Yawijibaya is a non-Pama-Nyungan language of the Worrorran family, specifically western Worrorran, along with Worrorra K17; Umiida K49; Unggarrangu K55; Unggumi K14; Winyjarrumi K56 (McGregor and Rumsey, 2009:8).
The Ethnologue (2005) lists Yawjibara (K53) as an alternative name of Yawuru K1 but this refers to another language. Yawuru belongs to the Nyulnyulan family, while Yawijibaya belongs to the Worrorran family.
Clendon (2000:vii) reports that 'a closely related dialect of Worrorra was formerly spoken by the people of the Montgomery Islands, anja Yawijabaaya K53. McGregor (2004:43) says that Yawijibaya is 'sometimes treated as a separate language, sometimes as a dialect of Worrorra'.
On the Montgomery Islands, n.n. ['Jawutjap] (this name applies probably only to the main island), including those in the southern part of Collier Bay (Tindale 1974).
Yawijibaya was associated with the Montgomery Islands and probably also with the Wood Islands (Harvey AILEC 0802).
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McGregor, William. 1988 Handbook of Kimberley Languages. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. © Author.
AIATSIS gratefully acknowledge William McGregor for permission to use his material in AUSTLANG.
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).
