Darkinjung is an extinct Australian Aboriginal language

Australian Aboriginal languages

The Australian Aboriginal languages comprise several language families and isolates native to the Australian Aborigines of Australia and a few nearby islands, but by convention excluding the languages of Tasmania and the Torres Strait Islanders...

, the traditional language of the Darkinjung people

Darkinjung people

The Darkinjung are the in the Wyong and area and is a major landowner on the Central Coast, participating in formal joint management of some areas of state forest in the region. It represents over 450 local Aboriginal residents...

. It was spoken adjacent to Dharuk

Dharuk language

The Sydney language, also referred to as Dharug or Iyora, is a nearly extinct Australian Aboriginal language of the Yuin–Kuric group that was spoken in the region of Sydney, New South Wales...

, Wiradhuri and Awabakal

Awabakal language

Awabakal is an Australian Aboriginal language that was spoken around Lake Macquarie and Newcastle in New South Wales. The name is derived from Awaba, which was the native name of the lake.-Classification:...

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Name

The name of the language has various spellings:

• Darkinjang (Tindale 1974)
• Darkinjung
• Darkiñung (Mathews 1903)
• Darginjang
• Darginyung
• Darkinung
• Darkinoong
• Darknung

Revitalisation effort

Since 2003 there has been a movement from the Darkinyung language group to revitalise the language. They started working with the original field reports of Robert H. Mathews and W. J. Enright. Where there were gaps in the sparsely populated wordlists, words were taken from lexically similar nearby languages. This led to the publishing of the work: Darkinyung grammar and dictionary: revitalising a language from historical sources.