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Gooniyandi
Region	Western Australia
Ethnicity	Gooniyandi
Native speakers	210 (2021 census)
Language family	Bunuban Gooniyandi
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	gni
Glottolog	goon1238
AIATSIS	K6
ELP	Gooniyandi
Glottopedia	Gooniyandi
Gooniyandi is classified as Severely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.

Gooniyandi is an Australian Aboriginal language now spoken by about 200 people, most of whom live in or near Fitzroy Crossing in Western Australia. Gooniyandi is an endangered language as it is not being passed on to children, who instead grow up speaking Kriol.

Classification

Gooniyandi is closely related to Bunuba, to about the same degree as English is related to Dutch. The two are the only members of the Bunuban language family. Unlike the majority of Australian Aboriginal languages, Gooniyandi and Bunuba are non-Pama–Nyungan.

Phonology

Gooniyandi has three vowel sounds: /a, i, u/. /a/ has contrastive vowel length.

Vowels

	Front	Back
High	i	u
Low	a

Consonants

	Peripheral		Laminal		Apical
	Labial	Velar	Palatal	Dental	Alveolar	Retroflex
Plosive	b	ɡ	ɟ ⟨j⟩	t̪ ⟨th⟩	d	ɖ ⟨rd⟩
Nasal	m	ŋ ⟨ng⟩	ɲ ⟨ny⟩	n̪ ⟨nh⟩	n	ɳ ⟨rn⟩
Tap					ɾ ⟨dd⟩
Lateral			ʎ ⟨ly⟩		l	ɭ ⟨rl⟩
Approximant	w		j ⟨y⟩			ɻ ⟨r⟩

Orthography

A Gooniyandi alphabet based on the Latin script was adopted by the community in 1984, and subsequently revised in 1990 and again in 1999. It is not phonemic, as it omits some distinctions made in speech.

Grammar

Gooniyandi has no genders, but a large number of cases; it uses an ergative-absolutive case system. It is a verb-final language, but without a dominant order between the subject and the object.

References

• McGregor, William (1984). A grammar of Kuniyanti: an Australian Aboriginal language of the southern Kimberley, Western Australia (Ph.D. thesis). hdl:2123/15383.
• McGregor, William (1990). A Functional Grammar of Gooniyandi. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• McGregor, William (1994). "Gooniyandi". In Nick Thieberger & William McGregor (ed.). Macquarie Aboriginal Words. The Macquarie Library. pp. 193–213.
• McGregor, William (2004). The Languages of the Kimberley, Western Australia. London, New York: Taylor & Francis.
• M Haspelmath; M S Dryer; D Gil; B Comrie (2005). The World Atlas of Language Structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

External links

• Gooniyandi on the Omniglot website
• Rosetta Project: Gooniyandi Swadesh List
• Gooniyandi Aboriginal Corporation Archived 11 July 2015 at the Wayback Machine