Yidiñ (more typically spelt as Yidiny, though personally I prefer the Latin flair) is a language that was once spoken by the around 2,000 members of the Yidiñdyi, Gunggañdyi and Madyañdyi tribes, who lived in the rain forests south of the city of Cairns in New Queensland.
Currently, the Yidiñ language boasts 19 speakers, at least according to the 2016 Australian National Census. It also possess a number of similarities with the neigbouring Dyirbal language, some of which may appear in the explanation that follows.
For whatever reasons, the speakers of Yidiñ seem to actively abhor the utterance of any word with an odd number of syllables. Suffice to say, we will not discuss why this is. Instead, we will explore the strategies whereby Yidiñ ensures that as many words as possible contain an even number of syllables.
At the time of writing, Yidiñ is the only language, of which I am aware, that has rules to ensure that words have either an even or odd number of syllables. Whatever the advantages or disadvantages to such a system may be, are a question which I leave to you to consider.
(Note: When two vowels are placed together, this is to indicate the presence of a long vowel. In the grammar from which I drew most of my insights, this is demonstrated via the use of a colon, /:/, instead.)
(The area wherein the Yidiñ language spoken. Directly on its southern border lies the region where Dyirbal is/was spoken, a language which we have explored in a number of previous articles.)
Section 1:
Yidiñ: bamaal dyadyaang dyugi budiil / bamaal gamimbu dyugi budiil
English: The small child puts the sticks down / The grandfather puts the sticks down
As one can see, the only difference between the two sentences is that we have replaced the word dyadyaang with gamimbu, which mean small child and (paternal) grandfather respectively. Both of these words are in the Ergative Case, which is used to indicate the Agent of a Transitive Verb, i.e. one that takes an object.
The Ergative Case carries two suffixes, one for words which end in a vowel, and one for words which end in a consonant, both of which are visible (in one form or another) in the above sentences.
For a word which ends in a vowel, e.g. dyadya, which means small child, the Ergative Suffix is -nggu. However, because dyadya contains an even number of syllables, this becomes reduced to -:ng. (The colon indicates that the previous vowel is lengthened.)
For a word which ends in a consonant, e.g. gamim, which means (paternal) grandfather, the Ergative Suffix is -du. However, if it is preceded by a nasal sound, then it will undergo assimilation.
Thus, when it follows the letter /m/, it becomes -bu, and when it follows the letter /ñ/, it becomes -dyu. Regardless as to which of these variations is used, however, this Suffix does not undergo any sort of modification to ensure that the word to which it is attached has an even number of syllables.
(In addition, the Ergative Suffix in the neighbouring Dyirbal language is also -nggu. Like its Yidiñ counterpart, it also undergoes a number of phonological variations, though the rules here are different.)
Now that we have explored the two words that are different between each sentence, we will now turn our attention to the rest of the words, which remain the same between the two.
Starting both sentences is the word bamaal, which is the Ergative Declension of bama, which means the person. This leads us to a discussion of the Noun Classifier, which is a very important aspect of Yidiñ.
In Yidiñ, most Noun Phrases require a generic and a specific noun, the former of which constitutes the Noun Classifier. Thus, you cannot simply say a sentence such as the man drank the water, you must instead say something along the lines of the person man drank the drinkable liquid water.
Thus, bamaal dyadyaang means the person small child, and bamaal gamimbu means the person (paternal) grandfather.
bama itself, meanwhile, is very irregular, hence why it takes the Ergative Suffix -:l. Alas, one has no option other than to learn the many different forms of this particular noun. However, it does appear quite commonly, so you should not lack for practice.
dyugi is the Absolutive Case declension of dyugi, has two meanings. In the above sentence, means stick, tree or wood. It is worth noting that Yidiñ does not have a distinction between singular and plural nouns. Here, the Absolutive Case indicates the Direct Object of the sentence, though we will explore this concept in further detail below.
budiil, meanwhile, is the Past Tense form of budi-l, which means to put down, though here we have another instance where the number of syllables comes into play.
For example, let us add the Verbal Comitative Suffix -nga-l, which gives us the new verb budinga-l, which means to put down with or to make put down.
Now, the Past Tense form now becomes budingalñu, which contains an even number of syllables.
In this section, we have seen how this concern over syllable number has affects indigenous words. In the next section, we will see this principle as it interacts with loan words also.
(Dick Moses, also known as Dyariyi. He was one of the main informants for the Yidiñ grammar listed below, and without his enthusiasm and insight our understanding of this enigmatic language would be severely impoverished. He spoke the coastal dialect of Yidiñ, one of several. This photo was taken in 1973.)
Section 2:
Yidiñ: miña gurngga dyardyii dugaal / miña gurngga biliganla dugaal
English: The kookaburras were caught in a net / The kookaburras were caught in a billy can
Once again, we have two sentences which differ from on another in terms of a single word. In the first, we have dyardyii, which is the Instrumental Case Declension of dyardyi, which means either net trap or spider’s web. It does not seem to take any Noun Classifier.
In the second, we are treated to biliganla, which is the Instrumental Case Declension of biligan, which means billy can, and is a loan word from English. Like dyardyi, it does not take a Noun Classifier.
There does exist the Noun Classifier bundu, which refers to bags, but it only applies to traditional types of baskets, e.g. bundu dugubil, which means bark bag and bundu dyurrbal, which means (small) woven grass basket.
The Instrumental Case is used to indicate the
(For those who do not know, a billy can is a metal container used to heat water. Typically, it will also be used for other purposes throughout the day. Though the term has now spread across the Anglophone world, it is most closely associated with Australia, and the intrepid explorers who risked all to explore the Outback.)
gurngga, which means kookaburra, (a type of bird) can take two possible Noun Classifiers. The one featured here, miña, refers to edible animals, though it also covers eggs (dingal), because they are considered a type of flesh food.
Both Classifier and Noun are in the Absolutive Case, which indicates the Subject of an Intransitive Verb (i.e. one that does not affect an object), and the Object (also called Patient) of a Transitive Verb.
The second possible Classifier, dyaruy, refers to birds. In Yidiñ, it seems that all birds are considered edible.
This brings us to the two categories of Classifiers, which are Inherent and Functional. As one can infer, the former refers to the nature/identity of the noun, while the latter refers to how it is used. It is possible to use one of each in a specific Noun Phrase, though this does not seem particularly common.
The last word, dugaal, is the Past Tense Conjugation form of duga-l, which means to catch. It follows the same rules as budi-l, which we explored in the previous sentence.
Before we move on, we will briefly explore an approximate literal translation of one of the Yidiñ sentences:
Yidiñ: miña gurngga dyardyii dugaal
English: The.edible.animal kookaburra caught with.a.net (The kookaburras were caught with a net)
Unlike English, Yidiñ does not contain a Passive Voice. Instead, we have the employment of dugaal, which is a Transitive Verb, and miña gurngga, which is in the Absolutive Case. This is significant because an Absolutive subject cannot be the Agent in a Transitive Verb, it can only be the object.
As a result, we have a sentence with an object but no subject. One solution would be to add a subject: e.g. it or something/someone caught the kookaburras with the net.
However, although there is nothing grammatically wrong with either of these sentences, they require that you add something that did not previously exist these. How we avoid this potential issue is by re-conceptualising dugaal as being in the Passive Voice, even though this does not exist as a separate Verb-form in Yidiñ.
Another feature of English that is absent from Yidiñ is the Reflexive Pronoun, e.g. myself, yourself or ourselves. I think you will find one of the strategies quite bemusing.
(A Laughing Kookaburra, or Dacelo novaeguineae, which are native to Australia and Papua New Guinea. The English name kookaburra comes from the Wiradjuri word guugubarra, which is onomatopoeic, which means that it is named after the call that it makes.)
Section 3:
Yidiñ: ngañañ biwiing gundaadyiñu
English: I accidentally cut myself with the stick knife
ngañañ is the 1st Person Accusative Pronoun, or me in simple English. In Yidiñ, Pronouns follow a Nominative-Accusative Paradigm, e.g. the same as English, where the Subject of an Intransitive Sentence is the same as the Agent of a Transitive Sentence.
biwiing is the Ergative Case Declension of biwi, which means stick knife.
gundaadyiñu is built in several phases. First, we have the Infinitive gunda-l, which means to cut. However, because biwi is a Non-Animate Agent, we must add the Derivation Suffix -:dyi-n to the verb. Essentially, this serves the purpose of allowing an inanimate object to behave like an animate creature, e.g. a person or an animal.
Naturally, this switches the verb from an -l Verb to the -n Verb, which gives us the Past Tense Conjugation of -ñu.
Now, if we translate the Yidiñ sentence as directly as we can, we reach something along the lines of: The stick knife cut me
If, on the other hand, you decided to cut yourself deliberately, we get an eerily similar sentence:
Yidiñ: ngayu gundaadyiñu
English: I cut myself on purpose
ngayu is the 1st Person Singular Nominative Pronoun, or I.
gundaadyiñu is the same as in the previous sentence, though it brings us to a further explanation of the Suffix -:dyi-n.
Without going too far into it, -:dyi-n has many functions in Yidiñ grammar. As we saw earlier, it can be used to turn an Non-Animate Object into an Animate Agent. In this sentence, it serves the opposite purpose, i.e. to turn the Agent (Subject) of the sentence into its object.
As a result, ngayu becomes both the Agent and the Object of the sentence, even though it remains in its Nominative form. Essentially, -:dyi-n functions as the Reflexive Modifier, which in the English we have translated as myself, though naturally it can also mean yourself, themselves and so on, depending on the Subject of the sentence.
Other functions of the Suffix -:dyi-n, which we shall not go into detail here, include: to reference a chance event; to indicate that an action is continuous; and as an Antipassive, a grammatical feature which do not fully understand, except in that it can be used to change word order and the case marking of certain words.
(Two members of the Yidiñ tribe, taken in 1938. This photo was taken in Yarrabah, Queensland.)
In conclusion, I hope that this was an interesting introduction to some of the features of the Yidiñ language spoken in North-East Queensland. Naturally, we have barely scratched the tip of the iceberg of this enigmatic tongue, particularly the Noun Classifiers, which will certainly receive a further exploration in the future.
Of course, if you wish to explore this language in your own time, the resources with which to do so are listed in the list of sources below, most of which are available for free online. This is true for the vast majority of the sources which I used, something which I feel I could emphasise more often.
In the next article, we will explore two languages whose names may look and/or sound confusingly similar with one another. These will be Jarawa, spoken in the remote and little heard-of Andaman Islands, and Jarawara, spoken in the Southern Amazon Rainforest. Until then,
Same Wilf-time!
Same Wilf-channel!
Sources:
R. M. W. Dixon, A Grammar of Yidiny, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1977)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yidiny_language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kookaburra
https://www.samuseum.sa.gov.au/gallery/aacg/speakingland/story01/01_images/01_img01b.htm
Google Images
Languages with Wilf 