This is a language spoken by indigenous Australians in the northeast of the state of Queensland. It is now a dying language headed for extinction because it is used in its original form by very few. In 2001 there were estimated to be five speakers of the traditional language (source: Wikipedia) all over sixty years old. According to academics there is also another minority of younger people, aged between 34 and 59, who speak a simplified Dyribal. They have lost some of the traditional terms substituting them with English, but that don’t exactly translate the original meaning (Ethnologue estimates there are between 40 and 50 speakers).
The most interesting characteristic of this language is the classification of substantive nouns that are subdivided into classes dependant on a semantic base, on the knowledge of traditional myths and on cultural beliefs.
There are four classes in traditional Dyribal and they foresee that a classifier that conveys which category it belongs to precedes each substantive and they are:
• I class or bayi: men, most animals and the moon • II class or balan: women, some animals for example birds, fire, water, sun and stars • III class or balam: all edible fruits and the plants that they grow on, honey and cigarettes • IV class or bala: everything that doesn’t fit into the other classes like parts of the body, meat, insects, trees and rocks.
In Dyirbal there is a rule according to which everything associated with something in a category is put into that category. Fish, for example, are part of class I, like men, and that is also where you will find words like harpoon or fishing line because they are associated with fish. To understand why birds, since they are animals, are not put into the first class but into the second you need to know that in the belief system of the Dyribal tribe all birds are spirits of dead women and as such are assigned to the female category. In the same way to understand the attribution to two different categories of the sun and the moon you need to be aware of the fact that in the local mythology the two heavenly bodies are husband (the moon) and wife (the sun). There is also another principle according to which if some members of the group are different from the others, in terms of danger or capacity to generate income, they are placed in another class. For example fish like the stonefish or eel are placed in category II while other fish are in category I.
A uniqueness of the Dyirbal language is constituted by the so-called “mother-in-law language”. To understand its use you need to keep in mind that an individual is forbidden to speak, get close to or look directly at his mother in law, nephews, brother and sister in laws. If it should be necessary for them to speak, not just to this type of person but also in their presence, it is necessary to use a form of complicated and specialized language that essentially foresees the use of the same phonemes and grammar but that has words that are different to normal language. Do you know of any programs working to save these languages or stories and facts about them? Write to us!
