Bardi language
| Bardi | |
|---|---|
| Region | Australia |
| Ethnicity | Bardi |
|
Native speakers
|
30 (2005) to 150 (2006 census) |
|
Nyulnyulan
|
|
| Dialects | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | Either: bcj djw – Jawi |
| Glottolog | bard1254 |
| AIATSIS | K15 |
Bardi (also Baardi, Baard) is a moribund Australian Aboriginal language, located in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. There are approximately 20 speakers out of a population of 380.
Bardi is a member of the Nyulnyulan language family. It is a member of the Western branch of the family.
According to R. M. W. Dixon (2002), the following dialects are mutually intelligible with Bardi:
Ethnologue (206) treats all but Ngumbarl as distinct languages, and this view is supported by those linguists who have worked on the languages, including Claire Bowern and William McGregor. It is also the view of Bardi speakers.
There is considerable documentation of the Bardi language, but most of it is unpublished. The earliest work on the language dates from the 1880s, although that has been lost. The earliest records are from the very early 20th century. Gerhardt Laves spent some time on Sunday island in the late 1920s and recorded extensive textual materials, and steady documentation has progressed since the late 1960s. In 2012, a comprehensive reference grammar written by Claire Bowern was published by De Gruyter Mouton.
Bardi has a consonant inventory rather typical of Australian languages, distinguishing 17 consonants both five positions and manners of articulation, with no fricatives or voicing distinctions.
The consonant inventory is as follows, with the orthographic conventions represented in bold.
The plosives are voiceless word initially and finally, and usually voiced everywhere else. Intervocally, they are often weakly lenited to an approximant.
Bardi has a typical vowel inventory for Australian languages, aside from /o/, which is not phonemic in other Nyulnyulan languages. Except for /o/, all of the vowels have phonemic short and long variants. The short versions are considerably more frequent than long vowels in the language, except for /o/ which is the least common vowel quality in Bardi.
...
Wikipedia