Little is known about Barranbinya, apart from the language name. Oates (1988) says the language probably ceased to be spoken before the turn of the (twentieth) century. Oates' grammar sketch adds to the existing data, drawing on her recordings of Barranbinya as remembered by a Muruwari D32 speaker who spoke Barranbinya during childhood.
Oates revisits O'Grady, Voegelin and Voegelin's (1966) classification of Barranbinya as a subgroup of Wiradjuric with Wongaibon D18, Weilwan D20 and Ngemba D22, concluding that Barranbinya was probably actually a dialect of 'the Muruwari group' (Oates 1988:198-99). Wafer and Lissarrague place Barrabinya in a group with Muruwari, on the basis these languages have more in common with each other than with their neighbours (2008: 255-257).
Wafer, Jim and Amanda Lissarrague. 2008. A handbook of Aboriginal languages of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. Nambucca Heads: Muurrbay Aboriginal Language and Culture Co-operative.
Bourke to Brewarrina on northern bank of Darling River (Tindale 1974).
... extended along the Darliing from Brewarrina to about Bourke. Mathews (1903a:57) says Barrabinya also comprised portions of the Bokhara, Bogan and the Culgoa Rivers for some distance above their respective junctions with the Darling. Tindale (1974) maps Barrabinya similarly, though he includes Collerina as a portion of the territory; my information would place Collerina in Muruwari country (Oates 1988:2).
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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).
Oates, Lynette. 1988. Barranbinya: fragments of a N.S.W. Aboriginal language. In Papers in Australian Linguistics 17: Pacific Linguistics A71, eds. Austin, P. et al, 185-204. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
