ayearinlanguage: A Year in Language, Day 25: Pitjantjatjara Pitjantjatjara, pronounced “pitch
ayearinlanguage: A Year in Language, Day 25: Pitjantjatjara Pitjantjatjara, pronounced “pitch - ant - cha - char - uh”, or, to use an actual phonetic transcription, /pɪtʃəntʃəˈtʃɑːrə/, is a language of the Western Desert or Wati branch of the Pama-Nyungan language family that dominates Australia. The word “pitjantjatjara” means “having pitjantja” noting the word used by this group for “to go”. This distinguishes them from the Yakunytjatjara people who speak a mutually intelligible language but use a different word for “to go”. Uluru, formerly known to the western world by its colonial name “Ayer’s Rock”, gets its name from the Pitjantjatjara to whom it is sacred. The Pitjantjatjara, along with their close linguistic relatives collectively known as Anangu, have been relatively successful in gaining rights to their sacred lands and more, and the languages are currently still healthy i.e. not dying out. Like many aboriginal languages Pitjantjatara has retroflex consonants and no fricatives. It is a split-ergativity language, meaning it inflects nominative-accusative in some grammatical context and argative-absolutive in others. -- source link
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