Nhanda or Nhanta or Nhandi is an Australian Aboriginal language

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...

. It has been considered a member of the Kartu languages

Kartu languages

The Kartu languages is the name given by linguists to a group of Indigenous Australian languages spoken in the Murchison and Gascoyne regions of Western Australia which are thought to be closely related and to descend from a relatively recent common ancestor....

 group of the large Southwest branch of the Pama–Nyungan family, but recent research has thrown this classification into question.

Nhanda is a language once spoken on the coastal strip of Western Australia, from Geraldton north to the Murchison River, and some 20km 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out work on the Nhanda language since 1992 and has produced an illustrated wordlist and a dictionary (the latter unpublished).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

Phoneme

In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....

 glottal stop

Glottal stop

The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...

, is initial-dropping (i.e. it has lost many initial consonants, leading to vowel-initial words) and the stop consonant

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 &...

s show a phonemic length contrast. It has been suggested by Rupert Gerritsen

Rupert Gerritsen

Rupert Gerritsen is a noted authority on Indigenous Australian prehistory. Coupled with his work on early Australian cartography he has played an influential part in re-charting Australian history prior to its settlement by the British in 1788.-Early Years:...

 that Nhanda exhibits Dutch

Dutch language

Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...

 influence, due to contact with shipwreck

Shipwreck

A shipwreck is what remains of a ship that has wrecked, either sunk or beached. Whatever the cause, a sunken ship or a wrecked ship is a physical example of the event: this explains why the two concepts are often overlapping in English....

ed 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

Geraldton, Western Australia

Geraldton is a city and port in Western Australia located north of Perth in the Mid West region. Geraldton has an estimated population at June 2010 of 36,958...

) he was given this word, which he recorded as 'Amangu' and believed to be the 'tribal name' for this group.

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

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...		Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
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 &...	p	k	c	t̪	t	ʈ	ʔ
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....			ʎ	l̪	l	ɭ
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