Mbabaram language

Not to be confused with the Bambara language.

Mbabaram (Barbaram) is an extinct Australian Aboriginal language of north Queensland. It was the traditional language of the Mbabaram people. Recordings are held in the Audiovisual Archive of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. R. M. W. Dixon described his hunt for a native speaker of Mbabaram in his book Searching for Aboriginal Languages: Memoirs of a Field Worker. Most of what is known of the language is from Dixon's field research with speaker Albert Bennett.

Mbabaram
Barbaram
Region	Queensland
Ethnicity	Mbabaram
Extinct	1979
Language family	Pama–Nyungan Paman Southern Paman Mbabaram
Language codes
ISO 639-3	vmb
Glottolog	mbab1239
AIATSIS	Y115
ELP	Mbabaram

Classification

Until R. M. W. Dixon's work on the language, "Barbaram" (as it was then known) was thought to be too different from other languages to be part of the Pama–Nyungan language family. Dixon revealed it to have descended from a more typical form, that was obscured by subsequent changes. Dixon (2002) himself, however, still regards genetic relationships between Mbabaram and other languages as unproven.

Traditional lands of the Aboriginal peoples around Cairns

Geographic distribution

Mbabaram was spoken by the Mbabaram tribe in Queensland, southwest of Cairns (17°20′S 145°0′E).

Nearby tribal dialects were Agwamin, Djangun (Kuku-Yalanji), Muluridji (Kuku-Yalanji), Djabugay, Yidiny, Ngadjan (Dyirbal), Mamu (Dyirbal), Jirrbal (Dyirbal), Girramay (Dyirbal), and Warungu. While these were often mutually intelligible, to varying degrees, with the speech of the adjacent tribes, none were even partially intelligible with Mbabaram. The Mbabaram would often learn the languages of other tribes rather than vice versa, because Mbabaram was found difficult.

Phonology

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i	ɨ	u
Low-mid	ɛ		ɔ
Low		a

Consonants

	Peripheral		Laminal		Apical
	Bilabial	Velar	Palatal	Dental	Alveolar	Retroflex
Plosive	b	ɡ      ɡʷ	ɟ	d̪	d      dʷ
Nasal	m	ŋ	ɲ	n̪	n      nʷ
Lateral					l
Rhotic					r	ɻ
Semivowel	w		j

Phonological history

Vowels

Mbabaram would have originally had simply three vowels, /i a u/, like most Australian languages, but several changes occurred to add /ɛ ɨ ɔ/ to the system:

• [ɔ] developed from original */a/ in the second syllable of a word if the first syllable began with */ɡ/, */ŋ/, or */wu/.
• [ɛ] developed from original */a/ in the second syllable of a word if the first syllable began with */ɟ/. (It may have also occurred with /ɲ/ or /ji/, but no examples are known.)
• [ɨ] developed from original */i/ in the second syllable of a word if the first syllable began with */ɡ/, */ŋ/, or */w/.
• [ɨ] also developed from original */u/ in the second syllable of a word if the first syllable began with */ɟ/, */ɲ/, or */j/.

The first consonant of each word was then dropped, leaving the distribution of /ɔ ɛ ɨ/ unpredictable.

Word for "dog"

Mbabaram is famous in linguistic circles for a striking coincidence in its vocabulary. When Dixon finally managed to meet Bennett, he began his study of the language by eliciting a few basic nouns; among the first of these was the word for "dog". Bennett supplied the Mbabaram translation, dog. Dixon suspected that Bennett had not understood the question, or that Bennett's knowledge of Mbabaram had been tainted by decades of using English. But it turned out that the Mbabaram word for "dog" was in fact dúg, pronounced almost identically to the Australian English word (compare true cognates such as Yidiny gudaga, Dyirbal guda, Djabugay gurraa and Guugu Yimidhirr gudaa, for example). The similarity is a complete coincidence: the English and Mbabaram languages developed on opposite sides of the planet over the course of tens of thousands of years. This and other false cognates have been cited by typological linguist Bernard Comrie as a caution against deciding that languages are related based on a small number of lexical comparisons.

Bibliography

• Dixon, R. M. W. (1966). "Mbabaram: A Dying Australian Language". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. 29 (1): 97–121. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00060833.
• Dixon, R. M. W. (1991). "Mbabaram". In Dixon, R. M. W.; Blake, B. J. (eds.). Handbook of Australian Languages. Vol. 4. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
• Dixon, R. M. W. (2002). Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development. Cambridge University Press.

External links

• Bibliography of Mbabaram language and people resources, at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies