Australian Aboriginal Languages: Warlpiri PART 1

[@naturalmedicinewriting5208]

Watching all your videos. Awesome content and pedagogical approach. Great stuff

[@yiannisroubos8846]

Australian here. I speak Arrernte which is spoken in central Australia, quite close to Warlpiri country. I expected warlpiri to be more similar but it’s completely different. The phonology is very similar though

[@torrawel]

Great video! As a Dutch-speaker I (naturally ;)) love languages with position verbs (like a lot of Plains languages in North America). Even though this system seems to be a bit different, I immediately translated it to: "De man zit moe te zijn/wezen" ("The man sits tired to be"), which I think is very hard to translate into English, even though our languages are closely related. It means something like: "The man is just looking tired", or "He's just not feeling well, not enjoying life". It has this kind of sad (despondent) feeling to it. Similar sentences are: hij zit niks te doen ("he sits nothing to do" >>> he's just doing nothing) hij staat te wachten ("he stands to wait" >>> he's waiting) hij loopt zich te vervelen ("he walks himself to bore" >>> he's "getting" bored) explanationwhy a continent that was settled so long ago, has such an overwhelming presence of just 1 language family? And is the Pama-Nyungan family not hotly debated then? I'm definitely not a specialist in Australian languages, but looking to it from a Indigenous American perspective, it looks really weird. I mean, sure, there are still some followers of Greenberg (who claimed there were only 3 language families in North&South America), but there at least was a huge discussion about the topic. It seems (from the little I know about it), that such a discussion never really materialised with the Australian languages. Looking forward to see the rest of the video and your channel!

[@languagestolearn8155]

I'm currently working with a small group of linguists on a language-revival project - a couple of them are native speakers of Pama-Nyungan languages and we're going to dissect precisely this notion. The accepted theory is that Pama-Nyungan spread across the entire continent relatively recently - although in Australia, "recently" might mean a few thousand years ago. The non-Pama Nyungan family consists of several small unrelated families and a few isolates. But, some linguists think ALL the languages on the entire continent are related and belong to just one family and the wide span of time that they've been spoken in Australia has obscured the relationship.

[@torrawel]

@@languagestolearn8155 "The accepted theory is that Pama-Nyungan spread across the entire continent relatively recently - although in Australia, "recently" might mean a few thousand years ago."... Okay but HOW? Algonquian, Arawakan and other large American families all spread due to new techniques or agricultural inventions or even military techniques. Just like in the rest of the world. Is there any evidence for that in Australia? I've never heard of it. Maybe the dingo? Fire farming? Boomerangs and better spears? And if all languages are related (even the non-PN), where are the (remnants of the) older ones? Just like in America, there is of course a bottle neck due to the European colonisation and diseases but that still doesn't really explain why a landmass as big as Australia would have 1 or only a few language families (especially with such a long archaeological record). Good luck with the discussion! :)

[@WarlpiriMan]

The positional verbs nyina' 'sit', karri- 'stand' and nguna- 'lie' can also be used in the sense of state of being verbs. So, 'Wati-lpa nyina-ja mata' is probably better translated 'The man was tired'. If you wish to focus on his stance, then you could use 'karri-' or 'nguna'.

[@xwtek3505]

7:46 Actually it's common in (mainland) southeast asia, where you get cluster like 彎鉤 (wan-gou), and ถุงเท้า (tŭng táo). There is also Indonesian tanpa and embankan. It's also (somewhat) common in Europe, especially among Germanic languages: steamed /sti:md/ suncap /sʌnkʰæp/

[@Tsass0]

Very interesting

[@spremanands]

Very interesting study. Consider looking closer into the Dravidian Languages like Tamil instead of Sankrit.

[@Despotic_Waffle]

Yeah, theres a lot of hypotheses which say the aboriginals may have connections with south indians.

[@nevem5010]

👍

[@jr_8292]

Really interesting - looking forward to part 2!

[@TheBronJaime]

Kalaw Lagaw Ya’s neighbour Meriam Mir spoken on Mer (Murray), Erub (Darnley) and Ugar (Stephens) is the only Papuan language within Australia. Both languages have some Austronesian vocabulary likely coming from Austronesian speakers to the east, which may have spoken a language similar to proto-oceanic. I also read that Kalaw Lagaw Ya has up to 80% of its vocabulary stemming from a non Australian source, either from Papuan or Austronesian roots

[@radityautama5375]

Still can't pronounce those cool *r sounds..Is the sound similarity with dravidian likely to be accidental or associated with the same root?

[@languagestolearn8155]

Good question! Some linguists think there may be ancient links to Dravidian languages, also some South Indians seem to have genes that are similar or that come from a common origins as the Australian Aboriginals. The phonology is very similar to ancient Tamil, but there aren't many cognates or related words as I can tell. But maybe someday someone will look into this in more detail.

[@yesid17]

haha just left a comment on another video didn't realize it was old I said I couldn't wait for this video and I'm glad I didn't have to! lol

[@Hampter-m7r]

Australian government must make residents learn and use regional aboriginal language.

[@yiannisroubos8846]

Why

[@rabbiswit]

there should be an option in schools yes, but its very difficult to create due to a lack of linguistic material/people speaking the language to put into a course and the curriculum. also in one small town you can have 3-5 different dialects. alot of aboriginal leaders also dont want to make the language public as they dont want to share too much.

[@davegraham7550]

Teaching of a language such as Walpiri in varied and different locations around the world via correspondance is a good strategy I think. If those who speak agree to that. Can't see why that strategy wouldn't work for any language...revival via the cybersphere.

[@somebodyelse5515]

ARABİC....

[@ninamccann9644]

Please change the image of the colonial flag at the introduction of this video. The fact that the colonial flag has been featured here is a mark of severe insincerity, disrespect and a true lack of cultural compassion/understanding/education. The true flag of this country is the Indigenous Flag. Your video contains content that is culturally significant and important but this graphic is beyond offensive to our First Nations Peoples. With all due respect, please amend this asap.