Yolŋu Matha -

Yolŋu Matha

Yolŋu = people; Matha = tongue/language; ie. People's of North East Arnhem language

Australian Indigenous languages

When you look closely into this overlay of maps it gives a clear picture of the length and breadth of Australia's land mass in comparison to Europe. If you consider the variation of European languages covered within its traditional geographical boundaries, it should then be no surprise that in the larger land mass of Australia that there is also diversity in Indigenous languages of Australia. So, just as there are significant differences between English and Hungarian, so also there are differences between Yolŋu languages to the Central desert Aṉangu languages.

Pama-Nyungan languages

There are two widely spread family groups of Indigenous Australian languages. Yolŋu languages are separated from their larger Australian family of 'Pama-Nyungan' languages (in yellow), by a band of prefixing 'non-Pama-Nyungan' language varieties. (those not yellow in these adjacent maps.)

Wikipedia explains about these 2 widely separated families in more detail at this address; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pama–Nyungan_languages

In North Eastern Arnhem Land each Yolŋu clan has its own dialect. These dialects overlap a great deal, and everyone understands at least those closest to his/her own.

Yolŋu sort their languages into groups by classifying them by the word used by each clan for "this". Thus there is a group of clans calling themselves "dhuwalamirri", which means literally "having dhuwala” for the word "this". Other groups use: dhuwal, dhaŋu, djaŋu, nhaŋu, dhay'yi. Dhuwal, Dhaŋu and Djaŋu are the three largest language groups on Elcho, with the majority of people speaking dhuwal.

The different languages are similar in grammatical structure and have a lot of vocabulary in common. They have however some variations in grammar that separate them, and each has some vocabulary which is definitely its own. There is said to be mutual intelligibility, but between some languages in East Arnhem, this would be like saying that the European languages, English, French and German are mutually intelligible. However as mother and father are always from different clans, almost all children grow up bilingual, and are more likely to be multi-lingual.