Badimaya language

Badimaya (sometimes written Badimia) is an Australian Aboriginal language. It is a member of the Kartu subgroup of the Pama–Nyungan family, spoken by the Badimaya people of the Mid West region of Western Australia.

Badimaya is a critically endangered language, spoken by only a handful of elderly Aboriginal people, all of whom are over 65 years of age. However, there is a passionate movement of language revival underway in the Badimaya community.

Badimaya was traditionally spoken across a large region spanning Lake Moore, Ninghan Station, Paynes Find and Dalwallinu in the south, to Mount Magnet, Wynyangoo Station and Kirkalocka Station in the north.

Today Badimaya people live across the Mid West region, based in regional towns and communities including Mount Magnet, Geraldton, Yalgoo, Mullewa, Meekatharra, Wubin, Dalwallinu and Perth.

Traditional Badimaya country is bordered by Western Desert language (Tjuparn, Wanmala) to the east, Noongar to the south-west and Wajarri to the north-west.

Analysis of the lexicon and grammatical features of the language suggests that there were (at least) two varieties of Badimaya, a northern and southern variety. These varieties are unnamed; however, Badimaya speakers are aware of differences in the speech of Badimaya people from different regions of Badimaya country.^{[citation needed]}

Widi, also referred to as Wiri (not to be confused with the Wiri language of Queensland) and a variety of other names, may be a dialect of Badimaya, but its status is unclear.

Badimaya is typologically fairly standard of Western Australian Pama-Nyungan languages. It has a phoneme inventory typical of Pama-Nyungan languages, with six places of articulation (showing both a laminal and apical contrast) and a three-way vowel system, with (limited) length-contrast.