#kuninjku

[nathaliemdavid]

Aboriginal art exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art: "Yirawala: Artist Room" . . . #yirawala #aboriginalart #barkpainting #kangaroo #kuninjku #australianart #contemporaryart #museumofcontemporaryart #kangaroos #mythology #sydney #australia #visitaustralia #globetrotter #solotraveler #freelancelife #backpacker #ontheroad #travelaroundtheworld #travelbug #traveling #wanderer #instatravel #worldtravel (à Museum of Contemporary Art Australia) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bv0CWgyhRAu/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=x2ru4bdbgxap

[gekbarna]

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man-djarduk 'red bush apple'

Kuninjku songman and composer Balang Kevin Djimarr sings about the red bush apple man-djarduk (Syzygium suborbiculare) which is in fruit at this time of year (November, December) in Australia's north.

Here is an extract of the song text and translation:

Ngune-re Ngal-madjenge man-djarduk ngune-rikan

ngune-re Ngal-madjenge man-djarduk ngune-rikan

ngune-re Ngal-madjenge

na-ngaleh nuye

Na-kakkak nuye

ngune-re ngune-mang

ngunem-kan ngune-won

ngune-won ka-baye

 You go with your sister's daughter who is my mother's mother and go and get man-djarduk fruit (repeated)

"Whose is it?"

It is for your mother's mother's brother's and the one I call uncle

You both go and get it

Bring it here and give it to him

Give it to him to bite

The text contains examples of triple predicate or 'triangular' kin terms (ngal-madjenge, na-kakkak). These are intellectually demanding terms that in a single word encode three kinship relationships: I call you X, I call the referent Y, you call the referent Z. There are over 120 such terms in Bininj Gunwok and over a thousand three way situations for their use.

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[gekbarna]

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Bininj Gunwok tongue twister

Once a Kuninjku speaker (Australian language, western Arnhem Land) and I were looking at a rock painting of a sole fish called bembem in Kuninjku. It was up very high on a wall in a rock shelter on the Arnhem Land escarpment. It made me wonder how anyone could have managed to paint on a wall some 4 metres from the floor of the shelter. I had the following conversation with my uncle Nabulumo:

Me:

Baleh ka-yime bu birri-biduni birri-bimbuni bembem namekke?

How did they climb up and paint a picture of that sole fish.

Nabulumo:

Dabbarrabbolk birri-bidbohbidbom bembem birri-bimbohbimbom.

The ancestors used to climb up and paint pictures of the sole fish.

When he finished uttering this sentence we both laughed our heads off. It was a great Kuninjku language tongue twister.