Talk:Noongar language

message: This is an excellent start level article on the background of the Noongar language in which I am very interested.  Has anyone done a linguistic analysis of the phonemics of this language?  John D. Croft (talk) 09:04, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Congratulations on the creation of this page

message: Spelling of many Aboriginal words is disputed , although phonetic spelling is generally prefferred.
Tradimus (talk) 08:54, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: On that subject: There are lists, with recommended orthography and pronunciation, for species of plants, birds and mammals, produced by Ian Abbott. I will add these later tonight. —— cygnis insignis 11:45, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  I added some notes on Abbott's published lists, does this address some of your concerns. There is some discussion of orthography and accuracy in the paper, should be of interest to you. — cygnis insignis 06:15, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  On that subject: Not sure where you added things. I am pretty comfortable with spelling inherited from Inglesh, Djerman and Doetch. Feel free to add a word list. My point is that there are now so many sources that a wiki list is possible. The peak Noongar authority is encouraging access with dictionaries posted themselves and in Rose Whitehall dictionaryTradimus (talk) 14:27, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:   I added wordlists in this revision, which you can see in the page history tab. I haven't converted that information into a list, only incorporating it into the articles on the species; it is a good idea though. — cygnis insignis 14:32, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

text:  Ian Abbott is only one of many sources. A word list has been started in the Noongarpedia at [] Perhaps an administrator can check these links are appropriate and delete our comments. Tradimus (talk) 14:23, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: orthography (spelling)

message: :The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 
The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 17:47, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Nyungar language →  – "Noongar" seems to be the substantially most common spelling of the language, based on Ngrams; "Noongar" also seems to be the spelling typically used by Noongar organizations (e.g.  and ). Changing the spelling would also make this article WP:CONSISTENT with Noongar. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 16:20, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

text: An informal discussion about this topic was held last year, so I'm also pinging all participants in that past discussion: , , , , , , . ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 16:20, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested move 1 July 2022 

message: Now that we've renamed the article, we should probably replace most instances of Nyungar in the article text with Noongar, to match the article title. I say "most" because we need some mention of the alternate spellings, including reasons and the fact that Nyungar is the ISO standard term. A selective search-and-replace might do most of the work, then manual edits where Nyungar is required (including reversing the order of the terms in the lead sentence so article title spelling is first, per MOS:FIRST, MOS:BOLDALTNAMES). Mitch Ames (talk) 03:25, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I've just gone through and swapped usage of the Noongar vs. Nyungar spellings throughout the body text. However, I left Neo-Nyungar alone for the time being, as I'm not familiar enough with that area to know whether there's a strong spelling preference among the Neo-Noongar community. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 13:30, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use of Noongar, Nyungar in article text 

message: We currently have two different figures for number of speakers at home, from 2016 census:
* 443 from https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-peoples/language-statistics-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-peoples/jun-2016/Language%20speakers.xlsx, accessed via https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-peoples/language-statistics-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-peoples/jun-2016#using-abs-language-data
* 475 from
:::https://explore.data.abs.gov.au/vis?tm=nyungar&pg=0&df[ds]=CENSUS_2016_TOPICS&df[id]=ABS_C16_T09_SA&df[ag]=ABS&df[vs]=1.0.0&pd=2016%2C&dq=....0&ly[cl]=SEX_ABS&ly[rw]=LANP_2016
::(convoluted URL does not display correctly as clickable link, but you can copy and pasted it) 
::accessed via http://stat.data.abs.gov.au/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ABS_C16_T09_SA 
Why do they differ? Which should we use? Mitch Ames (talk) 06:38, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Because the term 'Noongar speaker' is subjective, covering (a) people with a knowledge of anything from a handful to a lot of Noongar terms to (b) a few who can actually, like apparently Len Collard,  deliver a short address in that language. According to the sources cited here, (b) number 5 people, and none of these qualify in linguistic terms as a 'fluent native speaker', i.e., comfortable in expressing themselves on anything or everything.  A census is a matter of filling out a form, and if one ticks Noongar, there is no evidence that the (a) group is grammatically fluent as people in the (b) group. The language, whatever, should be 'neo-Noongar' to refer to the synthesis of Noongar dialects taught now. The Mineng terms for the six seasons were completely different from those used by the Whadjuk round the Swan river. Since political correctness rules this page, rather than realism (which would oblige one to do what Israelis did, as has been attempted in South Australia by an Israeli linguist, i.e., refashion a modern version of a well-documented set of dialects, and forge a new grammar and idiom with which to raise descendants in. That would take some decades, but it would do far more for the 25,000 Noongar people, and Westralians generally, than just teaching a short list of terms for bush tucker and the like).Nishidani (talk) 15:04, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Number of speakers 

message: I've changed the image caption to refer to  language varieties rather than countries, for consistency with the article text, which is about the language/dialects/varieties rather than the countries/nations. If we want to assert that language varieties correspond to separate countries/nations (eg per Indigenous Australians#Aboriginal people, "The [Australian Aboriginal] population was split into 250 individual nations") we should probably do so in the article text. Mitch Ames (talk) 08:39, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I suggest a little learning might go a long way, every one of those regions are known as countries, the languages varieties you refer to are more because of the literacy backgrounds of westerners writing them down, be they English, French, German, Spanish or Latin or some combination of them. They dont actually reflect the boundaries of how things are pronounced Gnangarra 09:20, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
replies: text:  I would advocate a middle ground here. As best I can tell, the map is an attempt to represent boundaries of people groups, which may correlate to linguistic distinctions, but are equally (if not more) likely to be socio-ethno-cultural-et cetera distinctions. But since language is the context in which it's used, I say the caption should say something like, "A map of Noongar groups, roughly corresponding to varieties of the Noongar language". That said, I haven't gone with "countries" as you do, Gnangarra, not so much to avoid the issue Mitch raises as because I can't recall "country" in a Noongar context ever being pluralised. "Nations" is certainly used (particularly in increasingly popular terms like "First Nations"), but not "countries". Although I'll gladly point out that my experience is limited and local, and perhaps most importantly that I'm not Aboriginal myself! -- Perey (talk) 11:29, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: All the maps refer what is country ie Yeut country, Whadjuk Country, Menang Country not language usages, the language spoken doesn't so much vary between each country but by the person who recorded them. The bigger variant are in the outer regions where they share words with non-nyungar regions that overlapped in both. Tinsdale has lot to answer for with his use of solid lines to define regions when they were always fluid at the edges with neighbours having equal use, and different story lines. This why I refer to it country over language because those solid line dont represent language use in any viable way. At least this map is way more acceptable than the other that was in use. Gnangarra 13:49, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
replies: text:   If that is the case, the article text should (also) be updated to say so explicitly. (Currently the article text says "The subdivisions shown [on the map] correspond to individual varieties".) If we are going to include a map that does not represent language use in any viable way, in an article about the language, it would probably be a good idea if any corresponding article text (that explicitly refers to the map) accurately explained to the reader the correlation between image and article topic. Mitch Ames (talk) 02:13, 25 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Varieties of the Noongar subgroup - language subgroup, countries, varieties