Woiwurrung Language
Woiwurrung (sometimes spelt Woiwurrong, Woiworung, Wuywurung) is an Indigenous Australian language spoken by the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation of Central Victoria, from Mount Baw Baw in the east to Mount Macedon, Sunbury and Gisborne in the west. The language remains, but is not widely known or spoken due to the impact of colonisation.
The Woiwurrung clans inhabited the Yarra River, called Birrarung in Woiwurrung, before European displacement. The clans include:
- The Wurrundjeri-willam, who occupied the Yarra River and its tributaries and inhabited the area now covered by the city of Melbourne. Referred to initially by Europeans as the Yarra tribe.
- The Marin-Bulluk
- The Kurung-Jang-Bulluk
- The Wurundjeri-Balluk
- The Balluk-willam
Wurundjeri is now the common term for descendants of all the Woiwurrung clans. Their totems are Bunjil the eagle and Waa the crow.
The Jindyworobak Movement claimed to have taken their name from a Woiwurrung phrase jindi worobak meaning to annex or join.
Read more about Woiwurrung Language: Consonants, Pronouns, Other Vocabulary
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“This is of the loon—I do not mean its laugh, but its looning,—is a long-drawn call, as it were, sometimes singularly human to my ear,—hoo-hoo-ooooo, like the hallooing of a man on a very high key, having thrown his voice into his head. I have heard a sound exactly like it when breathing heavily through my own nostrils, half awake at ten at night, suggesting my affinity to the loon; as if its language were but a dialect of my own, after all.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)