Marra language facts for kids

Marra (sometimes spelled Mara) is an Aboriginal language from Australia. It was traditionally spoken along the Gulf of Carpentaria coast in the Northern Territory. This area is near the Roper River, Towns River, and Limmen Bight River.

Sadly, Marra is now an endangered language. This means very few people still speak it. A survey in 1991 found only 15 speakers, and they were all older people. Today, most Marra people speak Kriol as their main language. The few remaining Marra speakers live in Aboriginal communities. These include Ngukurr, Numbulwar, Borroloola, and Minyerri.

Marra is a "prefixing language." This means it adds small parts (prefixes) to the beginning of words. It has three groups for nouns: masculine, feminine, and neuter. It also tells you if something is singular (one), plural (many), or dual (two). Marra has a special way to show when actions happen. It also has detailed words for family members. Unlike some nearby languages, Marra does not have special "avoidance speech." This means men and women speak the same way.

Who Speaks Marra?

Marra is part of the Arnhem language family. This is the second largest language family in Australia. The people who speak Marra call themselves Marranbala or Marra. They call their language Marra.

Marra was spoken near other languages. To the north was Warndarrang. To the west was Alawa. To the south were Binbinga and Wilangarra. To the southeast was Yanyuwa.

The Marra people traditionally lived in three main groups. These groups were called clans. They lived along the Limmen Bight River in Arnhem Land. Their clans were burdal, murrungun, and mambali. By the 1970s, the mambali clan no longer existed. However, a family from the burdal clan and a man named Anday from the murrungun clan helped a linguist named Jeffrey Heath. A linguist is a person who studies languages. They shared their language and culture with him.

These three clans, plus the Warndarrang-speaking guyal group, formed four special groups. Each group had its own songs, stories, and traditions. Each group also had a special animal or "totem." For example, the mambali group had the olive python or fork-tailed catfish. The burdal group had the black-headed python or antilopine kangaroo. The murrungun group had the king brown snake. These groups were responsible for their totems.

Between 1973 and 1977, linguist Jeffrey Heath worked with Marra speakers. He created a large grammar book and dictionary for the language. He worked with four main helpers: Mack Riley, Tom Riley, Johnnie, and Anday. With their help, he gathered information about Marra grammar and words. He also collected many stories about clan songs and totem traditions.

How Marra Sounds

Marra has many consonant sounds. It has sounds similar to English. But it also has some unique sounds. These include sounds made with the tongue between the teeth. Marra has three main vowel sounds: /i/, /u/, and /a/. These are like the "ee" in "see," "oo" in "moon," and "ah" in "father." Very few words in Marra use the vowel sounds /e/ or /o/.

Marra Grammar Basics

In Marra, words like nouns (names of things), adjectives (describing words), and adverbs (words that describe actions) are treated similarly. However, personal pronouns (like "I," "you") and demonstrative pronouns (like "this," "that") are different. They have their own special rules.

Nouns and Articles

Nouns in Marra usually have an "article" before them. Articles tell you about the noun's case, gender, and number. For example, nana means "the" for a masculine singular noun. ngana is for a feminine singular noun.

Nouns also get a small part added to the beginning, called a prefix. This prefix tells you if the noun is the subject of the sentence (nominative) or something else (non-nominative). It also tells you if the noun is masculine, feminine, neuter, dual, or plural.

Most singular nouns that are not human are masculine. The feminine group is mostly for female people. The neuter group is for body parts, places, ideas, and the word for "sun."

Noun Endings (Suffixes)

Nouns in Marra also get endings, called suffixes. These suffixes show how the noun is used in the sentence. There are six main types:

• Nominative: This is for the subject of a sentence.
• Ergative/Instrumental: This is for the subject of an action verb or for the object used to do something. It also shows who something belongs to.
• Allative/Locative: This shows direction ("to X") or location ("in/on/at X").
• Ablative: This shows where something came from ("from X").
• Pergressive: This means "through" or "along" something, often for body parts or places.
• Purposive: This shows the goal of an action ("for X").

Showing What Belongs to Whom

To show possession (who owns what), Marra often uses a special pronoun. For example, n-nga-radburr n-jawurru means "his camp."

Counting in Marra

Marra has five basic numbers:

• wanggij or wangginy (one)
• wurruja (two)
• wurruja-gayi (three, meaning "two-another")
• wurruja wurruja (four, meaning "two two")
• mani n-murrji (five, meaning "like hand")

Numbers from six to ten are made by combining "five" with other numbers. For example, "nine" is mani n-murrji wurruja wurruja. Marra also has words for "many" or "a few."

Repeating Parts of Words (Reduplication)

Like many Australian languages, Marra sometimes repeats part or all of a word. This is called reduplication. For human nouns, it means "three or more." For example, jawu-yawulba means "three or more old people" from jawulba (old person). For other nouns, it can mean "having X" or "having lots of X." For verbs, it shows a repeated action.

Personal Pronouns

Marra has separate words for personal pronouns (like "I," "you," "he"). These pronouns can be used to emphasize a point. They change based on who is speaking, who is being spoken to, and how many people there are.

Words for "This" and "That" (Demonstrative Pronouns)

Marra has many ways to say "this" or "that." These words show how close something is to the speaker or listener. They can mean "here," "nearby," or "far away." They also change based on gender, number, and case.

Cardinal Directions

Marra has words for "north," "south," "east," and "west." These words can change their form to show location ("in the west"), direction ("westward"), or origin ("from the west"). There are also words for "up" and "down" that change in similar ways.

Asking Questions

In Marra, a "yes-no" question sounds like a regular statement. The only difference is how your voice goes up at the end. Other questions use special words like ngani, which can mean "who?", "someone," or "anyone." These question words usually come at the beginning of the sentence.

How Marra Verbs Work

Marra verbs can be quite complex. A basic verb often has a prefix (at the start), a verb stem (the main part), and suffixes (at the end). These parts tell you who is doing the action, who the action is for, and when it happens.

Sometimes, a Marra verb is made of two parts. There's a "main verb" that gives the meaning. Then there's an "auxiliary verb" that changes to show tense (when it happened) or mood (how it happened).

Verb Categories

Marra verbs can show sixteen different categories. These categories tell you about the tense (past, present, future) and aspect (if the action was quick or ongoing). They also show the mood (if it's a command or a possibility).

One interesting category is the "evitative." This means "lest" or "or else." For example, nga-nanggu-wa wuninggi rang-ningganjiyi means "give it to me, or else I will hit you." It warns about something undesirable that might happen.

Verb Prefixes

Verbs in Marra get different prefixes depending on who is doing the action and who the action is happening to. For example, the prefix for "I hit you" would be different from "you hit me." These rules are very detailed and have many exceptions.

Marra Sentence Structure

Within a noun phrase (like "the big dog") or a verb group, the word order is usually fixed. For example, articles come before demonstrative pronouns, which come before the main noun. However, the order of bigger parts of a sentence (like noun phrases and verb groups) is quite free. The first part of the sentence is usually the most important.

Special Language Rules

Like many Aboriginal languages, Marra has rules about how certain family members interact. For example, brothers and sisters of the opposite sex are not supposed to talk directly to each other after about age eight.

Marra has one specific "avoidance term." A sister uses marlayarra to talk about or to her brother. Normally, the word for a boy is warlima.

Also, men are not supposed to say the names of their mother-in-law, their wife's mother's brother, or their wife's brother. These rules become less strict as a man gets older.

Comparing Marra to Related Languages

Marra and Warndarrang are very closely related languages. Warndarrang has not been spoken since 1974. Marra, Warndarrang, Alawa, and Yugul form the Marran subgroup of the Gunwinyguan language family. These languages share many words and similar grammar rules. However, there are also important differences. Warndarrang, for example, has many words borrowed from other languages like Nunggubuyu.

Verb Similarities

All three languages (Marra, Warndarrang, Alawa) add prefixes to their verbs. Their verbs either have one main part that changes, or a main verb followed by an auxiliary verb. They also repeat parts of verbs to show repeated actions. To say "not" (negation), they put a special word right before the verb. In Marra and Warndarrang, this word is gu.

Marra has a more complex verb system than Warndarrang. Marra has sixteen different categories for verbs, while Warndarrang has eight.

Noun Similarities

Alawa nouns have two genders (masculine and feminine). Marra has three (masculine, feminine, neuter). Warndarrang has six. All three languages tell you if a noun is singular, dual, or plural.

The way Marra and Warndarrang use noun cases (endings that show a noun's role) is very similar. However, the actual endings are often different.

The words for "this" and "that" (demonstratives) in Marra and Warndarrang cover similar ideas. But the words themselves are not very similar. Marra demonstratives change a lot for case, number, and gender. Warndarrang demonstratives are simpler.

The words for cardinal directions (north, south, east, west) are similar in Warndarrang and Marra. For example, garrgali (Marra) and arrgarli (Warndarrang) both mean "west." But Marra has a more complex system for changing these words. Marra also has "up" and "down" directions, which Warndarrang does not.

Word Similarities

The words for cultural things are different across the three languages. Marra has a very complex system for family terms. Warndarrang's system seemed simpler. Alawa has a similar family system to Marra, but it doesn't have the special "dyadic" terms (words for pairs of relatives). There are few similar words for plants and animals across the three languages. However, the names of the special clan groups (semimoieties) in Warndarrang and Marra are almost identical.

See also

• Non-Pama–Nyungan languages
• Grammatical aspect