| Description:
The Barrow Point language is a moribund Australian Aboriginal language. According to Ethnologue, there was one speaker left in 1981.
Ethnologue (2005) classifies Barrow Point together with Guugu Yimidhirr as a branch of Pama-Nyungan.
Unusually among Australian languages, Barrow Point has at least two fricative phonemes, /ð/ and /ɣ/. They usually developed from *t̪ and *k, respectively, when preceded by a stressed long vowel, which then shortened.
See also John Haviland and Roger Hart's Old Man Fog and the Last Aborigines of Barrow Point, ISBN 1-56098-928-9, a novel about the efforts of Hart, a native of the Cape York peninsula, to record and preserve Barrow Point language and culture...... full article at Wikipedia |
