Yanyuwa language

The Yanyuwa (also Yanyula, Anyula) language is spoken by the Yanyuwa people around the settlement of Borroloola (Yanyuwa burrulula) in the Northern Territory, Australia. Walu may have been a dialect.

Yanyuwa, like many Australian Aboriginal languages, is a complex agglutinative language whose grammar is pervaded by a set of sixteen noun classes, whose agreements are complicated and numerous. Yanyuwa is ergative.

Yanyuwa is critically endangered. Despite this, the anthropologist John Bradley, who has worked with the Yanyuwa for three decades (and who also fluently speaks the language), has produced an enormous dictionary and grammar of the language along with a cultural atlas in collaboration with a core group of senior men and women, so Yanyuwa's impending extinction may not be permanent.

Phonology

Yanyuwa is extremely unusual in having 7 places of articulation for stops, compared to 3 for English and 4–6 for most other Australian languages.

Consonants

Vowels

Grammar

Noun classes