Wagaya language

Wagaya (Wakaya) is an extinct Australian Aboriginal language of Queensland. Yindjilandji (Indjilandji) may have been a separate language. The linguist Gavan Breen recorded two dialects of the language, an Eastern and a Western variety, incorporating their description in his 1974 grammar.

Wagaya belongs to the Warluwarric (Ngarna) subgroup of the Pama–Nyungan family of Australian languages. It is most related to Yindjilandji, Bularnu, and Warluwarra. Gavan Breen groups Wagaya together with Yindjilandji into the "Ngarru" group, while Bularnu and Warluwarra form the "Thawa" group (each respectively after the common word for 'man, Aboriginal person'). These two groups together form the southern branch of Ngarna/Warluwarric, to which the discontinuous Yanyuwa is related at the uppermost level of the whole subgroup.

Work on proto-Warluwarric has been done by Catherine Koch (1989), Daniel Brammall (1991), Margaret Carew (1993), and Gavan Breen (2004).

Stops may also be pronounced as voiceless [p, k, t̪, t̠ʲ, t, ʈ].

There are reports of around 10 Native speakers worldwide as of 1983, but the language is currently extinct.

While endangeredlanguages.com reports 10 speakers of this language as of 1983, ethnologue.com explicitly states that the language is extinct.

Broadly speaking, the traditional language of Wakaya country is to the north east and east of Tennant Creek, Alyawarre is to the east and south east, Kaytetye is to the South, and Warlpiri to the west.

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