The only material for Dyirringañ (S51) comprises Mathews' (1902) manuscripts and his brief published grammar of the language (Eades, 1976:5). This evidence suggests that Dyirringañ was a language separate from, and to the south of, Dhurga S53.
Wafer and Lissarrague (2008:101, 107) link Jiringayn (S51) and Thawa S52 as dialects of the 'Southern Coastal' variety of their 'South-east NSW ("Yuin") language group'.
Neither Eades nor Besold mention a dialectal relationship between Thawa and Dyirringañ.
Besold remarking on the difficulty of drawing definitive conclusions about the language situation in this area, says that 'even recent statements such as 'Thawa is distinguished from Jeringan (Djirringanj) but Jeringan and Thoorga (Dhurga) S53 are closely related and are variants of a single language' (Biamanga Gulaga Final Report, 2005) cannot be confirmed based on the language analysis presented in this study' (2012-13:3).
From Jingellic eastward was the country of the Walgalu tribe, whose speech resembled partly the Dhudhuroa and partly the Dyirringan, a tongue spoken from about Nimmitabel to Bega (Blake & Reid 2002:179).
From Cape Dromedary (Kajan) south to beyond Bega; inland to the sharp scarp of the Dividing Range east of Nimmitabel (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).
Besold, Jutta. 2013. Language recovery of the New South Wales south coast Aboriginal languages. MS 5078.
