Dyirbal
| Dyirbal | |
|---|---|
| Region | Northeast Queensland |
|
Native speakers
|
15 (10 Girramay & 5 Dulgubarra Mamu) (2005) to 28 Girramay (2006 census) |
|
Pama–Nyungan
|
|
| Dialects |
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | dyir1250 |
| AIATSIS | Y123 |
 |
|
Dyirbal /ˈdʒɜːrbəl/ (also Djirubal) is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken in northeast Queensland by about 29 speakers of the Dyirbal tribe. It is a member of the small Dyirbalic branch of the Pama–Nyungan family. It possesses many outstanding features that have made it well known among linguists.
In the years since the Dyirbal grammar by Robert Dixon was published in 1972, Dyirbal has steadily gotten closer to extinction as younger community members have failed to learn it.
Dyirbal has only four places of articulation for the stop and nasals, whereas most other Australian Aboriginal languages have six. This is because Dyirbal lacks the dental/alveolar/retroflex split typically found in these languages. Like the majority of Australian languages, it does not make a distinction between voiced consonants (such as b, d, g, etc.) and voiceless consonants (the corresponding p, t, and k, etc. respectively). Like Pinyin, standard Dyirbal orthography uses voiced consonants, which seem to be preferred by speakers of most Australian languages since the sounds (which can often be semi-voiced) are closer to English semi-voiced b, d, g than aspirated p, t, k.
The Dyirbal vowel system is typical of Australia, with three vowels: /i/, /a/ and /u/, though /u/ is realised as [o] in certain environments and /a/ can be realised as [e], also depending on the environment in which the phoneme appears. Thus the actual inventory of sounds is greater than the inventory of phonemes would suggest. Stress always falls on the first syllable of a word and usually on subsequent odd-numbered syllables except the ultima, which is always unstressed. The result of this is that consecutive stressed syllables do not occur.
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