Umbugarla or Mbukarla is a possible Australian language isolate once spoken by three people in Arnhem Land, northern Australia, in 1981, and is now extinct.
Umbugarla | |
---|---|
Mbukarla | |
Region | Northern Territory |
Extinct | ca. 2000; with the death of Butcher Knight |
Darwin
| |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | umr |
Glottolog | umbu1235 |
AIATSIS[1] | N43 |
ELP | Umbugarla |
historic distribution of Umbugarla |
Peripheral | Laminal | Apical | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Labial | Velar | Palatal | Alveolar | Retroflex | |
Plosive | b | ɡ | ɟ | d | ɖ |
Nasal | m | ŋ | ɲ | n | ɳ |
Lateral | ʎ | l | ɭ | ||
Rhotic | ɽ | ||||
Approximant | w | j | ɹ |
Front | Back | |
---|---|---|
High | i iː | u uː |
Mid | ɛ | ɔ |
Low | a aː |
Phoneme | Allophones |
---|---|
/a/ | [ä], [äː], [æ], [ɛ], [ə], [ɒ], [o] |
/ɛ/ | [ɛ], [ɛː] |
/i/ | [i], [iː], [ɨ], [ʉ], [ə], [eː] |
/u/ | [u], [uː], [o], [oː], [ʉ], [ə] |
/uː/ | [uː], [oː] |
Umbugarla was once considered a language isolate (together with Ngurmbur as a dialect), but Mark Harvey has made a case for it being part of a family of Darwin Region languages.[3]