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The Barrow Point or Mutumui language, called Eibole, is a recently extinct Australian Aboriginal language. According to Wurm and Hattori (1981), there was one speaker left at the time.[3]
Classification
The language has one dialect in the north called Ongwara.[4]
Phonology
Unusually among Australian languages, Barrow Point had at least two fricative phonemes, /ð/ and /ɣ/. They usually developed from *t̪ and *k, respectively, when preceded by a stressed long vowel, which then shortened.[5]
References
- ^ a b Y63.1 Barrow Point at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
- ^ Bowern, Claire. 2011. "How Many Languages Were Spoken in Australia?", Anggarrgoon: Australian languages on the web, December 23, 2011 (corrected February 6, 2012)
- ^ Barrow Point language at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
- ^ "Mutumui (QLD)". www.samuseum.sa.gov.au. Retrieved 21 November 2023.
- ^ Dixon, R. M. W.; Dixon, Robert M. W.; Dixon, Adjunct Professor and Deputy Director of the Language and Culture Centre R. M. W. (14 November 2002). Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521473781.
- Dixon, R. M. W. (2002). Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521473780.
Further reading
- John Haviland and Roger Hart's Old Man Fog and the Last Aborigines of Barrow Point, ISBN 1-56098-928-9, a novel about the efforts of Hart, a native of the Cape York peninsula, to record and preserve Barrow Point language and culture.
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