Nhanda language

Nhanda or Nhanta or Nhandi is an Australian Aboriginal language. It has been considered a member of the Kartu branch of the Pama–Nyungan family; recent research has thrown this classification into question, but it is still often listed included in the Kartu branch.

Nhanda is a language once spoken on the coastal strip of Western Australia, from Geraldton north to the Murchison River, and some 20 km inland. There are now no more than a few speakers or semi-speakers of the Nhanda language. The Yamaji Language Centre has been carrying out work on the Nhanda language since 1992 and has produced an illustrated wordlist and a dictionary (the latter unpublished). Dr Juliette Blevins has carried out work on Nhanda since 1993 and has produced a sketch grammar as well as a number of published papers on aspects of the phonology and history of Nhanda.

Nhanda differs somewhat from its neighbouring languages in that it has a phonemic glottal stop, is initial-dropping (i.e. it has lost many initial consonants, leading to vowel-initial words) and the stop consonants show a phonemic length contrast. It has been suggested by Rupert Gerritsen that Nhanda exhibits Dutch influence, due to contact with shipwrecked sailors, but this is contested by Blevins and other linguists who have worked on the language.

The Nhanda word for 'man, human being' is arnmanu. It appears that when Norman Tindale collected information on Nhanda (or on the closely related variety thought to have been spoken in Geraldton) he was given this word, which he recorded as 'Amangu' and believed to be the 'tribal name' for this group.