Langenesis

Pama-Nyungan family

Yolŋu Matha

c. 1500 CE – today Living

Yolŋu Matha (c. 1500 CE – today) is a living Pama-Nyungan language. Lineage: Proto-Pama-Nyungan → Yolŋu Matha.

See Yolŋu Matha on the interactive map
Speakers
6K (6,000)

Dialect cluster of northeast Arnhem Land. Its Pama-Nyungan membership makes it an outlier surrounded by non-Pama-Nyungan languages. Start date is nominal; intermediate subgroups are not tracked.

Lineage

  1. Proto-Pama-Nyunganc. 4,000 BCE – 3,000 BCE
  2. Yolŋu Mathac. 1500 CE – today

Sister languages 5

Also descended from Proto-Pama-Nyungan.

Sources