Barrow Point language

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.[4]

Barrow Point
Mutumui
Eibole
RegionQueensland, Australia
EthnicityMutumui
Extinctby 2005, with the death of Urwunjin Roger Hart[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3bpt
Glottologbarr1247
AIATSIS[1]Y63.1
ELPBarrow Point[3]

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

  1. Y63.1 Barrow Point at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
  2. Bowern, Claire. 2011. "How Many Languages Were Spoken in Australia?", Anggarrgoon: Australian languages on the web, December 23, 2011 (corrected February 6, 2012)
  3. Endangered Languages Project data for Barrow Point.
  4. Barrow Point language at Ethnologue (15th ed., 2005)
  5. 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.

See also 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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