When we talk about marsupials, Australia immediately comes to mind. It is home to many kinds of iconic marsupials, such as the dingo, sugar glider, and the wombat. But amongst them all, is the national animal of Australia — the kangaroo. The etymology of the word ‘kangaroo’ has been muddied in misconception before, but this has since been dispelled by ethnologists and anthropologists.

This misconception could be summarised as such. Captain James Cook first sighted this iconic marsupial in 1770, which was recorded as ‘kangooroo’, a word used by the indigenous people living in the area. But when Captain Phillip King visited the same area 50 years later, the marsupial was called a ‘minnar’ or ‘meenuah’ by the indigenous people. From these differing accounts, a theory suggested that the word ‘kangaroo’ was a indigenous word for ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I don’t understand’, a response given by the indigenous people to a question that they did not understand.

This myth was actually first dispelled in 1898 by an ethnologist called W.E. Roth, but his correspondence to a paper just went unnoticed for some reason. This surfaced once again in the 1970s, this time by John B. Haviland, who inferred that the word ‘kangaroo’, or gangurru, referred to a specific type of kangaroo called the eastern grey kangaroo or Macropus giganteus giganteus. In his 1979 paper, he also noted other words of kangaroos, with each one being specific to a certain species of kangaroo. For example, there is nharrgali, which refers to a red kangaroo or Osphranter rufus, and ngurrumugu, which refers to the black kangaroo or black wallaroo, Osphranter bernardus. And the language of origin? That is Guugu Yimithirr (or Guugu Yimidhirr).

Guugu Yimithirr is a Pama-Nyungan language spoken by around 800 people in the Far North of the state of Queensland, predominantly in the town of Hope Vale. As seen by Cook’s 1770 account, it is one of the first indigenous Australian languages to be recorded by Europeans, and written down. In fact, some of the earliest published word lists include those written by Sydney Parkinson and Joseph Banks in the 18th century. Contemporary research in the language is mostly attributed to the work done by John B. Haviland, Stephen C. Levinson, and Lourdes de León. Today, two main dialects of the language exist, split by geographical region. One is spoken closer to the coast, Dhalundhirr, while the other is spoken further inland, Waguurrga. However, more dialects have existed in the past, such as Nyiguudyi.

With 6 stop consonants and 6 nasal consonants part of the 17 consonants in total that Guugu Yimithirr has, the language pretty much has the typical phonological pattern the indigenous languages of Australia exhibit. This comes along with a small vowel inventory as well, with 3 vowels /a i u/ distinguished by vowel length. Where it probably stands out is its constraints in the syllables forming a word, as pretty much every single word must start with a consonant, with the exception of interjections like “Ah”. But even amongst these consonants, a word cannot start with the consonants /l/, /r/, and /ɻ/, and consonant clusters cannot occur at the start and end of the word. And a word, if it ends in a consonant, can only end with one of these consonants /l r ɻ j n n̪/.

Word order is technically free in Guugu Yimithirr, perhaps due to the use of various case markers to indicate grammatical relationships in the constituents of a given clause or sentence, there is a general preference towards a subject-object-verb word order. And like many indigenous Australian languages, Guugu Yimithirr has a restricted number system, with only unique number terms for ‘one’, ‘two’, ‘three or four’, and ‘five or a few’.. That is, respectively, nubuun, gudh-irra, guunduu, and gaguwarr. It is much akin to the singular, dual, and plural distinctions in grammatical functions, though the number system seems to distinguish between 3 and 5.

But perhaps one of the most notable features of Guugu Yimithirr is the use of geocentric orientation terms like ‘north’ and ‘west’ instead of a dichotomy of ‘left’ and ‘right’. This is perhaps the one feature of Guugu Yimithirr that has garnered a lot of research, and also fuels some controversial speculation about linguistic relativity.

According to Haviland in his 1998 publication, the way Guugu Yimithirr defines its cardinal directions not by the orientation to the magnetic north, but more rather rotated to account for other observable natural phenomena such as the arc of the sun. This gives the language the 4 directional roots to use, clockwise from north, gungga-, naga-, jiba-, and guwa-.

Full reduplication of these roots translates to “a bit [cardinal direction], while partial reduplication of guwa- and naga- translates to “on the [west / east] side”. But there are other conjugations that can confer further information to the orientation, such as proximity. For example, the -arr or -ar suffix specifies a “medium distance” away on a specific side, and the -lu suffix does not specify a distance at all. Instead, it just translates to “away to the [direction]”.

Levinson, in his 1997 publication, suggests that the exclusive use of this set of directional terms in Guugu Yimithirr lends support to Whorfianism. However, Haviland goes more into detail on the nuances of how these directional terms are used, which might not be as clear cut as it is made out to be. I would recommend checking out Haviland’s 1998 paper on this, linked in Further Reading.

While Guugu Yimithirr is deemed endangered on sources such as the UNESCO World Atlas of Languages, there is evidence of language transmission to the younger generations through schools, and one could actually catch a glimpse of it here. Being one of the first Australian languages to be recorded, there is a reasonable amount of resources on the language, stretching back to the 18th century, albeit with different orthographies used to transcribe Guugu Yimithirr words and sounds over time. As for digital and online resources, the Pama Language Centre also has some lessons online to introduce people to the language, while maintaining efforts to revitalise the language amongst the Guugu Yimithirr people. To get a taster of the Guugu Yimithirr language, you could also try out this interactive activity on the National Museum of Australia website which covers some basic terms. There is also audio in the activity, so you could listen to how these words sound like.

Further reading

Haviland, J. B. (1998). Guugu Yimithirr Cardinal Directions, Ethos, 26(1), 25-47. doi:10.1525/eth.1998.26.1.25.

Haviland, J. B. (1979). “Guugu Yimithirr Sketch Grammar”. In R. M. W. Dixon and B. Blake (ed.). Handbook of Australian Languages Vol I. pp. 26–180.

Levinson, S. C. (1997). Language and Cognition: The Cognitive Consequences of Spatial Description in Guugu Yimithirr, Linguistic Anthropology, 7(1), 98-131. https://doi.org/10.1525/jlin.1997.7.1.98.