Guugu Yimithirr language
Encyclopedia
Guugu Yimithirr is an Australian Aboriginal language
, the traditional language of the Guugu Yimithirr people
of Far North Queensland
. Most of the speakers today live at the community of Hopevale
, about 46 km from Cooktown. It is one of the more famous Australian languages because it is the source of the word kangaroo
.
The name has many spelling variants, including Gogo-Yimidjir, Gugu-Yimidhirr, Gugu Yimithirr, Guugu Yimidhirr, Guguyimidjir (used by Ethnologue
), Gugu Yimijir, Kukuyimidir, Koko Imudji, Koko Yimidir, Kuku Jimidir, Kuku Yimithirr, and Kuku Yimidhirr.
The original territory of the Guugu Yimithirr tribe extended northwards to the mouth of the Jeannie River, where it was bordered by speakers of Guugu Nyiguudji; southwards to the Annan River, where it was bordered by speakers of Guugu Yalandji; to the west, it was bordered by speakers of a language called Guugu Warra (literally "bad talk") or Lama-Lama. The modern town of Cooktown is located within Guugu Yimithirr territory.
Today however, most Guugu Yimithirr speakers live at the mission
at Hopevale
.
used the coastal dialect to translate hymn
s and Bible stories
, so some of its words now have religious associations that the inland equivalents lack.
In 1770, Guugu Yimithirr became the first Australian Aboriginal language to be written down when Lieutenant
(later Captain
) James Cook
and his crew recorded words while their ship, the HM Bark Endeavour
, was being repaired after having run aground on a shoal of the Great Barrier Reef
. Joseph Banks
described the language as totally different from that of the Islanders; it sounded more like English in its degree of harshness tho it could not be calld [sic] harsh neither.
Among the words recorded were kangooroo or kanguru (IPA
: /ɡaŋuru/), meaning a large black or grey kangaroo
, which would become the general English term for all kangaroos, and dhigul (transcribed by Banks as Je-Quoll), the name of the quoll
.
Sydney Parkinson
, who accompanied Cook, gave a useful word list in his posthumously published journal.
Short /u/ may be realized as unrounded [ɯ], and unstressed /a/ may be reduced to [ə].
The stops are usually voiceless and unaspirated initially and after short vowels, and voiced after consonants and long vowels.
The retroflexes [ɖ ɳ] may not be single phonemes, but clusters of /ɻd ɻn/. However, there is at least one word which, for older speakers, is pronounced with a word-initial retroflex: "run", which is [ɖudaː] or [ɖuɖaː].
The rhotic /r/ is normally a flap
[ɾ], but may be a trill
in emphatic speech.
s, begin with one consonant. The consonant can be a stop, nasal, or semivowel (that is, /l r ɻ/ do not occur initially).
Words can end in either a vowel or a consonant. The allowed word-final consonants are /l r ɻ j n n̪/.
Within words, any consonant can occur, as well as clusters of up to three consonants, which cannot occur initially or finally.
s have accusative morphology while nouns have ergative morphology. That is, the subject
of an intransitive verb
has the same form as the subject of a transitive verb
if the subject is a pronoun, but the same form as the object
of a transitive verb otherwise.
Regardless of whether nouns or pronouns are used, the usual sentence order is subject–object–verb, although other word orders are possible.
The language is notable for its use of pure geographic directions (north, south, east, west) rather than egocentric directions (left, right, forward, backward).
Australian Aboriginal languages
The Australian Aboriginal languages comprise several language families and isolates native to the Australian Aborigines of Australia and a few nearby islands, but by convention excluding the languages of Tasmania and the Torres Strait Islanders...
, the traditional language of the Guugu Yimithirr people
Guugu Yimithirr people
The Guugu Yimithirr are an Australian Aboriginal tribe of Far North Queensland, many of whom today live at Hopevale , which is the administrative centre of Hopevale Shire. It is about 46 km from Cooktown by road. It is also the name of their language...
of Far North Queensland
Far North Queensland
Far North Queensland, or FNQ, is the northernmost part of the Australian state of Queensland. The region, which contains a large section of the Tropical North Queensland area, stretches from the city of Cairns north to the Torres Strait...
. Most of the speakers today live at the community of Hopevale
Hopevale, Queensland
Hopevale, , Queensland, Australia is an Aboriginal community on Cape York Peninsula about 46 km northwest of Cooktown by road, and about 10 km off the Battlecamp Road that leads to Lakefield National Park and Laura...
, about 46 km from Cooktown. It is one of the more famous Australian languages because it is the source of the word kangaroo
Kangaroo
A kangaroo is a marsupial from the family Macropodidae . In common use the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, especially those of the genus Macropus, Red Kangaroo, Antilopine Kangaroo, Eastern Grey Kangaroo and Western Grey Kangaroo. Kangaroos are endemic to the country...
.
Name
The word guugu means "speech, language", while yimithirr (or yumuthirr) means yimi-having, yimi being the word for "this". The use of the word yi(mi), rather than some other word for "this", was seen as a distinctive feature of Guugu Yimithirr. The element guugu and the practice of naming based on some distinctive word is found in many other languages.The name has many spelling variants, including Gogo-Yimidjir, Gugu-Yimidhirr, Gugu Yimithirr, Guugu Yimidhirr, Guguyimidjir (used by Ethnologue
Ethnologue
Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christian linguistic service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language and support their efforts in language development.The Ethnologue...
), Gugu Yimijir, Kukuyimidir, Koko Imudji, Koko Yimidir, Kuku Jimidir, Kuku Yimithirr, and Kuku Yimidhirr.
Geographic distribution
Location of the Guugu Yimithirr people |
The original territory of the Guugu Yimithirr tribe extended northwards to the mouth of the Jeannie River, where it was bordered by speakers of Guugu Nyiguudji; southwards to the Annan River, where it was bordered by speakers of Guugu Yalandji; to the west, it was bordered by speakers of a language called Guugu Warra (literally "bad talk") or Lama-Lama. The modern town of Cooktown is located within Guugu Yimithirr territory.
Today however, most Guugu Yimithirr speakers live at the mission
Mission (station)
A religious mission or mission station is a location for missionary work.While primarily a Christian term, the concept of the religious "mission" is also used prominently by the Church of Scientology and their Scientology Missions International....
at Hopevale
Hopevale, Queensland
Hopevale, , Queensland, Australia is an Aboriginal community on Cape York Peninsula about 46 km northwest of Cooktown by road, and about 10 km off the Battlecamp Road that leads to Lakefield National Park and Laura...
.
Dialects
Guugu Yimithirr originally consisted of several dialects, although even the names of most have now been forgotten. Today two main dialects are distinguished: the coastal dialect, called dhalundirr "with the sea", and the inland dialect, called waguurrga "of the outside". MissionariesMissionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
used the coastal dialect to translate hymn
Hymn
A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification...
s and Bible stories
Bible story
Bible stories, Judeo-Christian parables retelling some portions of the Bible, have been used in family religious worship, spiritual instruction and literature in Christian and Jewish societies....
, so some of its words now have religious associations that the inland equivalents lack.
History
Lieutenant
A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...
(later Captain
Captain (naval)
Captain is the name most often given in English-speaking navies to the rank corresponding to command of the largest ships. The NATO rank code is OF-5, equivalent to an army full colonel....
) James Cook
James Cook
Captain James Cook, FRS, RN was a British explorer, navigator and cartographer who ultimately rose to the rank of captain in the Royal Navy...
and his crew recorded words while their ship, the HM Bark Endeavour
HM Bark Endeavour
HMS Endeavour, also known as HM Bark Endeavour, was a British Royal Navy research vessel commanded by Lieutenant James Cook on his first voyage of discovery, to Australia and New Zealand from 1769 to 1771....
, was being repaired after having run aground on a shoal of the Great Barrier Reef
Great Barrier Reef
The Great Barrier Reef is the world'slargest reef system composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over 2,600 kilometres over an area of approximately...
. Joseph Banks
Joseph Banks
Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, GCB, PRS was an English naturalist, botanist and patron of the natural sciences. He took part in Captain James Cook's first great voyage . Banks is credited with the introduction to the Western world of eucalyptus, acacia, mimosa and the genus named after him,...
described the language as totally different from that of the Islanders; it sounded more like English in its degree of harshness tho it could not be calld [sic] harsh neither.
Among the words recorded were kangooroo or kanguru (IPA
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
: /ɡaŋuru/), meaning a large black or grey kangaroo
Kangaroo
A kangaroo is a marsupial from the family Macropodidae . In common use the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, especially those of the genus Macropus, Red Kangaroo, Antilopine Kangaroo, Eastern Grey Kangaroo and Western Grey Kangaroo. Kangaroos are endemic to the country...
, which would become the general English term for all kangaroos, and dhigul (transcribed by Banks as Je-Quoll), the name of the quoll
Quoll
The quoll, or native cat, is a carnivorous marsupial native to mainland Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania. It is primarily nocturnal and spends most of the day in its den. There are six species of quoll; four are found in Australia and two in New Guinea...
.
Sydney Parkinson
Sydney Parkinson
Sydney Parkinson was a Scottish Quaker, botanical illustrator and natural history artist.Parkinson was employed by Joseph Banks to travel with him on James Cook's first voyage to the Pacific in 1768. Parkinson made nearly a thousand drawings of plants and animals collected by Banks and Daniel...
, who accompanied Cook, gave a useful word list in his posthumously published journal.
Vowels
| Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also... |
Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark... |
|
|---|---|---|
| High | i iː | u uː |
| Low | a aː | |
Short /u/ may be realized as unrounded [ɯ], and unstressed /a/ may be reduced to [ə].
Consonants
| Peripheral Peripheral consonant In Australian linguistics, the peripheral consonants are a natural class encompassing consonants articulated at the extremes of the mouth: bilabials and velars. That is, they are the non-coronal consonants... |
Laminal Laminal consonant A laminal consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, which is the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue on the top. This contrasts with apical consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the tongue apex only... |
Apical Apical consonant An apical consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the apex of the tongue . This contrasts with laminal consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the blade of the tongue .This is not a very common distinction, and typically applied only to fricatives... |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
Dental | Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
Retroflex Retroflex consonant A retroflex consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants, especially in Indology... |
|
| Stop Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &... |
b | ɡ | ɟ | d̪ | d | ɖ |
| Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
m | ŋ | ɲ | n̪ | n | ɳ |
| Lateral Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth.... |
l | |||||
| Rhotic Rhotic consonant In phonetics, rhotic consonants, also called tremulants or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including "R, r" from the Roman alphabet and "Р, p" from the Cyrillic alphabet... |
r | ɻ | ||||
| Semivowel Semivowel In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel is a sound, such as English or , that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.-Classification:... |
w | j | ||||
The stops are usually voiceless and unaspirated initially and after short vowels, and voiced after consonants and long vowels.
The retroflexes [ɖ ɳ] may not be single phonemes, but clusters of /ɻd ɻn/. However, there is at least one word which, for older speakers, is pronounced with a word-initial retroflex: "run", which is [ɖudaː] or [ɖuɖaː].
The rhotic /r/ is normally a flap
Flap consonant
In phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator is thrown against another.-Contrast with stops and trills:...
[ɾ], but may be a trill
Trill consonant
In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr> as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular....
in emphatic speech.
Phonotactics
All words, with the exception of a couple of interjectionInterjection
In grammar, an interjection or exclamation is a word used to express an emotion or sentiment on the part of the speaker . Filled pauses such as uh, er, um are also considered interjections...
s, begin with one consonant. The consonant can be a stop, nasal, or semivowel (that is, /l r ɻ/ do not occur initially).
Words can end in either a vowel or a consonant. The allowed word-final consonants are /l r ɻ j n n̪/.
Within words, any consonant can occur, as well as clusters of up to three consonants, which cannot occur initially or finally.
Grammar
Like many Australian languages, Guugu Yimithirr pronounPronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...
s have accusative morphology while nouns have ergative morphology. That is, the subject
Subject (grammar)
The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...
of an intransitive verb
Intransitive verb
In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb that has no object. This differs from a transitive verb, which takes one or more objects. Both classes of verb are related to the concept of the transitivity of a verb....
has the same form as the subject of a transitive verb
Transitive verb
In syntax, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects.-Examples:Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs:...
if the subject is a pronoun, but the same form as the object
Object (grammar)
An object in grammar is part of a sentence, and often part of the predicate. It denotes somebody or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb. Basically, it is what or whom the verb is acting upon...
of a transitive verb otherwise.
Regardless of whether nouns or pronouns are used, the usual sentence order is subject–object–verb, although other word orders are possible.
The language is notable for its use of pure geographic directions (north, south, east, west) rather than egocentric directions (left, right, forward, backward).