Murrinh-Patha

Murrinh-Patha People's country

The Murrinh-Patha are an indigenous Australian people, whose traditional lands are located in Australia's Northern Territory, inland from the settlement of Wadeye between the Moyle and Fitzmaurice rivers. Their language, also called Murrinh-Patha, is spoken by about 2500 people, and serves as a lingua franca for several other ethnic groups, such as the Mati Ke or Marri-Djabin, whose languages are extinct or threatened.^[1] It is one of two members of the Garaman language family, which in turn is part of the large Australian phylum; its intermediate affinities are subject to current debate.

The Murrinh-Patha culture displays a social structure characteristic of indigenous Australian peoples generally, featuring a complex kinship system with elaborate behavioural norms for interactions between the different kinship groups.

References

• Street, Chester S., The Language and Culture of the Murrinh-Patha, Summer Institute of Linguistics, Australian Aboriginal Branch, Darwin, 1987.

Notes

1. ^ Abley, Mark. Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 2003. Page 18

External links

• 1974 map (Museum of South Australia, the area occupied by the Murrinh-Patha is shown here as Murinbata and Muringura.