Worrorra language
Worrorra, also written Worora and other variants, and also known as Western Worrorran, is a moribund Australian Aboriginal language of northern Western Australia. It encompasses a number of dialects, which are spoken by a group of people known as the Worrorra people.
It is one of a group of Worrorran languages, the other two being Wunambal and Ngarinyin.
Dialects
Worrorra is a dialect cluster; Bowern recognises five languages: Worrorra proper, Unggumi, Yawijibaya, Unggarranggu, and Umiida. McGregor and Rumsey include the above dialects and also include Winyjarrumi, describing Worrorra as a non-Pama-Nyungan language of the Worrorran group of languages known properly as western Worrorran.An alleged Maialnga language was a reported clan name of Worrorra proper that could not be confirmed with speakers.
Notable people
Elkin Umbagai was a translator between English and Worrorra.Phonology
- A nasal occurring before a stop consonant, is then realised as a prenasalized voiced stop sound.
- /r/ can be heard as a trill or a flap, and is typically only voiced when preceding a sonorant, voiced phoneme, or lateral consonant. Elsewhere, it is voiceless as, or can be heard in free variation.
- /j/ can also be heard as a fricative sound in word-initial positions.
| Front | Central | Back | |
| High | |||
| Mid | |||
| Low |
- Long vowel sounds are noted as follows: /iː, ɛː, uː, ɔː, ɑː/.
- In between consonant clusters, an epenthetic vowel sound ~ occurs when breaking them up. Sometimes it can also be heard as a central vowel sound.
| Phoneme | Allophones |
| /i/ | , |
| /a/ | ,,,,, |
| /u/ | ,, |
| /iː/ | , |
| /ɛː/ | , ~ |
| /ɑː/ | , |
| /ɔː/ | , ~ |
| /uː/ | , |