Terrill describes Yuwibara (E54) as a variety of Biri E56 on the basis of the Bridgeman and Bucas list in Curr (Vol3 44-51) having over 80% in common with Biri collected by other sources.
Breen indicates a close relationship with Wirri E57 on the basis of geography and shared items with Tindale's Widi (E57) wordlist (Terrill 1998 and Tindale 1938 in Breen 2009:228), keeping in mind that Wiri E57 is a Biri dialect from Central Queensland.
Breen indicates that Yuwibarra is clearly of the local group type (having the -barra suffix) rather than a dialect or language name.
See also Gabulbarra E45 for an explanation of the suffix -barra.
Tindale's spelling 'Juipera' (1974:171) seems to have been adapted from the name in Curr 'Yuipera'; Tindale missed the form of the suffix '-barra' (Breen 2009:228). Capell wrote 'Juwibara' (1963).
Bridgeman, George F., and H. Bucas. 1887. Port Mackay and its neighbourhood. In The Australian race vol. 3, ed. E. M. Curr, 44-51. Melbourne: John Farnes, Government Printer.
Terrill, Angela. 1998. Biri: Languages of the world 258. München: Lincom Europa.
At Mackay; from St. Helens south to Cape Palmer-ston; inland to Connors Range (Tindale 1974).
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Speaker numbers were measured differently across the censuses and various other sources listed in AUSTLANG. You are encouraged to refer to the sources.
Speaker numbers for ‘NILS 2004’ and ‘2005 estimate’ come from 'Table F.3: Numbers of speakers of Australian Indigenous languages (various surveys)' in 'Appendix F NILS endangerment and absolute number results' in McConvell, Marmion and McNicol 2005, pages 198-230 (PDF, 2.5MB).
