Yanyuwa
Yanyuwa
Pronunciation	[jaṉuwa]
Native to	Australia
Region	Northern Territory
Ethnicity	Yanyuwa,Wadiri
Native speakers	47 (2021 census)[1]
Language family	Pama–Nyungan Ngarna Yanyuwa
Language codes
ISO 639-3	jao
Glottolog	yany1243
AIATSIS[2]	N153
ELP	Yanyuwa
Yanyuwa is the patch of yellow on the northern coast, between the orange and the green.
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Yanyuwa (Yanyuwa pronunciation:[jaṉuwa]) is the language of theYanyuwa people of the Sir Edward Pellew Group of Islands in the Gulf of Carpentaria outsideBorroloola (Yanyuwa:Burrulula) in theNorthern Territory, Australia.

Yanyuwa, like many otherAustralian Aboriginal languages, is a highlyagglutinative language withergative-absolutive alignment, whose grammar is pervaded by a set of 16noun classes whose agreements are complicated and numerous.

Yanyuwa is a criticallyendangered language. The anthropologistJohn Bradley has worked with the Yanyuwa people for three decades and is also a speaker of Yanyuwa. He has produced a large dictionary and grammar of the language,^[3] along with a cultural atlas in collaboration with a core group of senior men and women.

Dixon (2002), who rejects the validity of Pama–Nyungan, accepts that Yanyuwa is demonstrably related toWarluwara and languages closely related to it.

In Yanyuwa, certain words have synonyms used to replace the everyday term in certain cultural situations.

Avoidance speech is speech style used when talking to or near certain relatives: one's siblings and cousins of the opposite sex, one's brother-in-law, sister-in-law, father-in-law and mother-in-law, and one's nieces and nephews if their father (for male speakers) or their mother (for female speakers) has died. Occasionally, avoidance speech takes the form of different affixes to usual speech, but generally, it is simply a change in vocabulary.

For example, adigging stick is usually referred to asna-wabija, but when talking to one of the above relatives, the word used isna-wulungkayangu.

An example of avoidance speech is given below:

Another set of vocabulary is used during ceremonies and other ritual occasions. Many of the words used in ritual speech are sacred and kept secret.

For example, adingo is usually referred to aswardali, but during ritual occasions, the word used isyarrarriwira. That is one ritual term which is known to the general public, as are some other terms for flora and fauna.

When on theSir Edward Pellew Group of Islands, which is part of Yanyuwa territory, another set of vocabulary may be used to replace the terms used when on the mainland. There is more variance about the usage of island speech than the other speech styles.

For example, on the mainland, fishing is referred to aswardjangkayarra, but on the islands, the word used isakarimantharra.

Yanyuwa is extremely unusual in having 7places of articulation forstops, compared to 3 forEnglish and 4–6 for most otherAustralian languages.^[4] In common with many other Australian languages, it does not observe a voicing distinction between consonants.

Yanyuwa has 16noun classes, distinguished by prefixes. In some cases, different prefixes are used, depending on whether the speaker is a male or a female.

^w Women's speech.

^m Men's speech.

^1rra- is a more formal female/feminine prefix often used in elicitations, anda- is the informal everyday form. There is only one word in Yanyuwa,rra-ardu "girl", in which therra- prefix is always used. That distinguishes it from the men's speech formardu "boy" for which women saynya-ardu.

^2∅- is used to indicate no prefix.

Yanyuwa is unusual among languages of the world in that it has separate dialects for men and for women at themorphological level. The only time that men use the women's dialect is if they are quoting someone of the opposite sex and vice versa.An example of this speech is provided below:

The BBC reported in 2018 that there were 3 fluent female speakers worldwide.^[5]

Yanyuwa-speakers have actively engaged in making a number of films, and more recently have begun a project to animate important stories and songlines. These include three important films, all of which have extensive narratives in Yanyuwa, with subtitles:

• Kanymarda Yuwa – Two Laws,
• Buwarrala Akarriya – Journey East,
• Ka-wayawayama – Aeroplane Dance.

SingerShellie Morris released in May 2013 a song albumNgambala Wiji Li-Wunungu – Together We are Strong, with songs in Yanyuwa.^[6][7]

• Yanyuwa recordings demonstrating the seven POAs.
• Yanyuwa Wuka: Language from Yanyuwa Country – a Yanyuwa Dictionary and Cultural Resource

• Agglutinative languages
• Ngarna languages
• Endangered indigenous Australian languages in the Northern Territory

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use dmy dates from February 2020
• Articles containing Yanyuwa-language text
• Pages with Yanyuwa IPA
• ISO language articles citing sources other than Ethnologue
• Pages with plain IPA