The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wiradyuri and Other Languages of New
South Wales, by Robert Hamilton Mathews

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Title: The Wiradyuri and Other Languages of New South Wales

Author: Robert Hamilton Mathews

Release Date: August 3, 2006 [EBook #18978]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WIRADYURI AND OTHER ***

THE WIRADYURI AND OTHER LANGUAGES OF NEW SOUTH WALES.

By R. H. Mathews, L.S., Corres. Memb. Anthrop. Soc., Washington,
U.S.A.

Synposis.--Introductory.--Orthography.--The Wiradyuri Language.--The
Burreba-burreba Language.--The Ngunawal Language.--Vocabulary of
Wiradyuri Words.--Vocabulary of Ngunawal Words.

The native tribes speaking the Wiradyuri language occupy an immense
region in the central and southern portions of New South Wales. For
their eastern and northern boundaries the reader is referred to the
map accompanying my paper to the American Philosophical Society in
1898.[1] The western boundary is shown on the map with my article to
the Royal Society of New South Wales the same year.[2] Their southern
limit is represented on the map attached to a paper I transmitted to
the Anthropological Society at Washington in 1898.[3] The maps
referred to were prepared primarily to mark out the boundaries of the
social organisation and system of marriage and descent prevailing in
the Wiradyuri community, but will also serve to indicate the
geographic range of their language.

The Wiradyuri language is spoken over a greater extent of territory
than any other tongue in New South Wales, and the object of the
present monograph is to furnish a short outline of its grammatical
structure. I have included a brief notice of the Burreba-burreba
language, which adjoins the Wiradyuri on the west. A cursory outline
is also given of the language of the Ngunawal tribe, which bounds the
Wiradyuri on a portion of the east. The Kamilaroi tribes, whose
language I recently reported to this Institute,[4] adjoin the
Wiradyuri on the north.

In all the languages treated in this article, in every part of speech
subject to inflexion, there are double forms of the first person, of
the dual and plural,