Badimaya language
| Badimaya | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Australia |
| Region | Murchison area of Western Australia |
|
Native speakers
|
3 (2005) |
|
Pama–Nyungan
|
|
| Dialects |
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | badi1246 |
| AIATSIS | A14 |
Badimaya (sometimes recorded as 'Parti-maya') is an Australian Aboriginal language. It is a member of the Kartu subgroup of the Pama–Nyungan family.
Badimaya is a critically endangered language, spoken by only a handful of elderly Aboriginal people, all of whom are over 65 years of age.
Badimaya was traditionally spoken across a large region spanning Lake Moore, Ninghan Station, Paynes Find and Dalwallinu in the south, to Mount Magnet, Wynyangoo Station and Kirkalocka Station in the north (Bednall, 2014).
Today Badimaya people are found scattered across the Murchison and Mid-West region, based in regional towns and communities including Mount Magnet, Geraldton, Yalgoo, Mullewa, Meekatharra, Wubin, Dalwallinu and Perth (Bednall, 2014).
Traditional Badimaya country is bordered by Western Desert language (Tjuparn, Wanmala) to the east, Noongar to the south-west and Wajarri to the north-west.
Widi may have been another name for Badimaya, or for a particular variety of it.
Analysis of the lexicon and grammatical features of the language suggests that there were (at least) two varieties of Badimaya, a northern and southern variety. These varieties are unnamed, however Badimaya speakers are aware of differences in the speech of Badimaya people from different regions of Badimaya country.
Badimaya is typologically fairly standard of Western Australian Pama-Nyungan languages. It has a phoneme inventory typical of Pama-Nyungan languages, with six places of articulation (showing both a laminal and apical contrast) and a three-way vowel system, with (limited) length-contrast.
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