Jiwarli is an Australian Aboriginal language formerly spoken in Western Australia

Western Australia

Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...

. It is one of the Mantharta languages

Mantharta languages

The Mantharta languages is the name given by linguists to a group of closely related languages in the southern Pilbara region of Western Australia.The four languages classified as members of the Mantharta languages group are as follows.* Warriyangka* Thiin...

 of the large Southwest branch of the Pama–Nyungan family.

The last native speaker of Jiwarli, Jack Butler

Jack Butler (Jiwarli)

Jack Butler was the last native speaker of the Jiwarli language of Australia.As the last speaker, he was the primary source for the documentation of the language. He was the son of a white father, a shepherd named Dick Butler, and an aboriginal Australian mother, Silver...

, died in April 1986. Prof Peter K. Austin (Linguistics Department, SOAS) collected all the available material on Jiwarli during fieldwork with Jack Butler 1978-1985. He has published a volume of texts on the language and a bilingual dictionary (Jiwarli-English with English-Jiwarli finderlist); both are currently out of print.

Vowels

	Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...	Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
High	i, iː	u, uː
Low	a, aː

Consonants

	Peripheral Peripheral consonant In Australian linguistics, the peripheral consonants are a natural class encompassing consonants articulated at the extremes of the mouth: bilabials and velars. That is, they are the non-coronal consonants...		Laminal Laminal consonant A laminal consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, which is the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue on the top. This contrasts with apical consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the tongue apex only...		Apical Apical consonant An apical consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the apex of the tongue . This contrasts with laminal consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the blade of the tongue .This is not a very common distinction, and typically applied only to fricatives...
	Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....	Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...	Dental	Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...	Postalveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate...
Stop Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...	p	k	c	t̪	t	ʈ
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...	m	ŋ	ɲ	n̪	n	ɳ
Lateral Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth....			ʎ	l̪	l	ɭ
Rhotic Rhotic consonant In phonetics, rhotic consonants, also called tremulants or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including "R, r" from the Roman alphabet and "Р, p" from the Cyrillic alphabet...					r	ɻ
Semivowel Semivowel In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel is a sound, such as English or , that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.-Classification:...	w		j

Phonotactics

Word-initially, only non-apical stops, nasals and glides are allowed; that is, words may only begin with one of {/p k j th m ng nh w y/}. Words may not begin with vowels.

All words end in vowels. Roots may end on a consonant, however -pa is added to all roots ending in l rl rr and -ma is added to all roots ending in a nasal that would violate the vowel-final word constraint.

External links

• Information on the Jiwarli language and culture
• Ethnologue report for language code:djl
• Handbook of WA Aboriginal Languages South of the Kimberley Region: Jiwarli