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Five Pieces of Information for the Tiwi Language Wikipedia Article
1) Language History

Tiwi, a language that is predominantly spoken in the Tiwi Islands, has long been regarded as a language isolate due to its large scale of linguistic differences from other languages in the mainland Australia regions. However, recent research using historical linguistic techniques suggests that the Tiwi language might be under the Gunwinyguan family (a language family that consists of languages primarily spoken in North Central Australia).

2) Name Variations

There are a number of name variations for the Tiwi language. Some of the variations were established by local Australian residents who lived in geographical regions and territories with close proximity with the Tiwi speakers, or have had close interactions with them for research work purposes. Other name variations of the language were coined by neighboring indigenous communities.


 * Tunuvivi

Tunuvivi was the initial term coined by the Indigenous members of the Melville and Bathurst islands. It is the original name for the Tiwi language itself, and has the meaning of “people” or “we the only people”. Meanwhile, the widely recognized name, Tiwi, was originally established by an anthropologist C.W.M. Hart in 1930 in order to have a discernible tribal name that can represent the Melville and Bathurst indigenous members. The term Tiwi was later accepted by the Melville and Bathurst islanders, and they have subsequently incorporated this name as a constituting part of their social identities.


 * Wongak

This name variation, "Wongak", was used by the Iwaidja community to describe the Tiwi language. The phonetic realization ['Wonga:k] is also another variation that is termed by the Iwaidja community members themselves.


 * Nimara

The term “Nimara” was established by an Australian writer and author named William Edward Harney, who had adopted the pen name of "Bill Harney" at the time. This name variation has the meaning of “to talk”, or “language”.


 * Woranguwe/Worunguwe

The name “Woranguwe” (or Worunguwe) was used by the Iwaidja community to specifically refer to the indigenous members of the Melville Islands. This name is a variation existing in the Iwaidja language.

3) Modern Tiwi and Traditional Tiwi

The advent of European settlements in the Tiwi islands has increased the amount of contact between Tiwi speakers and the English language. As a result, this led to the emergence of the Modern Tiwi dialect, which contains many loan words, verbs and nouns borrowed from the English language. In more informal speech acts and conversations, children and younger generation would use loan words that are similar to English pronunciations on a phonological level. They also used Modern Tiwi in different social domains, including classrooms, social institutions, social media, while their instances of speaking the Traditional Tiwi dialect are relatively limited to their interactions with older members such as the elderly and their parents.

Another linguistic difference that sets Traditional and Modern Tiwi apart is the presence of certain morphological elements. Modern Tiwi has a less complex morphological structure that often omits object prefixes, while they are maintained in the traditional dialect.

The exact and official number of Traditional Tiwi speakers remains uncertain. In the Language Activity Survey, a respondent of the survey responded that the traditional version of the Tiwi language had only up to 35 speakers, in which none of them can speak the language fully. There were approximately five speakers aged 60 and above who could speak the traditional version partially, and around 10 speakers who can speak only some words and sentences in each of the age groups of 20 to 39, 40 to 59, as well as 60 and above.

4) Language Documentation

A text excerpt of the Tiwi language was published in 1974 by C. R. Osborne, under the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies in Canberra, Australia. The text contains two parts of a Tiwi traditional ceremony, titled "The First Funeral Dance". In the first part, it describes a dancing ritual that is initiated and performed by two Tiwi man — Alikampwaɹni, and his brother-in-law T̪aŋkənaŋki, where other members on the islands would perform the same dance after their deaths. The second part depicts the story of Purukupaɹli, a Tiwi man who performs a dancing ceremony to express bereavement and to mourn the death of his own son. The ceremony was subsequently joined by Purukupaɹli's wives Waijai and Pamatikimi.

The documentation contains the original texts in the Tiwi language, with translations available in English. In addition, the text also contains textual and explanatory notes that detail the lexical definitions for specific Tiwi terms, background information of items in the Tiwi culture, and the non-verbal gestures that were also performed as a part of the funeral dancing ceremonies.

5) Ethnomedicine in the Tiwi Community

The concept of ethnomedicine in the Tiwi community is built upon their existing social practices in utilization of nature's resources, and their cultural beliefs of nature's intricate connections with an individual's body in itself. The Tiwi members believed that the foods they hunt and gather in nature helps maintain their physical well-being. Tiwi men and women participated in a relatively equal division of labor in their hunting-gathering efforts, where they would hunt for "bush foods" such as fish, turtle eggs, mussels, yams, and mangrove worms. One of the theories in Tiwi medicine centers around the concept of “tarni”, which is considered by Tiwi speakers as the state of general “sickness”. The term "tarni” was derived from Tiwi’s particular cultural belief of the sharp, pointed tip of yams, as they believed that these yams carried the “tarni” sickness. They believed that if pregnant women ate them, their sharp pointed tips would pierce the womb, which would release the sickness and kill the baby.

The Tiwi community also uses plants for remedies and treatments for the common ailments that their members experience. For example, the pandanus is believed to be an ideal treatment for diarrhea, where the leaves are cut and the middle part is chewed and swallowed. If the leaves are cut from the center of the plant, and are placed on the patient’s forehead for around two to three days, it is believed that this procedure can help alleviate headaches.