages, and may have been a dialect of the Kartu language Nhanda language. (As such, Amangu may have been synonymous with a dialect known as Nhanhagardi, which has also been classified, at different times, as a part of Nhanda, Noongar, or Widi.)
There is a general consensus that the following varieties belong to the Noongar subgroup: Wudjari, Minang, Bibelman (a.k.a. Pibelman; Bibbulman), Kaneang (Kaniyang), Wardandi, Balardung (a.k.a. Ballardong; which probably included Tjapanmay/Djabanmai), and Yuat (Juat). Wiilman, Whadjuk (Wajuk) and Pinjarup are also usually regarded as dialects of Noongar, although this identification is not completely secure. The Koreng (Goreng) people are thought to have spoken a dialect of, or closely related to, Wudjari, in which case their language would have been part of the Noongar subgroup. Njakinjaki (Nyakinyaki) was possibly a dialect of Kalaamaya – a language related to, but separate from, the original Noongar subgroup. It is not clear if the Njunga (or Nunga) dialect was significantly different from Wudjari. However, according to Norman Tindale, the Njunga people rejected the name Wudjari and had adopted some of the customs of their non-Noongar-speaking eastern neighbours, the Ngadjunmaya.
A number of small wordlists were recorded in the early days of the Swan River Colony, for example Robert Menli Lyon's 1833 publication A Glance at the Manners and Language of Aboriginal Inhabitants of Western Australia. Lyon acquired much of his information from Yagan while Yagan was incarcerated on Carnac Island. Despite the significance of Lyon's work in being the first of its kind, George Fletcher Moore described Lyon's work as "containing many inaccuracies and much that was fanciful".
During August and October 1839 the Perth Gazette published Vocabulary of the Aboriginal people of Western Australia, written by Lieutenant George Grey of HM 83rd Regiment. Grey spent twelve months studying the languages of the Noongar people and came to the conclusion that there was much in common between them. Just prior to publication, he received from Mr Bussel of the Busselton district a list of 320 words from that region which was near identical to those he had collected in the Swan River region. Much to Grey's disappointment, his work was published in an unfinished list as he was leaving the colony, but he believed that the publication would assist in communication between settlers and Noongar people. Also noted by Grey was that the Noongar language had no soft sound, there was no use of and that was very rarely used and never at the start of a word.
Serious documentation of the Noongar language began in 1842 with the publication of A Descriptive Vocabulary of the Language in Common Use Amongst the Aborigines of Western Australia by George Fletcher Moore, later republished in 1884 as part of Moore's diary. This work included a substantial wordlist of Noongar. The first modern linguistic research on Noongar was carried out by Gerhardt Laves on the variety known as "Koreng", near Albany in 1930, but this material was lost for many years and has only recently been recovered. Beginning in the 1930s and then more intensively in the 1960s Wilfrid Douglas learnt and studied Noongar, eventually producing a grammar, dictionary, and other materials.
More recently, Noongar people have taken a major role in this work as researchers, for example Rose Whitehurst who compiled the Noongar Dictionary in her work for the Noongar Language and Culture Centre. In 2012 Tim McCabe finished a PhD on Noongar place names, songs and stories, having been taught a variety of the language by Clive Humphreys of Kellerberrin, and is teaching Noongar to inmates in Perth prisons.
Peter Bindon and Ross Chadwick have compiled an authoritative cross referenced "A Nyoongar Wordlist: from the South West of Western Australia", by assembling material from all of the above writers in their original spelling. It is clear from this reference that the orthographies used reflected not only dialectical differences, but also how the various authors "heard" and transcribed spoken Noongar.
Since the late 20th century, there has been increased interest in reviving the Noongar/Nyungar language, including teaching it at many schools throughout the south west of Western Australia. it is one of the 24 Aboriginal languages being taught at 68 schools in Western Australia to around 10,000 students. Curtin University offers an open online Noongar language and culture course.
In 1997 at a meeting of around 200 Noongar people at Marribank, a standard orthography was agreed on for teaching the language in schools. A unanimous vote decided that the language would be spelt "Nyoongar", but later, as teaching and learning resources were being developed for the Languages Other Than English (LOTE) curriculum which would be taught in schools, it was decided to change to "Noongar".
By 2010, 37 schools in the South West and Perth were teaching the language.
In 2014, the Noongar Boodjar Language Cultural Aboriginal Corporation (NBLCAC) was incorporated, and the Commonwealth Government provided funding for four years from 2015 under the Indigenous Languages Support program to establish the Noongar Language Centre. The offices are located in Cannington.
An adaption and translation of the tragedy Macbeth into Noongar was performed at the 2020 Perth Festival. The play, named Hecate, is produced by Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company with Bell Shakespeare, and performed by an all-Noongar cast. The play took years to translate, and has sparked wider interest in reviving the language.
On July 2022, rock band King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard released a special edition of their album Butterfly 3000 with all its 10 songs translated into Noongar by Merinda Hansen and Lois Spehn-Jackson; all proceedings of this edition are donated to the Langford Aboriginal Association.
| B | /b/; " book" | boodjar (country) |
| D | /d/; " dog" | darbal (estuary) |
| DJ or TJ | /ɟ/; similar to " jewish" | djen (foot) or nortj (death) |
| NY | /ɲ/; "ca nyon" | nyungar |
| NG | /ŋ/; "si ng" | ngow (malleefowl) |
The following adverbs are used to indicate grammatical tense or aspect.
Some tense/aspect distinctions are indicated by use of a verb suffix. In Noongar, the past or preterite tense is the same as the past participle.
A few adverbs are used with the past tense to indicate the amount of time since the event of the verb took place.
Nouns (as well as adjectives) take a variety of suffixes which indicate grammatical case, specifically relating to motion or direction, among other distinctions.
The direct object of a sentence (what might be called the dative) can also be expressed with the locative suffix - ak.
Grammatical number is likewise expressed by the addition of suffixes. Nouns that end in vowels take the plural suffix - man, whereas nouns that end in consonants take - gar. Inanimate nouns, that is, nouns that do not denote human beings, can also be pluralized by the simple addition of a numeral.
Noongar features a set of dual number pronouns which identify interpersonal relationships based on kinship or marriage. The "fraternal" dual pronouns are used by and for people who are siblings or close friends, "paternal" dual pronouns are used by and for people who are paternal relatives (parent-child, uncle-niece and so forth), and "marital" pronouns are used by and for people who are married to each other or are in-laws.
Typically, if the subject of a sentence is not qualified by a numeral or adjective, a subject-marker pronoun is used. Thus: yongka baal boyak yaakiny (lit. "kangaroo it on-rock standing"), "the kangaroo is standing on the rock."
There is also an adverbial negation word, bru, roughly equivalent to the English less or without.
A large number of modern place names in Western Australia end in -up, such as Joondalup, Nannup and Manjimup. This is because in the Noongar language, -up means "place of". For example, the name Ongerup means "place of the male kangaroo". The word gur, ger or ker in Noongar meant "a gathering". Daisy Bates suggests that central to Noongar culture was the karlupgur, referring to those that gather around the hearth (karlup).
Noongar words which have been adopted into Western Australian English, or more widely in English, include the given name Kylie, "boomerang", gilgie or jilgie, the freshwater crayfish Cherax quinquecarinatus, and gidgie or gidgee, "spear". The word for smoke, karrik, was adopted for the family of compounds known as . The word quokka, denoting a type of small Macropodidae, is thought to come from Noongar.
| +Vocabulary list from Blake (1981) ! English !! Nyungar |
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