99-475: Koori (also spelt koorie , goori or goorie ) is a demonym for Aboriginal Australians from a region that approximately corresponds to southern New South Wales and Victoria . The word derives from the Indigenous language Awabakal . For some people and groups, it has been described as a reclaiming of Indigenous language and culture, as opposed to relying on European titles such as "Aboriginal". The term
198-459: A 'pressed' voice quality , with the glottal opening narrower than in modal voice, a relatively high frequency of creaky voice , and low airflow. This may be due to an avoidance of breathy voice . This pressed quality could therefore serve to enhance the clarity of speech and ensure the perception of place of articulation distinctions. Probably every Australian language with speakers remaining has had an orthography developed for it, in each case in
297-494: A Person From...? A Dictionary of Resident Names (the first edition of Labels for Locals ) Dickson attributed the term to George H. Scheetz, in his Names' Names: A Descriptive and Prescriptive Onymicon (1988), which is apparently where the term first appears. The term may have been fashioned after demonymic , which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as the name of an Athenian citizen according to
396-696: A complete absence of uvular consonants and only a few languages with a glottal stop . Both stops and nasals occur at all six places, and in many languages laterals occur at all four coronal places. Andrew Butcher speculates that the unusual segmental inventories of Australian languages may be due to the very high presence of otitis media ear infections and resulting hearing loss in their populations. People with hearing loss often have trouble distinguishing different vowels and hearing fricatives and voicing contrasts. Australian Aboriginal languages thus seem to avoid sounds and distinctions which are difficult for people with early childhood hearing loss to perceive. At
495-456: A few cases the [u] has been unrounded to give [i, ɯ, a] . There is almost never a voicing contrast ; that is, a consonant may sound like a [p] at the beginning of a word, but like a [b] between vowels, and either letter could be (and often is) chosen to represent it. Australia also stands out as being almost entirely free of fricative consonants , even of [h] . In the few cases where fricatives do occur, they developed recently through
594-514: A few languages which employ only nominative–accusative case marking. The following represents a canonical 6-place Australian Aboriginal consonant system. It does not represent any single language, but is instead a simplified form of the consonant inventory of what would be found in many Australian languages, including most Arandic and Yolŋu languages. A typical Australian phonological inventory includes just three vowels, usually /i, u, a/ , which may occur in both long and short variants. In
693-565: A few nearby islands. The relationships between the language families are not clear at present although there are proposals to link some into larger groupings. Despite this uncertainty, the Indigenous Australian languages are collectively covered by the technical term "Australian languages", or the "Australian family". The term can include both Tasmanian languages and the Western Torres Strait language , but
792-645: A formal partnership with the Australian Federal Government to address the goals of the Closing the Gap initiative. The partnership also includes representatives from Indigenous activist groups. A Koori Court is a division of the Magistrates' Court of Victoria that sentences Indigenous Australians who plead guilty, operational since 2002. New South Wales has several Youth Koori Courts ,
891-681: A link between Australian and Papuan languages, the latter being represented by those spoken on the coastal areas of New Guinea facing the Torres Strait and the Arafura Sea . In 1986 William A. Foley noted lexical similarities between Robert M. W. Dixon's 1980 reconstruction of proto-Australian and the East New Guinea Highlands languages . He believed that it was naïve to expect to find a single Papuan or Australian language family when New Guinea and Australia had been
990-530: A native of the United Kingdom may be called a British person , a Briton or, informally, a Brit . Some demonyms may have several meanings. For example, the demonym Macedonians may refer to the population of North Macedonia , or more generally to the entire population of the region of Macedonia , a portion of which is in Greece . In some languages, a demonym may be borrowed from another language as
1089-490: A nickname or descriptive adjective for a group of people: for example, Québécois , Québécoise (female) is commonly used in English for a native of the province or city of Quebec (though Quebecer , Quebecker are also available). In English, demonyms are always capitalized . Often, demonyms are the same as the adjectival form of the place, e.g. Egyptian , Japanese , or Greek . However, they are not necessarily
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#17327975987841188-400: A number of other names from Australian Aboriginal languages commonly used to identify groups based on geography : Demonym A demonym ( / ˈ d ɛ m ə n ɪ m / ; from Ancient Greek δῆμος ( dêmos ) 'people, tribe' and ὄνυμα ( ónuma ) 'name') or gentilic (from Latin gentilis 'of a clan, or gens ') is
1287-519: A pair sold for AUD$ 140 at a Sydney gallery in 2009. Also unique to the Koori region were possum-skin cloaks , traditionally gifted to Koori newborns. The cloaks were embellished with the markings of the newborn's clan and family, and were added to as the child grew, to represent a kind of Koori "autobiography". Although the craft of possum-skin cloaks has declined, it is being revived by contemporary Koori artists such as Kelly Koumalatsos. The Koori region
1386-860: A practice that appears unique to the Sydney area. Shell craft has continued to be of importance to the modern Koori population, with a 2008 exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney incorporating Indigenous shell craft. In 2005, Koori shell artist Esme Timbery won the Parliament of New South Wales Indigenous Art Prize for her shell-adorned model of the Sydney Harbour Bridge . The economic prevalence of Koori shell craft, too, has increased in contemporary Indigenous art history. While in 2005, shell craft shoes retailed for approximately AUD$ 20,
1485-402: A sharp population decline, influenced by the colonisation of Australia by Europeans. The legacy of colonisation is still strongly felt, and has had ongoing ramifications for Koori life and wellbeing. "Koori" comes from the word gurri , meaning "man" or "people" in the Indigenous language Awabakal , spoken on the mid-north coast of New South Wales. On the far north coast of New South Wales,
1584-794: A single landmass (called the Sahul continent ) for most of their human history, having been separated by the Torres Strait only 8000 years ago, and that a deep reconstruction would likely include languages from both. Dixon, in the meantime, later abandoned his proto-Australian proposal. Glottolog 4.1 (2019) recognises 23 independent families and 9 isolates in Australia, comprising a total of 32 independent language groups. According to Claire Bowern 's Australian Languages (2011), Australian languages divide into approximately 30 primary sub-groups and 5 isolates. It has been inferred from
1683-495: A study in Diachronica that hypothesised, by analysing noun class prefix paradigms across both Pama-Nyungan and the minority non-Pama-Nyungan languages, that a Proto-Australian could be reconstructed from which all known Australian languages descend. This Proto-Australian language, they concluded, would have been spoken about 12,000 years ago in northern Australia. For a long time unsuccessful attempts were made to detect
1782-446: A truncated form of the toponym , or place-name.) "-ish" is usually proper only as an adjective. See note below list. -ene Often used for Middle Eastern locations and European locations. -ensian -ard -ese, -nese or -lese "-ese" is usually considered proper only as an adjective, or to refer to the entirety. Thus, "a Chinese person" is used rather than "a Chinese". Often used for Italian and East Asian, from
1881-529: A widespread pattern is for pronouns (or first and second persons ) to have nominative – accusative case marking and for third person to be ergative–absolutive , though splits between animate and inanimate are also found. In some languages the persons in between the accusative and ergative inflections (such as second person, or third-person human) may be tripartite : that is, marked overtly as either ergative or accusative in transitive clauses, but not marked as either in intransitive clauses. There are also
1980-433: A word that identifies a group of people (inhabitants, residents, natives) in relation to a particular place. Demonyms are usually derived from the name of the place (hamlet, village, town, city, region, province, state, country, and continent). Demonyms are used to designate all people (the general population) of a particular place, regardless of ethnic, linguistic, religious or other cultural differences that may exist within
2079-515: Is a valid language family. However, few other linguists accept Dixon's thesis. For example, Kenneth L. Hale describes Dixon's scepticism as an erroneous phylogenetic assessment which is "such an insult to the eminently successful practitioners of Comparative Method Linguistics in Australia, that it positively demands a decisive riposte". Hale provides pronominal and grammatical evidence (with suppletion) as well as more than fifty basic-vocabulary cognates (showing regular sound correspondences) between
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#17327975987842178-515: Is also used with reference to institutions involving Koori communities and individuals, such as the Koori Court , Koori Radio and Koori Knockout . The Koori region is home to the largest proportion of Australia's Indigenous population (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people), with 40.7% of Indigenous Australians living in either New South Wales or Victoria. Within the region however, Koori-identifying people make up only 2.9% and 0.8% of
2277-590: Is based largely on dot work, done in "earthy colours" such as blacks, whites, reds and browns. Some Koori elders identify this style as a means of reconnecting with traditional Indigenous culture and ancestry. More unique to the Koori population is the prevalence of artistic " shell craft ", using shells found in the coastal environment to decorate ornamental pieces. Documents from the 1880s detail Koori women selling shell craft baskets and decorative shoes to settler women at markets in La Perouse and Circular Quay ,
2376-539: Is characteristic of more careful speech, while these sounds tend to be apical in rapid speech. Kalaw Lagaw Ya and many other languages in North Queensland differ from most other Australian languages in not having a retroflexive series. The dental series th, nh, lh are always laminal (that is, pronounced by touching with the surface of the tongue just above the tip, called the blade of the tongue), but may be formed in one of three different ways, depending on
2475-594: Is encountered also in Latinate names for the various people that ancient Romans encountered (e.g. Allemanni , Helvetii ). -i.e. is rather used for English places. -iot or -iote Used especially for Greek locations. Backformation from Cypriot , itself based in Greek -ώτης . -k -asque Often used for Italian and French locations. -(we)gian -onian Australian Aboriginal languages The Indigenous languages of Australia number in
2574-561: Is highly unusual. The anticipatory assimilation of nasality is quite common in various languages around the world. Typically, a vowel will become nasalized before a following nasal consonant. However, this process is resisted in Australian languages. There was a historical process in many languages where nasal + stop C 1 C 2 clusters lost the nasal element if C INIT was a nasal. Also, many languages have morphophonemic alterations whereby initial nasals in suffixes are denasalized if
2673-522: Is home to a number of traditional Indigenous languages . The state of Victoria has speakers of 38 Aboriginal languages, while New South Wales has historically been home to more than 70. However, the number of Kooris who report speaking an Indigenous language at home is low. Only 0.8% of New South Wales and 1% of Victorian Kooris speak an Indigenous language in the home, being the lowest rates of Indigenous language usage outside of Tasmania . There are some attempts to revive Koori languages. In New South Wales,
2772-547: Is mostly used by the natives in the province of Quezon , is also used for their local or native demonyms in English . -a(ñ/n)o/a, -e(ñ/n)o/a, or -i(ñ/n)o/a Adaptations from the standard Spanish suffix -e(ñ/n)o (sometimes using a final -a instead of -o for a female, following the standard Spanish suffix -e(ñ/n)a ) Countries and regions Cities -ite -(e)r Often used for European locations and Canadian locations -(i)sh (Usually suffixed to
2871-548: Is not aspirated, even in Kalaw Lagaw Ya, despite its other stops being aspirated. The other apical series is the retroflex, rt, rn, rl (or rd, rn, rl ). Here the place is further back in the mouth, in the postalveolar or prepalatal region. The articulation is actually most commonly subapical ; that is, the tongue curls back so that the underside of the tip makes contact. That is, they are true retroflex consonants . It has been suggested that subapical pronunciation
2970-592: Is one of the largest gatherings of Indigenous people in Australia. A modern-day corroboree for the Koori people of NSW, it has been held annually over the October long weekend since 1971. The Koorie Heritage Trust in Melbourne holds over 100,000 artistic artefacts from Indigenous South-Eastern Australia. The Trust's collection includes prehistoric tools, 19th Century art by Koori artists William Barak and Tommy McRae, and pieces by contemporary Koori artists. There are
3069-582: Is succeeded by the Nyingarn Project , which digitises manuscripts and crowdsources transcriptions through DigiVol. In recent decades, there have been attempts to revive indigenous languages. Significant challenges exist, however, for the revival of languages in the dominant English language culture of Australia. The Kaurna language , spoken by the Kaurna people of the Adelaide plains, has been
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3168-533: Is the large number of places of articulation . Some 10-15% of Australian languages have four places of articulation, with two coronal places of articulation, 40-50% have five places, and 40-45% have six places of articulation, including four coronals. The four-way distinction in the coronal region is commonly accomplished through two variables: the position of the tongue (front, alveolar or dental, or retroflex ), and its shape ( apical or laminal ). There are also bilabial , velar and often palatal consonants , but
3267-577: Is thought to be of particular benefit to the emotional well-being of Indigenous children . There is some evidence to suggest that the reversal of the Indigenous language shift may lead to decreased self-harm and suicide rates among Indigenous youth. The first Aboriginal people to use Australian Aboriginal languages in the Australian parliament were Aden Ridgeway on 25 August 1999 in the Senate when he said "On this special occasion, I make my presence known as an Aborigine and to this chamber I say, perhaps for
3366-529: The English language , there are many polysemic words that have several meanings (including demonymic and ethnonymic uses), and therefore a particular use of any such word depends on the context. For example, the word Thai may be used as a demonym, designating any inhabitant of Thailand , while the same word may also be used as an ethnonym, designating members of the Thai people . Conversely, some groups of people may be associated with multiple demonyms. For example,
3465-574: The Pama–Nyungan family , a family accepted by most linguists, with Robert M. W. Dixon as a notable exception. For convenience, the rest of the languages, all spoken in the far north, are commonly lumped together as "Non-Pama–Nyungan", although this does not necessarily imply that they constitute a valid clade . Dixon argues that after perhaps 40,000 years of mutual influence, it is no longer possible to distinguish deep genealogical relationships from areal features in Australia, and that not even Pama–Nyungan
3564-462: The Torres Strait or Polynesia , indicating a system of regional trade. The first documented contact between Indigenous Australians and Europeans on Koori territory occurred in 1770 during James Cook 's HMS Endeavour expedition. In his journals, Cook documents interactions with Indigenous groups at Botany Bay near modern-day Sydney. During this initial contact, two Indigenous men resisted Cook's landing, causing Cook to open fire and wound one of
3663-988: The deme to which the citizen belongs, with its first use traced to 1893. Several linguistic elements are used to create demonyms in the English language . The most common is to add a suffix to the end of the location name, slightly modified in some instances. These may resemble Late Latin , Semitic , Celtic , or Germanic suffixes, such as -(a)n , -ian , -anian , -nian , -in(e) , -a(ñ/n)o/a , -e(ñ/n)o/a , -i(ñ/n)o/a , -ite , -(e)r , -(i)sh , -ene , -ensian , -ard , -ese , -nese , -lese , -i(e) , -i(ya) , -iot , -iote , -k , -asque , -(we)gian , -onian , -vian , -ois(e) , or -ais(e) . -(a)n Continents and regions Countries Constituent states, provinces and regions Cities -ian Countries Constituent states, provinces, regions and cities -anian -nian -in(e) -(h)in The Tayabas Tagalog suffix -(h)in , which
3762-552: The genetic relationship to the mainland Australian languages of the former is unknown, while the latter is Pama–Nyungan , though it shares features with the neighbouring Papuan , Eastern Trans-Fly languages, in particular Meriam Mir of the Torres Strait Islands , as well as the Papuan Tip Austronesian languages. Most Australian languages belong to the widespread Pama–Nyungan family, while
3861-429: The lenition (weakening) of stops, and are therefore non-sibilants like [ð] rather than the sibilants like [s] that are common elsewhere in the world. Some languages also have three rhotics , typically a flap , a trill , and an approximant (that is, like the combined rhotics of English and Spanish) and many have four laterals. Besides the lack of fricatives, the most striking feature of Australian speech sounds
3960-490: The poverty line . Approximately 32.4% of Koori households in New South Wales earn below A$ 500/week, compared to 22.3% of non-Indigenous. Less than half of New South Wales Kooris own their homes, compared to 70% of non-Koori residents. New South Wales Kooris are less likely to be in the labour force, with an underemployment rate of 43% compared to 35.9% of non-Koori residents. The professional services industry has
4059-599: The 1900s at Daisy Bates Online provides a valuable resource for those researching especially Western Australian languages, and some languages of the Northern Territory and South Australia . The project is co-ordinated by Nick Thieberger , who works in collaboration with the National Library of Australia "to have all the microfilmed images from Section XII of the Bates papers digitised". The project
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4158-558: The 1910s, the Board's powers were extended to allow for the removal of Koori children from their families for assimilation into the non-Indigenous population. Some Koori children were placed into white families, while others were sent to labour schools such as the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls and Kinchela Aboriginal Boys' Training Home . This process of segregation and child-removal
4257-514: The 5 places of articulation of stops/sibilants. Where vowels are concerned, it has 8 vowels with some morpho-syntactic as well as phonemic length contrasts ( i iː , e eː , a aː , ə əː , ɔ ɔː , o oː , ʊ ʊː , u uː ), and glides that distinguish between those that are in origin vowels, and those that in origin are consonants. Kunjen and other neighbouring languages have also developed contrasting aspirated consonants ( [pʰ] , [t̪ʰ] , [tʰ] , [cʰ] , [kʰ] ) not found further south. Descriptions of
4356-816: The Aboriginal Child Placement Principle in 1987, mandating that an Indigenous family be chosen for the rehoming of Koori children wherever possible. In 1997, the premiers of both New South Wales and Victoria apologised for the historic mistreatment of Indigenous Australians, including an apology for the Stolen Generation, and affirmed their commitment to reconciliation. Statistics indicate ongoing divergences between Koori and non-Koori Australians in areas such as health, education, income levels, and incarceration rates. The Australian National University 's Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research ties these statistical divergences to
4455-408: The C 1 (C 2 ) position, and are most commonly sonorant + obstruent sequences. In languages with pre-stopped nasals or laterals, those sounds only occur at C 1 . Australian languages typically resist certain connected speech processes which might blur the place of articulation of consonants at C 1 (C 2 ), such as anticipatory assimilation of place of articulation, which is common around
4554-542: The IPA sense of the term, and indeed they contrast with true palatals in Yanyuwa . In Kalaw Lagaw Ya, the palatal consonants are sub-phonemes of the alveolar sibilants /s/ and /z/ . These descriptions do not apply exactly to all Australian languages, as the notes regarding Kalaw Lagaw Ya demonstrate. However, they do describe most of them, and are the expected norm against which languages are compared. Some have suggested that
4653-402: The Indigenous experience of colonialism. Statistics show that Koori Australians have poorer health than their non-Koori counterparts, reflected in their lower life expectancy . Across New South Wales and Victoria, non-Koori individuals were expected to live 8–10 years longer than Koori individuals between 2015 and 2017. Thus, the Koori population is younger in demographic, with the median age of
4752-620: The Italian suffix -ese , which is originally from the Latin adjectival ending -ensis , designating origin from a place: thus Hispaniensis (Spanish), Danensis (Danish), etc. The use in demonyms for Francophone locations is motivated by the similar-sounding French suffix -ais(e) , which is at least in part a relative (< lat. -ensis or -iscus , or rather both). -i(e) or -i(ya) Countries States, provinces, counties, and cities Mostly for Middle Eastern and South Asian locales. -i
4851-475: The Koori region as early as 50,000–45,000 years ago. Ancient Koori artefacts including human remains and tools have been found at Lake Mungo in New South Wales, dated to be between 50,000 and 46,000 years old. In Western Victoria, structures from ancient Koori populations have been discovered, including stone-walled fishing traps measuring up to six metres in height and three kilometres in length. The traps date to approximately 6,600 years old, making them one of
4950-542: The Koori region in the first 20 years of contact. Generally accepted estimates approximate that 2000 non-Aboriginals (mostly Europeans) and 20,000 Aboriginals were killed in armed conflict between the two groups. This included the Waterloo Creek massacre on New South Wales Koori territory in 1837, during which an estimated 200–300 Kooris were killed. In the 1830s and 40s, the Western District of Victoria
5049-505: The New South Wales Koori community being 22, in contrast to 38 for the non-Koori population. In New South Wales, 7.6% of the Indigenous population are profoundly or severely disabled , compared to 5.6% of non-Indigenous individuals, and this gap is widening. Additionally, New South Wales Kooris with a disability tend to be younger: 36% of the Indigenous disabled population in New South Wales is under 25, compared to 12.7% of
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#17327975987845148-405: The New South Wales and Victoria regions in 1830. Deaths also occurred due to sexually transmitted infections , transported to Australia by the settlers. In Port Phillip, Victoria, two-thirds of the Koori population died of sexually transmitted infections. The Aborigines Protection Board of New South Wales and Victoria enabled the segregation of Kooris onto government-run missions and reserves. In
5247-573: The North Queensland Regional Aboriginal Corporation Language Centre (NQRACLC) in 2008, and has been contributing oral histories and the results of his own research to their database. As part of the efforts to raise awareness of Wiradjuri language a Grammar of Wiradjuri language was published in 2014 and A new Wiradjuri dictionary in 2010. The New South Wales Aboriginal Languages Act 2017 became law on 24 October 2017. It
5346-476: The above generalisations is Kalaw Lagaw Ya , spoken in the Torres Strait Islands , which has an inventory more like its Papuan neighbours than the languages of the Australian mainland, including full voice contrasts: /p b/ , dental /t̪ d̪/ , alveolar /t d/ , the sibilants /s z/ (which have allophonic variation with [tʃ] and [dʒ] respectively) and velar /k ɡ/ , as well as only one rhotic, one lateral and three nasals (labial, dental and velar) in contrast to
5445-419: The approximately 250 once spoken, but with a high rate of attrition as elders died out. Of the 90, 70% by 2001 were judged as 'severely endangered' with only 17 spoken by all age groups, a definition of a 'strong' language. On these grounds it is anticipated that despite efforts at linguistic preservation, many of the remaining languages will disappear within the next generation. The overall trend suggests that in
5544-623: The baby and welcome it to country. Sometimes, the placenta would be buried under the birthing tree to symbolise the newborn's connection to country . A Koori birthing tree in Western Victoria has received status as a significant tree on the Australian Register of the National Trust in recognition of its importance to the Koori population. Radiocarbon dating has identified evidence of Indigenous inhabitancy in
5643-408: The coronal articulations can be inconsistent. The alveolar series t, n, l (or d, n, l ) is straightforward: across the continent, these sounds are alveolar (that is, pronounced by touching the tongue to the ridge just behind the gum line of the upper teeth) and apical (that is, touching that ridge with the tip of the tongue). This is very similar to English t, d, n, l , though the Australian t
5742-556: The dialect of English spoken by Kooris within their communities. The dialect developed from the pidgin English used by Kooris to communicate with settlers at the time of colonisation. It employs nonverbal language cues such as silences, gestures and lip pursing. Some grammatical elements of Koori English may persist from traditional Indigenous languages, such as distinct ways of marking plural nouns. Historical records show Koori birthing rituals involving song, dance and ceremonial practices. Gunditjmara Kooris of south west Victoria record
5841-436: The early stages of language acquisition. The weakening of C INIT , on the other hand, is very unusual. No Australian language has consonant clusters in this position, and those languages with fortis and lenis distinctions do not make such distinctions in this position. Place of articulation distinctions are also less common in this position, and lenitions and deletions are historically common here. While in most languages
5940-480: The encroachment of colonial society broke up Indigenous cultures. For some of these languages, few records exist for vocabulary and grammar. At the start of the 21st century, fewer than 150 Aboriginal languages remained in daily use, with the majority being highly endangered . In 2020, 90 per cent of the barely more than 100 languages still spoken are considered endangered. Thirteen languages are still being transmitted to children. The surviving languages are located in
6039-621: The entire continent. A common feature of many Australian languages is that they display so-called avoidance speech , special speech registers used only in the presence of certain close relatives. These registers share the phonology and grammar of the standard language, but the lexicon is different and usually very restricted. There are also commonly speech taboos during extended periods of mourning or initiation that have led to numerous Aboriginal sign languages . For morphosyntactic alignment , many Australian languages have ergative – absolutive case systems. These are typically split systems;
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#17327975987846138-617: The explorers onto Koori territory. Following this initial contact, Great Britain established a penal colony at Botany Bay in New South Wales. The first settlers of this colony arrived in 1788 aboard the First Fleet , beginning the official colonisation of Australia by Europeans. Over the century following colonisation, there occurred a steep decline in the Aboriginal population. Approximations of overall Indigenous population decline range from 80 to 96%, with estimates of around 80% in
6237-715: The first of which was established in Parramatta in 2015. Koori Radio, a community radio-station based in Redfern , broadcasts to Sydney on a citywide licence. It forms part of the Gadigal Information Service and is the only radio station in Sydney providing full-time broadcasting to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. Koori Mail is a national Indigenous newspaper based in Lismore, New South Wales . The NSW Koori Rugby League Knockout
6336-529: The first time: Nyandi baaliga Jaingatti. Nyandi mimiga Gumbayynggir. Nya jawgar yaam Gumbyynggir. " (Translation: My father is Dhunghutti. My mother is Gumbayynggir. And, therefore, I am Gumbayynggir.) In the House of Representatives on 31 August 2016 Linda Burney gave an acknowledgment of country in Wiradjuri in her first speech and was sung in by Lynette Riley in Wiradjuri from the public gallery. 2019
6435-758: The highest divergence, with non-Koori employees three times as likely to work in this sector. Koori Australians are more likely to be incarcerated in both New South Wales and Victoria. In 2019, Koori adults were 9.3 times more likely to be incarcerated in New South Wales than their non-Koori counterparts. In Victoria, they were 14.5 times more likely. These statistics are mirrored in youth detention . In New South Wales, Koori children aged 10–17 were sixteen times more likely to be in detention on an average day in 2018 and 2019. In Victoria, they were 10 times as likely. New South Wales and Victoria have both introduced initiatives to address these divergences between Koori and non-Koori individuals. In March 2019, both states established
6534-465: The hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intelligible varieties) up to possibly 363. The Indigenous languages of Australia comprise numerous language families and isolates , perhaps as many as 13, spoken by the Indigenous peoples of mainland Australia and
6633-497: The language, from which the language was reconstructed. "Some Aboriginal people distinguish between usership and ownership . There are even those who claim that they own a language although they only know one single word of it: its name." Whether it is due to genetic unity or some other factor such as occasional contact, typologically the Australian languages form a language area or Sprachbund , sharing much of their vocabulary and many distinctive phonological features across
6732-562: The language, on the speaker, and on how carefully the speaker pronounces the sound. These are interdental with the tip of the tongue visible between the teeth, as in th in English; dental with the tip of the tongue down behind the lower teeth, so that the blade is visible between the teeth; and denti-alveolar , that is, with both the tip and the blade making contact with the back of the upper teeth and alveolar ridge, as in French t, d, n, l . The first tends to be used in careful enunciation, and
6831-487: The last in more rapid speech, while the tongue-down articulation is less common. Finally, the palatal series ty, ny, ly . (The stop is often spelled dj , tj , or j .) Here the contact is also laminal, but further back, spanning the alveolar to postalveolar, or the postalveolar to prepalatal regions. The tip of the tongue is typically down behind the lower teeth. This is similar to the "closed" articulation of Circassian fricatives (see Postalveolar consonant ). The body of
6930-473: The mainland at the end of the Quaternary glaciation , and Indigenous Tasmanians remained isolated from the outside world for around 12,000 years. Claire Bowern has concluded in a recent study that there were twelve Tasmanian languages, and that those languages are unrelated (that is, not demonstrably related) to those on the Australian mainland. In 1990 it was estimated that 90 languages still survived of
7029-482: The men. Endeavour remained docked in the bay for the subsequent seven days, meaning that interactions between the explorers and Indigenous Kooris were conducted from a distance. Koori material culture was observed, such as the use of watercraft, weaponry and tools, but there was little European documentation of Koori religious and cultural life during this voyage. The Indigenous groups of Botany Bay did not accept Cook's trade offerings and resisted farther encroachment of
7128-436: The most appropriate unit to describe the phonotactics of Australian languages is the phonological word. The most common word length is two syllables , and a typical phonological word would have the form: (C INIT )V 1 C 1 (C 2 )V 2 (C FIN ) with the first syllable being stressed. The optionality of C FIN is cross-linguistically normal, since coda consonants are weak or nonexistent in many languages, as well as in
7227-792: The most isolated areas. Of the five least endangered Western Australian Aboriginal languages, four belong to the Western Desert grouping of the Central and Great Victoria Desert . Yolŋu languages from north-east Arnhem Land are also currently learned by children. Bilingual education is being used successfully in some communities. Seven of the most widely spoken Australian languages, such as Warlpiri , Murrinh-patha and Tiwi , retain between 1,000 and 3,000 speakers. Some Indigenous communities and linguists show support for learning programmes either for language revival proper or for only "post-vernacular maintenance" (Indigenous communities having
7326-403: The non-Indigenous. Koori Australians also have lower levels of education than their non-Koori counterparts. In New South Wales, Koori children are half as likely to have completed secondary school . In Victoria, only 56.5% of Koori 25–34 year olds have some form of tertiary education , compared to 74.9% of non-Koori individuals. Koori Australians are more likely to be living below or near
7425-552: The not too distant future all of the Indigenous languages will be lost, perhaps by 2050, and with them the cultural knowledge they convey. During the period of the Stolen Generations , Aboriginal children were removed from their families and placed in institutions where they were punished for speaking their Indigenous language. Different, mutually unintelligible language groups were often mixed together, with Australian Aboriginal English or Australian Kriol language as
7524-418: The number of Koori families speaking an Indigenous language at home is on the rise. Census data indicates that the number of New South Wales Indigenous language speakers increased by 123% between 2006 and 2016. The New South Wales Government's Aboriginal Languages Act was enacted in 2017 in an attempt to preserve Indigenous languages. In addition to traditional languages, Kooris may also speak "Koori English",
7623-433: The only lingua franca . The result was a disruption to the inter-generational transmission of these languages that severely impacted their future use. Today, that same transmission of language between parents and grandparents to their children is a key mechanism for reversing language shift. For children, proficiency in the language of their cultural heritage has a positive influence on their ethnic identity formation, and it
7722-480: The opportunity to learn some words and concepts related to the lost language). The National Indigenous Languages Survey is a regular Australia-wide survey of the status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages conducted in 2005, 2014 and 2019. Languages with more than 100 speakers: Total 46 languages, 42,300 speakers, with 11 having only approximately 100. 11 languages have over 1,000 speakers. Most Australian languages are commonly held to belong to
7821-693: The overall populations of New South Wales and Victoria respectively. Most of this Koori population speak English in the home, although a small number do report continued usage of traditional Indigenous languages. Koori culture is characterised by a commitment to the Dreaming , an overall worldview that believes in and values interconnectedness between the land and community. Koori art and literature continue to be produced in contemporary Australia, often with reference to traditional Indigenous artistic techniques. The first recorded meeting between Koori people and Europeans occurred in 1770. Kooris have since experienced
7920-515: The population of that place. Examples of demonyms include Cochabambino , for someone from the city of Cochabamba ; Tunisian for a person from Tunisia; and Swahili , for a person of the Swahili coast . As a sub-field of anthroponymy , the study of demonyms is called demonymy or demonymics . Since they are referring to territorially defined groups of people, demonyms are semantically different from ethnonyms (names of ethnic groups ). In
8019-551: The preceding stem contains a nasal consonant. While the existence of phonemic pre-stopped nasals and laterals, contrasting with plain nasals and laterals, has been documented in some Australian languages, nasals and laterals are pre-stopped on a phonetic level in most languages of the continent. These phenomena are the result of a general resistance to the anticipatory assimilation of nasality and laterality. The lack of assimilation makes coda nasals and laterals more acoustically distinct. Most speakers of Australian languages speak with
8118-487: The probable number of languages and the estimate of pre-contact population levels that there may have been from 3,000 to 4,000 speakers on average for each of the 250 languages. A number of these languages were almost immediately wiped out within decades of colonisation, the case of the Aboriginal Tasmanians being one notorious example of precipitous linguistic ethnocide . Tasmania had been separated from
8217-579: The proto-Northern-and-Middle Pamic (pNMP) family of the Cape York Peninsula on the Australian northeast coast and proto-Ngayarta of the Australian west coast, some 3,000 kilometres (1,900 mi) apart, to support the Pama–Nyungan grouping, whose age he compares to that of Proto-Indo-European . Johanna Nichols suggests that the northern families may be relatively recent arrivals from Maritime Southeast Asia , perhaps later replaced there by
8316-404: The remainder are classified as "non-Pama–Nyungan", which is a term of convenience that does not imply a genealogical relationship. In the late 18th century there were more than 250 distinct First Nations Peoples social groupings and a similar number of languages or varieties . The status and knowledge of Aboriginal languages today varies greatly. Many languages became extinct with settlement as
8415-441: The ritualistic use of sand, heated by fire both to warm the infant and welcome it to country. Records also exist detailing Koori use of medical techniques such as natural pain management, and the teaching of these techniques to European settler women. Historically, "birthing trees" were essential to Koori birthing rituals. These were trees used as the sites of births, where mothers, families and communities could congregate to deliver
8514-785: The same time, Australian languages make full use of those distinctions, namely place of articulation distinctions, which people with otitis media-caused hearing loss can perceive more easily. This hypothesis has been challenged on historical, comparative, statistical, and medical grounds. A language which displays the full range of stops, nasals and laterals is Kalkatungu , which has labial p, m ; "dental" th, nh, lh ; "alveolar" t, n, l ; "retroflex" rt, rn, rl ; "palatal" ty, ny, ly ; and velar k, ng . Wangganguru has all this, as well as three rhotics. Yanyuwa has even more contrasts, with an additional true dorso-palatal series, plus prenasalised consonants at all seven places of articulation, in addition to all four laterals. A notable exception to
8613-445: The same, as exemplified by Spanish instead of Spaniard or British instead of Briton. English commonly uses national demonyms such as Brazilian or Algerian , while the usage of local demonyms such as Chicagoan , Okie or Parisian is less common. Many local demonyms are rarely used and many places, especially smaller towns and cities, lack a commonly used and accepted demonym altogether. National Geographic attributes
8712-481: The spread of Austronesian . That could explain the typological difference between Pama–Nyungan and non-Pama–Nyungan languages, but not how a single family came to be so widespread. Nicholas Evans suggests that the Pama–Nyungan family spread along with the now-dominant Aboriginal culture that includes the Australian Aboriginal kinship system. In late 2017, Mark Harvey and Robert Mailhammer published
8811-470: The subject of a concerted revival movement since the 1980s, coordinated by Kaurna Warra Pintyanthi , a unit working out of the University of Adelaide . The language had rapidly disappeared after the settlement of South Australia and the breaking up of local indigenous people. Ivaritji, the last known speaker of the language, died in 1931. However, a substantial number of primary source records existed for
8910-641: The term demonym to Merriam-Webster editor Paul Dickson in a work from 1990. The word did not appear for nouns, adjectives, and verbs derived from geographical names in the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary nor in prominent style manuals such as the Chicago Manual of Style . It was subsequently popularized in this sense in 1997 by Dickson in his book Labels for Locals . However, in What Do You Call
9009-662: The term may still be spelt "goori" or "goorie" and pronounced with a harder "g". The term's first documented usage occurred in 1834 in An Australian Grammar as "Ko-re", translated to mean man or mankind. Koori Indigenous Australians inhabit the broad region of southern New South Wales and Victoria. Indigenous subgroups within this region are numerous, including the Eora nation of modern-day Sydney , Ngunnawal nation of Canberra and Woiwurrung nation of Melbourne . Like archetypal Indigenous painting , Koori painting
9108-501: The tongue is raised towards the palate . This is similar to the "domed" English postalveolar fricative sh . Because the tongue is "peeled" from the roof of the mouth from back to front during the release of these stops, there is a fair amount of frication, giving the ty something of the impression of the English palato-alveolar affricate ch or the Polish alveolo-palatal affricate ć . That is, these consonants are not palatal in
9207-420: The word-initial position is prominent, maintaining all a language's contrasts, that is not the case in Australia. Here the prominent position is C 1 (C 2 ), in the middle of the word. C 1 is typically the only position allowing all of a language's place of articulation contrasts. Fortis/lenis contrasts can only occur at C 1 , or at C 2 when C 1 is a sonorant. Consonant clusters are often restricted to
9306-570: The world's oldest known fish-trapping system. Similarly aged "village" sites have been found in South-Eastern Victoria, featuring wooden structures, garden areas and agricultural wetlands. In New South Wales, small tools used for processing plants and hunting have been discovered to be approximately 10,000 years old. Fishhooks appear to have been widely used across the Koori coastline as early as 1000 years ago. These fishhooks appear to originate from outside of Australia, possibly from
9405-415: The world. In Australia, this type of assimilation seems only to have affected consonants within the apical and laminal categories. There's little evidence of assimilation between the labial, apical, laminal, and dorsal categories. Many proto-Pama–Nyungan /-np-/ and /-nk-/ clusters have been preserved across Australia. Heterorganic nasal + stop sequences remain stable even in modern connected speech, which
9504-645: Was common throughout Australia and became known as the Stolen Generations . In 1937, New South Wales Koori activist William Ferguson founded the Aborigines Progressive Association in Sydney to protest the oppression of the Aborigines Protection Board. Approximately 1000 Indigenous Australians attended the organisation's first rally in Sydney on 26 January 1938. From the 1970s, the policies of segregation and assimilation began to shift. New South Wales adopted
9603-408: Was recorded as one of the two worst regions for violence. Sexual violence also occurred, particularly towards Koori women and children, sometimes resulting in death or infertility. Many Kooris also died from epidemics of European diseases to which they had no tolerance. In 1791, all but two of the Koori inhabitants of inner Sydney died of smallpox or chickenpox . Another smallpox epidemic affected
9702-564: Was the International Year of Indigenous Languages (IYIL2019), as declared by the United Nations General Assembly . The commemoration was used to raise awareness of and support for the preservation of Aboriginal languages within Australia, including spreading knowledge about the importance of each language to the identity and knowledge of Indigenous groups. Warrgamay/Girramay man Troy Wyles-Whelan joined
9801-640: Was the first legislation in Australia to acknowledge the significance of first languages. In 2019 the Royal Australian Mint issued a 50-cent coin to celebrate the International Year of Indigenous Languages which features 14 different words for "money" from Australian Indigenous languages. The coin was designed by Aleksandra Stokic in consultation with Indigenous language custodian groups. The work of digitising and transcribing many word lists created by ethnographer Daisy Bates in
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