Kamilaroi

Driving into town, looking towards the great sweeping expanses of the Liverpool Plains beyond it, Eric spoke of the Kamilaroi Aboriginal people who used to roam them, from Tamworth to the Pilliga region south of the Namoi River.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

Eric demonstrated the sucked-in or blown-out aspirates that separated two vowels in Kamilaroi when they occurred together.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

M. W. Dixon, a kind of linguistic archaeologist who has recorded many disappearing languages, managed to find two people who could still remember about a hundred words of Kamilaroi between them around 1972.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

Kamilaroi, once a widespread Aboriginal language, has now died out.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

Eric gave it a wry look and spoke of the white squatter stockmen and how they disposed of the Kamilaroi Aborigines who harassed them on the plains in the early days of settlement.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

Ridley, who published The Kamilaroi Language in 1886.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

He could remember old white men of no learning around the Pilliga who could still pronounce the place names authentically as the Kamilaroi did.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

Eric demonstrated the sucked-in or blown-out aspirates that separated two vowels in Kamilaroi when they occurred together.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

Eventually, with poignant irony, a Kamilaroi dictionary was posted as the first-ever dictionary on the internet, just as the language became fully extinct.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

The Kamilaroi Aborigines would pull up the yam-like tap roots of the seedling trees and cook them as vegetables.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009