Oates says that Ngarluma has three dialects: East Ngarluma W57, West Ngarluma W56 and a northern dialect called Jaburarra W47 (1975:70). This is based on von Brandenstein's research, who also mentions that there is minimal difference between East Ngarluma and West Ngarluma, and that all his informants spoke East Ngarluma (von Brandenstein 1966:2, PMS 2130).
Von Brandenstein also refers to Ngarluma and Jindjiparndi W37 as 'dialects', while Simpson (1980) says the two are 'closely related'. Wangka Maya notes that Kariyarra W39 is closely related to Ngarluma and, according to a 'purely linguistic classification' (such as Dixon (1980), Dench (1982), and Thieberger (1993)), they are dialects of the same language (2001:7).
Port Walcott, Roebourne and vicinity; at Sherlock River; inland to the foot of the uplands from 40 to 70 miles (65 to 110 km.); east to Depuch Island and Balla Balla; they visited islands off Nickol Bay but not those off Hampton Harbour which belonged to the Jaburara; west almost to Maitland River. Note that Curr's 'Markand' River is a misreading of Maitland (Tindale 1974).
Ngarluma were at Roebourne and south to the ranges (Palmer in Sutton 1995:99).
Contemporary location: Roebourne and surrounding towns (Dixon 2011:38).
Search MURA people®
Search MURA language®
Search OZBIB
Search Trove
Search Worldcat
Ngarluma Aboriginal Corporation
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).
Kohn, Allison. 2001. A morphological description of Ngarluma. South Hedland, WA: Wangka Maya PALC.
Thieberger, Nicholas. c2001. Ngarluma-English dictionary: a compilation of files produced from Ken Hale's fieldnotes. Port Hedland, WA: Wangka Maya PALC. Wangka Maya PALC. 2004. Ngarluma-English Dictionary. South Hedland. Wangka Maya PALC.