Burarra (N82) is the language of the Burarra and Gun-nartpa N81 people from the Blyth and Cadell River regions and Maningrida in North-Central Arnhem land. The Burarra language consists of three dialects: An-barra people speak Gun-narta N191; Martay people speak Gun-narda N190 and Mu-golarra people (also called Mukarli) speak Gun-nartpa N81 (Glasgow and Glasgow, 2011).
Gun-narta N191 and Gun-narda call their dialects Gu-jingarliya (Glasgow, 1994:7). Glasgow describes Gurrgoni or Gun-gurrgoni (N75) as a dialect of the Burarra N82 language family (1994:7).
An-barra and Martey peoples refer to their dialects (Gun-narta N191 and Gun-narda N190) as Gu-jingarliya and Mu-golarra aka Mukarli people refer to theirs (Gun-nartpa N81) as Gu-jarlabiya. An-barra and Martay people were called Burarra by their eastern neighbours; all three dialect groups share close cultural and social interaction (Glasgow, 1994:7).
Based on a comparison of verb tense/status suffixes, Green classifies Burarra N82, Gurr-goni N75, Ndjebbana N74 and Nakkara N80 as a 'Maningrida subgroup' of the larger Gunwinjguan language family, a refinement of the earlier classification of Gurr-goni as a member of the 'Bureran' family (Capell, Voegelin and Voegelin in Green, 1995:4-5).
Oates (1975:18) equates Burera (N82) with Burarra N135, and she subsumes Bureda N135 under Burera (N82).
Blyth River region (Glasgow 1994 Burarra-Gun-nartpa dictionary).
Burarra people's country is in Central Arnhem Land, along the Blyth and Cadell Rivers and the coastal and inland areas around between them.
Many people now live to the west of this, at Maningrida, a settlement on the mouth of the Liverpool River (Green 1987:1).
The general associations were to the coast from east Anamayirra Creek to Cape Stewart and inland at least to the junction of the Cadell and the Blyth (Harvey AILEC 0802).
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Batchelor Institute https://www.batchelor.edu.au/
Maningrida Literature Production Centre
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).
Green, Rebecca. 1987. A sketch grammar of Burarra, Australian National University: BA (Hons).
Glasgow, Kathy. 1994. Burarra-Gun-nartpa dictionary: with English finder list. Darwin:SIL.
