Data collected by AUSTLANG

Data on the language

Alternatives names: Bunaba, Punuba, Punaba, Bunapa, Booneba, Buniba, Bunuba

Other names or spellings are used for this language. See Austlang website.

Classification: Bunaban family

Main dialects: Capell (1940:416) identifies two dialects of this language, an eastern dialect and a western dialect.

Area: Bunuba is an aboriginal language spoken in Western Australia (WA).

It belongs to a large region in the southern Kimberley bounded (very roughly) by the Fitzroy River to the south-east, the Leopold Range to the north-east, the Oscar Range to the south-west, and the Napier Range to the north-west (Rumsey 2000:36).

Most of Bunuba speakers currently live in Fitzroy Crossing, either at Junjuwa, a housing block on the Crossing town site about two kilometers to the south (Rumsey 2000: 37).

The general territorial association was from the Oscar Range and Brooking Springs homestead in the south to Mt Broome and Stony Creek in the north. Sources in 2007 confirmed these boundaries, with the explicit addition that Fairfield homestead and Tunnel Creek were associated with Bunuba (Harvey ASEDA 802).

Number of speakers:

The Australian Bureau of Statistics 2006 Census estimated 114 speakers of Bunuba.

Media/Literature/Instruction: Kimberley Language Resource Centre has produced Bunuba yarrangi thangani: an interactive program for teaching indigenous languages (2000).

Sources & bibliography

Knight, Emily. 2004. A grammar of Bunuba, University of New England: MA.

Rumsey, Alan. 2000. Bunaba. In Handbook of Australian languages, vol.5, eds. RMW Dixon and B Blake, 34-152. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

Maps

Bowern, Clair. Unpublished map of West Kimberley region.

Harvey, Mark. 2008. Non-Pama-Nyungan Languages: land-language associations at colonisation (ASEDA 802).

McGregor, William. 1988. Handbook of Kimberley languages, volume 1: General information. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.

McGregor, William 1990. A functional grammar of Gooniyandi. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Rumsey, Alan. 2000. Bunuba. In Handbook of Australian languages, vol. 5, RMW Dixon and B Blake, 34-152. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

Links

AUSTLANG website: http://austlang.aiatsis.gov.au/main.php

Ethnologue webpage: http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=bck