Wiradjuri

Wiradjuri is the Pama-Nyungan language of the Wiradjuri Nation, whose country covers the central third of New South Wales between the Wambool (Macquarie), Kalari (Lachlan) and Murrumbidgee rivers — the largest single language territory in the state. Its name is itself a piece of grammar, wirray 'no' plus the suffix -dhuray 'having', the standard way neighbouring peoples labelled one another. The sound system is typical of inland Australia, contrasting dental (dh, nh), palatal (dy, ny) and plain alveolar articulations across three vowel qualities that distinguish length, and the counting system is base five, built on marra, which means both 'hand' and 'five'. Continuous first-language transmission ended during the twentieth century, but from the 1980s the Wiradjuri Elder Stan Grant Snr and the linguist John Rudder reassembled a dictionary of more than 8,000 words from nineteenth-century records and surviving knowledge, and the language is now taught from primary school to university level. Most modern Wiradjuri usage, including the forms given here, comes out of that reclamation work rather than unbroken everyday speech.

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