Ngamini is an Australian Aboriginal language traditionally spoken in the far north of South Australia, from Goyder’s Lagoon north towards Pandie Pandie and Birdsville.
I began studying Ngamini in 1975 as part of my PhD research on the neighbouring and related Diyari language. I spent a week in 1976 doing fieldwork on it with Bob Naylon (Milkili) and Maudie Naylon (Akawilyika), and subsequently transcribed the tape recordings of interviews carried out by Gavan Breen with the Naylons from 1967 to 1976. I have created a database that includes all of Breen’s and my materials, using the Field Linguist’s Toolbox software program.
Ngamini is closely related to Diyari (traditionally spoken to its immediate south), Karangura (traditionally spoken to its west), and Yarluyandi (traditionally spoken to its north) as members of the Central Karnic group (see Austin 1990; Bowern 2001, 2009; Breen 1971, 2007, 2011). All four languages share words in common and have similar grammatical structure. They are also related to Yandruwandha and Yawarrawarka, traditionally spoken to the east around Innamincka.
The Reuther manuscript in Volume V contains a comparative vocabulary list that displays words in languages spoken to the east of Lake Eyre. This includes vocabulary in Ngamini. You can access the Reuther comparative vocabulary list with editorial notes that include information on modern recordings of the languages.
Gavan Breen’s Ngamini Grammar and Vocabulary
On 17th October 2016 Gavan Breen emailed me nine chapters of a draft grammar of Ngamini, and then on 22nd November 2016 he sent me a Ngamini-English plus English-Ngamini vocabulary. He wrote in his November 2016 email that: “I’m leaving Ngamini for now, and moving on to other languages”. He never returned to this material and it remains unpublished.
Gavan Breen passed away on 5th October 2023 and with his widow’s permission and encouragement I am editing the draft grammar and vocabulary for publication. This will include a commentary taking into account materials from my fieldwork as well as the Reuther Ngamini vocabulary (and handfull of sentences in his Diyari dictionary).
Here is a sample of Breen’s draft Ngamini vocabulary:
Note
The map at the top of this page is based upon the Horton Indigenous Map of Australia © Aboriginal Studies Press, AIATSIS, and Auslig/Sinclair, Knight, Merz, 1996. The full map is available on the AIATSIS website.
References
- Austin , P . 1990 . Classification of Lake Eyre languages . La Trobe Working Papers in Linguistics 3, 171–201.
- Bowern, Claire. 2001. Karnic classification revisited. In Jane Simpson, David Nash, Mary Laughren, Peter Austin, and Barry Alpher. Forty Years On: Ken Hale and Australian languages, 245-261. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
- Bowern , Claire. 2009 . Reassessing Karnic: a reply to Breen (2007) . Australian Journal of Linguistics 29(3), 337–348 .
- Breen, Gavan. 1971. Aboriginal languages of western Queensland. Linguistic Communications 5, 1-88. Melbourne: Monash University.
- Breen, Gavan. 2007. Reassessing Karnic. Australian Journal of Linguistics 27(2), 175–199 .
- Breen, Gavan. 2011. Reassessing Karnic: A Reply to Bowern (2009). Australian Journal of Linguistics, 31(1), 137–142.