Burduna language
language
Burduna (Purduna) is an Aboriginal language that was traditionally spoken in the region between the Ashburton and Gascoyne Rivers in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. It belongs to the Kanyara group of languages, which also includes Binigura/Pinikura, Thalanyji, and Bayungu.
The language is currently classified as critically endangered, with no recorded native speakers by 1994. However, there are some people of Burduna heritage who can still speak and recognise a few words and phrases.
History
Evolution
Burduna has been classified as a double-marking language. Although it has been categorised as a Kanyara language, it is significantly different from the other languages in the category as it underwent a number of changes in pronunciation.
Over the years, the language lost most of its nasal sounds and tones. Certain words that contains peripheral stops with p and k sounds lenited to a w sound instead. For example, papu 'father' became pawu, and puka 'bad' became puwa. However, this lenition did not occur when the previous syllable contained a w.
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This entry incorporates text from “Burduna 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.