Talk:Arrernte language

Oh, right, refers here. So, I repeat:

With a vertical vowel system and all consonants split by labialization, there's bound to be some essential information not captured by the phoneme inventory alone, so explaining allophony would be nice. Also maybe a short explanation on why this analysis is preferred to a normal many-vowel no-labialization system? --Tropylium 10:05, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

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This article says 25% of the residents of Alice speak Arrernte, but contradicts itself by saying there are only 1,500 speakers (since Alice has at least 25,000 residents) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.207.115.37 (talk) 07:13, 23 October 2007 (UTC) --- That part about "most" workplaces in Alice Springs requiring some form of Arrernte is wrong. I'm from the Alice and I've never heard of anyone needing to know any Aboriginal languages at all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.229.248.247 (talk) 19:30, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Name pronunciation
I'd like to improve the lead-in with a pronunciation in IPA, preferably for both Arrernte and (Australian) English. From what I've gathered in the article, I think the correct pronunciation is. Does anyone know if that is correct? And do Aussies pronounce it somewhere close to ? That's how this American would say it, at least... — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 03:12, 19 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I'd gather (some of) those in the know say "ARR-un-duh" or similar while all others say "uh-RERN-tay" or "uh-RAN-duh" (as in rhyming with Miranda) depending on the spelling they encounter. BTW I think you mean . The is hardly expected unless you're trying to pronounce it Hindi-style. Benwing (talk) 07:13, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Title should be "Arrernte language"?
Why is this called "Upper Aranda language"? I get that Aranda is a vague attempt at rendering the pronunciation of the word Arrernte (although hardly anyone is going to realize they need to stress the first syllable rather than the second). But the newer sources all say "Arrernte", hence using "Aranda" is contrary to WP naming principles. Ladefoged and Maddieson discuss "Eastern Arrernte" (not "Eastern Aranda") quite a bit. The only sources that don't say Arrernte are old (1907 and 1944, prior to stabilization of the current orthography).

, can you please move this back? Thx. Benwing (talk) 07:09, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Doubtful about claims made about the phonology
Hey ... first, thanks for renaming the page in response to my request last Dec.

I'm cc'ing you because you've done a lot of work on this page. The presented phonology of this language looks suspect to me; in general I'm skeptical of analyses that claim a whole lot of phonemes like prestopped nasals and prenasalized stops, when clusters could do just as well, and esp. when other Pama-Nyungan languages don't appear to have such phonemes. Similarly for the whole set of rounded phonemes combined with no /i/ or /u/. In general there's an unfortunate tendency among some descriptive linguists to postulate unusual phonemes to make the language they're working on seem more interesting and exotic.

In fact the JIPA illustration of Central Arrernte has no rounded phonemes and no prenasalized stops and a more normal four-vowel system (/a ǝ i u/), although it does have prestopped nasals (which I'm still skeptical about). Central Arrernte apparently has clusters of various sorts even beyond homorganic nasal-stop combinations (e.g. clusters with laterals and non-homorganic nasals). The presented phonology is for Eastern Arrernte but I can't believe there's that much difference between the two.

I know you didn't create the phonology section but it's something you might want to look at if you have time.

Benwing (talk) 23:58, 9 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Could very well be. Or it could just be that the phonologist has a different theoretical background.  I doubt I'll get to this any time soon (like this year), but if you can find a source that comments on these kinds of sequences in CA, we could probably make a comment here, even though technically speaking it would be OR.  — kwami (talk) 04:49, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Requested move 14 June 2019

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: moved. (non-admin closure) —  Newslinger  talk   10:56, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Upper Arrernte language → Arrernte language – All sources seem to refer to Arrernte (or Aranda). Laterthanyouthink (talk) 07:42, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

I've been working on this article and related sub-articles for some time now (and still a WIP), but I have not come across any justification for the prefix "Upper" on this group of languages. Can anyone point to where the "Upper" came from, or any reason not to change the name? (A further issue is that the detail in this article refers specifically to only one of the dialects - but I'll work on this later.) Laterthanyouthink (talk) 07:42, 14 June 2019 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Consonant table organization
Is there any particular reason the consonant table is, frankly speaking, a mess? It's not ordered from frontness to backness, for some reason, but from furthest to closest, as measured from the alveolar ridge, unlike the vast majority of phonological tables on Wikipedia pages. It is a poor way to present the data and the only reason I am not editing it outright is that it is, to my naïve eyes, so bad that I assume whoever did it had some sort of reason for choosing this organization instead of the regular one. Vampyricon (talk) 04:30, 2 January 2023 (UTC)