Yanyuwa Language
The Yanyuwa (also Yanyula, Anyula) language is spoken by the Yanyuwa people around the settlement of Borroloola (Yanyuwa burrulula) in the Northern Territory, Australia. Walu may have been a dialect.
Yanyuwa, like many Australian Aboriginal languages, is a complex agglutinative language whose grammar is pervaded by a set of sixteen noun classes, whose agreements are complicated and numerous. Yanyuwa is ergative.
Yanyuwa is critically endangered. Despite this, the anthropologist John Bradley, who has worked with the Yanyuwa for three decades (and who also fluently speaks the language), has produced an enormous dictionary and grammar of the language along with a cultural atlas in collaboration with a core group of senior men and women, so Yanyuwa's impending extinction may not be permanent.
Yanyuwa speakers have also actively engaged in making a number of films and more recently have begun a project to animate important stories and songlines. Three important films that they have made are:
Kanymarda Yuwa -Two Laws, Buwarrala Akarriya - Journey East, Ka-wayawayama - Aeroplane Dance.
All three films have extensive narratives in Yanyuwa, with subtitles.
Read more about Yanyuwa Language: Phonology, Speech Styles, Classification
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“The angels are so enamored of the language that is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who understand it or not.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)