Yolŋu Matha is a cover term for the languages of the Yolngu (Yolŋu), the Indigenous people of northeast Arnhem Land in northern Australia. (Yolŋu = people, Matha = tongue, language).
Yolŋu Matha consists of about six mutually unintelligible languages divided into about thirty clan varieties and perhaps twelve different dialects, each with its own Yolŋu name. While there is extensive variation between these dialects, there is generally common mutu...
more
Yolŋu Matha is a cover term for the languages of the Yolngu (Yolŋu), the Indigenous people of northeast Arnhem Land in northern Australia. (Yolŋu = people, Matha = tongue, language).
Yolŋu Matha consists of about six mutually unintelligible languages divided into about thirty clan varieties and perhaps twelve different dialects, each with its own Yolŋu name. While there is extensive variation between these dialects, there is generally common mutual intelligibility, hence the umbrella group of Yolngu Matha. The linguistic situation is very complicated, since each of the 30 or so clans also has a named language variety. The dialects or separate language as used by the Ethnologue are:
Dictionaries have been produced by Beulah Lowe, David Zorc and Michael Christie. A public-domain version of Beulah Lowe's dictionary is available as a pdf file.
There are also several grammars of Yolngu languages by Jeffrey Heath, Frances Morphy, Melanie Wilkinson and others.
less
