Ngan'gi language
language
Ngan'gi, formerly known as Ngan'gityemerri, and also known as Ngan'gikurunggurr, Moil/Moyle, Tyemeri/Tyemerri, Marityemeri, and Nordaniman, is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken in the Daly River region of Australiaʼs Northern Territory. There are three mutually intelligible dialects, with the two sister dialects known as Ngen'giwumirri and Ngan'gimerri.
Classification and alternative names and spellings
The first major study of Ngan'gi was Darrell Tryon's 1974 work, a broad discussion of Ngan'gi as one of a dozen or so "Daly Family languages". Tryon viewed Ngan'gikurunggurr and Ngen'giwumirri as two languages of the "Tyemeri subgroup" of the Daly family. The Daly Family was described as covering the area from the Daly River southwards to the Fitzmaurice River, comprising nine languages and fifteen dialects. Ngen'giwumirri was viewed as a dialect of Ngan'gikurunggurr, with which it shares approximately 84% of cognates, with the two forming the Tyemirri group of languages.
Ngangityemerri was a name used by linguists for the languages consisting of Ngan'gikurunggurr and Ngan'giwumirri now known as Ngan'gi.
Today Ngen'giwumirri and Ngan'gimerri (spoken by the Ngan'gimerri people) are seen as sister dialects, which are 90% cognate but distinct languages socio-linguistically (Reid & McTaggart, 2008). Ngan’gityemerri used to be used as a cover term for all three varieties, but more recently the term Ngan’gi has been adopted as standard practice.
The group of languages is classified with Murrinh-Patha as a Southern Daly family, a position not without problems; see Southern Daly languages for details.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ngan'gi language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.