Mbabaram (Barbaram) is an extinct Australian Aboriginal language of north Queensland, traditionally spoken by the Mbabaram people. R. M. W. Dixon described his hunt for a native speaker of Mbabaram in his book Searching for Aboriginal Languages: Memoirs of a Field Worker. Most of what is known of the language is from Dixon's field research with speaker Albert Bennett.
Recordings are held in the audio collection of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.
Classification Mbabaram is a Pama-Nyungan language, specifically belonging to the Paman group.
As part of his theory that the Mbabaram tribe (among others of the region) were of part Tasmanoid origin, Norman Tindale noted the Mbabaram language appeared strongly isolated, but R. M. W. Dixon stated the more reasonable view was that Mbabaram was very recognizably related to the languages of the region.
Geographic distribution Mbabaram was spoken by the Mbabaram tribe in Queensland, southwest of Cairns (). Their territory was bordered by the Walsh River in the north, and included the present localities of Irvinebank, Petford and Lappa.
The nearby languages were Agwamin, Djangun (Kuku-Yalanji), Muluridji (Kuku-Yalanji), Djabugay, Yidiny, Ngadjan (Dyirbal), Mamu (Dyirbal), Jirrbal (Dyirbal), Girramay (Dyirbal), and Warungu. Each language was mutually intelligible with at least its immediate neighbours, but Mbabaram was not mutually intelligible with any of them. Because of the difficulty of the language for other tribes, Mbabaram speakers would tend to learn their languages rather than the other way round.
Phonology Vowels
Front Central Back High Low-mid Low
Consonants
Peripheral Laminal Apical Bilabial Velar Palatal Dental Alveolar Retroflex Plosive Nasal Lateral Rhotic Semivowel
Phonological history Vowels Mbabaram would have originally had three vowels, , and , with a length distinction in the initial, stressed syllable. Several changes occurred to add , and to the system: developed from original in the second syllable of a word if the word began with , , or , e.g. > "burn", > "tame dog" developed from original in the second syllable of a word if the word began with , e.g. > "sit", > "liver" (It may have also occurred with or , but no examples are known.) developed from original in the second syllable of a word if the word began with , , or e.g. > "two", > "you" developed from original in the second syllable of a word if the word began with , , or e.g. > "emu", > "what" The first consonant and vowel of each word was then dropped, leaving the distribution of unpredictable.
Vocabulary
(dog), unrelated to the English word gungdg (kookaburra) yú (fish), unrelated to mandarin yú (鱼)
Word for "dog" Mbabaram is known in linguistic circles for a striking coincidence in its vocabulary. When Dixon began to study the language, he asked for several basic nouns, including the word for "dog". Bennett supplied the Mbabaram translation, . Dixon suspected that Bennett had misunderstood the question or that Bennett's knowledge of Mbabaram had been tainted by decades of using English, but the Mbabaram word for "dog" was in fact , pronounced almost identically to the Australian English word (compare true cognates such as Yidiny , Dyirbal , Djabugay and Guugu Yimidhirr , for example).
The similarity is a complete coincidence: the English and Mbabaram languages developed on opposite sides of the planet over tens of thousands of years. This and other false cognates have been cited by typological linguist Bernard Comrie as a caution against deciding that languages are related based on a small number of lexical comparisons.
References
Bibliography
External links Bibliography of Mbabaram language and people resources , at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies