Arandic languages
Arandic is a family of Australian Aboriginal languages consisting of several languages or dialect clusters, including the Arrernte group, Arrernte language|Lower Arrernte], Pertame language and Kaytetye.
Languages
- Upper Arrernte dialect cluster, with five or six main dialects, with the most dominant being Central or Eastern Arrernte, which is spoken in and around Alice Springs itself.Lower Arrernte, also known as Alenjerrntarpe and Lower Southern Arrernte, was spoken by the people around the Finke River area, but it is now extinct. The last speaker was Brownie Doolan, from whom Gavan Breen managed to write up a dictionary of roughly 1000 words. According to AIATSIS, this was a clearly distinct language.
- Pertame, also known as Southern Arrernte, is from the country south of Alice Springs, along the Finke River, north and north-west of the location of speakers of Lower Arrernte. With only 20 fluent speakers left by 2018, the Pertame Project is seeking to retain and revive the language, headed by Pertame elder Christobel Swan. Renowned artist Erlikilyika was a Pertame speaker. Ethnologue classes Pertame as a variant name for Lower Southern, but other sources vary in their classifications and descriptions of this language. Kaytetye, spoken near Barrow Creek and Tennant Creek by the Kaytetye people, had only 120 speakers in the 2016 census, and the number has been decreasing.
Differing classifications
There are differing opinions as to which are dialects and which separate languages, among linguists and among the Arrernte people themselves.- Koch only distinguished two dialects, Upper Arrernte and Katetye.
- Glottolog defines the Arandic group as comprising five Aranda dialects, plus two distinct languages, Kaytetye and Lower Southern Aranda, an extinct language.
- Ethnologue defines eight Arandic languages and classifies them slightly differently.