Damin

Spoken in

(Written often Damin ) Demiin was a ceremonial language which was (pronounced Leerdil ) by the men of Lardil - spoken and Yangkaal tribe, who had reached the second level of initiation. Both tribes inhabiting islands in the Gulf of Carpentaria; the Leerdil live on Mornington Iceland, the largest island of the Wellesley Group, and the Yangkaal on Forsyth Island. Their languages ​​belong to the same family, the Tankic language family ( tanka means person in all Tangkic languages). Compared to the other members of this language family, Leerdil is the one of the languages ​​has evolved away most of the others, while the other members of this family are able to communicate among themselves and with Yankgaal. The Leerdil word Demiin can be translated as to be silent.

Ceremonies

The Leerdil know two initiation ceremonies for men, on the one hand Luruku ceremony, which is connected with circumcision and the Warama ceremony, which is connected to Subinzision. There are no ceremonies for women, although women play a major role in both ceremonies, particularly in the Luruku ceremony.

It comes sometimes to the assertion that Demiin was a secret language, but this is misleading in that there was no attempt to hide the use of Demiin before the uninitiated members of the Leerdil. On the other hand, Demiin was taught only during the Warama ceremonies and therefore under complete exclusion of the non -initiated members. It is also at least one tribal elder known who possessed excellent knowledge of Demiin, although he had not attended Warama ceremonies. It seems, however, have been an isolated case.

Demiin lexemes were divided into different semantic fields. The learning process took place (ideally) take place in a single session and was that the candidates each individual lexemes were called out. Every time a new lexeme was introduced was a second speaker Leerdil the equivalent known. Usually however, several meetings were necessary until one candidate dominated the necessary basics to use Demiin in the public. At least one speaker claimed that he had learned Demiin in a single session, on the other side are two Warama elders known who admitted to not have sufficient Demiin knowledge.

The candidates who had once learned successfully Demiin were called Demiinkurlda ( Demiin - owner). They used the language, especially in the ritual context, but also in everyday life, in group meetings, in the spread of gossip and the like.

Grammatical structure

Demiin is mainly known that it is the only language outside of Africa, occur in the clicking sounds.

With approximately 150 lexemes Demiin had a much more limited vocabulary than the normal Leerdil. Each Demiin word corresponded several Leerdil words. Demiin for example, had only two personal pronouns, namely ( n! a " I " and n! U " not me " ), compared to the 19 personal pronouns of Leerdil. In addition Demiin used, with a few exceptions, all grammatical affixes of Leerdil. Demiin used as a prefix antonymisches kuri ( eg tjitjuu "small", kuritjitjuu " not small " = " big "). The Demiin the Leerdil and Yangkaal grammatically nearly identical, except for some small differences in the Suffixbildung.

Phonetics

Demiin had three of the four Leerdil - vowels, namely [ a], [a ː ], [i ], [i ː ], [ u] and [u ː ] in word stems, and a fourth vowel [ ə ] or [ ə ː ] in the suffixes.

Consonants of Demiin

It had the same egressiven constants as the normal Leerdil, but this has been extended to four additional air flow mechanisms:

• Velarisch ingressive: Nasal clicks
• Glottalisch egressive: a velar Ejektiv,
• Pulmonisch ingressive: lateral fricative,

The following table shows the Demiin consonants in the practical orthography and IPA represents:

The origin of Demiin

The origin of Demiin is unclear. According to the Leerdil and Yangkaal Demiin was created by a mythological figure in the dream time, while linguists such as K. Hale assume that the language was invented by tribal elders. N. Evans and others, even suspect, after they have studied the myths of both strains that were the tribal elders of the Yangkaal that Demiin invented and this passed on to the Leerdil and not vice versa.

Current Situation

The cultural traditions of the Leerdil and Yangkaal are in decline for several decades and the languages ​​of both groups are nearly extinct. The last Warama ceremony was held in the 1950s; therefore Demiin is now used by either the Leerdil nor by the Yangkaal. Nevertheless, began some time ago a revival of cultural traditions, and recently a Luruku ceremony was committed. It remains to be seen whether the Warama ceremony is revived.