Kararaya yawarra — words of the day: kararru ya mathari

Today we look at two Diyari words kararru and mathari, which are culturally very important. (Notice that Diyari has three ‘r-sounds’ written in the spelling system as r, r and rr, and they should all be pronounced differently in these words. You can listen to them in the podcast linked below.)

Dieri society is divided int two halves (called ‘moieties’, in technical terminology) which are inherited from a person’s mother — a kararru woman will have kararru children (male and female) while a mathari woman will have mathari children (male and female). Traditionally, kararru could only marry mathari, so husbands and wives must belong to the opposite group (there were other marriage preferences but the general rule is that your husband or wife cannot be in the same group as you). Notice that children will share the same group as their kadnhini ‘nanna, mother’s mother’ and kaka ‘uncle, mother’s brother’, and be different from both their ngapiri ‘father’ and other uncles, aunts, and grandparents. The word mathari has another use in Diyari, which we will discuss in the next blog post.

Every Dieri person has a mardu (which literally means ‘taste’) that is a plant, animal or natural feature that they have a special relationship with (and which they could not eat, traditionally). This also comes from a person’s mother and the list of mardu differs depending on whether you are mathari or kararru, as shown in the following table:

Mathari mardu		Kararru mardu
karrawara	eaglehawk	kawalka	crow
warrukathi	emu	purralku	brolga
malurra	cormorant	tyukurru	kangaroo
kinthala	dog	kadnungka	type of wallaby
yikawarra	native cat	karapana	marsupial mouse
mayarru	marsupial rat	kukula	stick nest rat
puntha	marsupial mouse	wama	carpet snake
kapirri	goanna	thidnamara	frog
kilapara	black bream fish	kanangara	seed of manyura
markara	yellow belly fish	malka	mulga tree (seed)
pardi	type of grub	kuntyirri	type of bush
manyura	type of seed	karku	red ochre
pityirri	pitchere tobacco	thalara	rain

Traditionally, to identify someone, rather than asking for their name, we would typically ask them:

minha mardu yini?

What is your mardu?

From the answer, you can work out whether that person is mathari or kararru. Anyone who belongs to the same mardu as me is considered close, and can be called palku ngakarni, literally ‘my body’.

If you memorise the words for mardu you will add to your vocabulary in Diyari and, hopefully, understand the culture better.

For the podcast episode of this blog post click here.

Kararaya yawarra — word of the day: widlhapina

Today we look at the Diyari word widlhapina (also pronounced wilhapina), which means ‘old woman’, and other related words for female people. There are some important cultural aspects related to these terms, and they are used in different ways from English terms. The discussion is based on the Reuther’s Diari dictionary (see here) and our own work with Diyari speakers.

In Diyari, the word widlhapina (or wilhapina) is used to refer to an ‘old woman’, generally one whose children have grown up. It is a positive term of respect and indicates that a person has lots of knowledge and life experience. The corresponding term for men is pinarru ‘old man’.

The following are the Diyari words used to refer to the various life stages of females:

• thitharri ‘new-born baby’, before he or she has been given a name;
• kupa ‘child’, after naming and up to about 10 years old. This term can be used for both girls and boys;
• mankarra ‘girl’, a female child;
• mankarra mulurru ‘girl who is not old enough yet to be married’. Traditionally, this would be up to 15 years old;
• karluka ‘young woman’ who has not yet given birth to a child;
• widlha (also pronounced wilha) ‘woman’ who has given birth to a child;
• widlhapina ‘old woman’.

Note that the general term karna ‘Aboriginal person’ can be used for females and males at any stage of life. For non-Aboriginal people we say walpala, which comes from English ‘white fella’.

The podcast episode of this blog post is here.

Ngapa ngakayi kudnarranhi

Today’s post is about a song composed by Dieri karna Chris E. Dodd, who writes and sings country and western music. Chris won an award at the Tamworth Country Music Festival in 2011 for a song called ‘Spinifex Man‘ and has released an album called Back to Silverton.

Another song by Chris is called ‘The Cooper’s Coming Down’ and it celebrates Dieri country and the times when rain in western Queensland results months later in floodwaters eventually coming down south, including along Cooper Creek (called kudnarri in Diyari language). The result is ngapa ngakayi kudnarranhi which means ‘water is flowing in the Cooper’. In Diyari ngapa means ‘water’, ngakayi means ‘is flowing’ (made up of the root ngaka ‘to flow’ and the ending –yi ‘is happening now, present tense’, and kudnarranhi means ‘in the Cooper’ (kudnarri means ‘Cooper Creek’ and –nhi is an ending which means ‘in, on’ — notice that the final i of kudnarri changes to a when we add an ending. This applies to all words ending in i that have three syllables.)

At a Diyari language workshop in Adelaide, South Australia, held on Saturday 2nd February 2013 and Sunday 3rd February the Dieri elders present, Greg Wilson, and I together created a song in Diyari that was inspired by the chorus of Chris’ song about the Cooper. This was a rather difficult task as we had the melody that Chris had composed (and played on a borrowed guitar for us), but we needed to come up with Diyari words which made sense, rhymed, and fit the melody. The result is not an exact translation but here is how the chorus turned out:

ngapa-ngapa pirna ngariyi
ngarrimatha wakarayi
thalara pirna kurdayi
ngayanarni mithanhi
daku pirna thana
matya ngayana pankiyilha
ngapa pirna ngakayi
parru pirna pakarna

Here is what it means in English:

Lots of water is coming down
A flood is coming
Lots of rain is falling
In our country
There are big sandhills
So we are happy now
Lots of water is flowing
And big fish (are coming) too

There is plenty of interesting Diyari grammar in the song, like the endings –yi ‘happening now’ (ngari-yi ‘is coming down’, kurda-yi ‘is raining’, panki-yi ‘is happy’) and -nhi ‘in, at, on’ (mitha-nhi ‘in the country’) that we mentioned above. We also saw the ending rni which is used to indicate ‘possession, belonging to’, as in ngayana-rni mitha ‘our country’.

After a bit of practice, on Sunday morning everyone at the workshop joined together to sing this Diyari song, which you can listen to over on the Dieri Yawarra podcast.

Ngandriya dityi

Sunday 14th May 2023 is Mother’s Day in Australia, and some other parts of the world. For anyone who would like to wish happiness to their female relatives in Diyari on this day, here are a few possible expressions to use. Note that in pre-contact times there was no concept of Mother’s Day, so these are recent developments.

The term ngandriya dityi means ‘mother’s day, day of mothers’ and is made up of ngandri ‘mother, mother’s sister’, the ending -ya meaning ‘of, belonging to’, and dityi ‘day’. To express ‘Happy Mother’s Day’ we could say:

Ngandriya Dityi Pankiyamayi

Here we have added the word pankiyamayi which is made up of the root panki ‘to be happy, to be glad’, and the endings -ya ‘order’ and -mayi ’emphasis’, so the whole expression means ‘be happy!’. Be careful to pronounce nk in the middle of panki as an n sound followed by a k sound. Do not confuse this with pangki (with an ng sound plus k sound) because this means ‘side, flank’ in Diyari. English speakers often confuse these two separate words: panki and pangki.

Here are some other words for female relatives who are mothers, or could be mothers, that you can also use (remember that ngandri is also used for ‘aunty, mother’s sister’, and Dieri people distinguish relatives in different ways than we do in English):

• papa ‘aunty, father’s sister’ (also ‘mother’s brother’s wife’, and ‘sister’s son’s wife’)
• kadnhini ‘granny, mother’s mother’
• kami ‘granny, father’s mother’
• payara ‘mother-in-law’
• tharu ‘daughter-in-law, son’s wife’
• kaku ‘older sister’
• ngathata ‘younger sister’
• puyurru ‘straight cousin’ (mother’s sister’s child, father’s brother’s child)
• kami ‘cross-cousin’ (mother’s brother’s child, father’s sister’s child)
• ngathamurra ‘daughter’ (father speaking)
• ngathani ‘daughter’ (mother speaking)

You can listen to a podcast of this material that includes pronunciation of all the Diyari words.

Let’s hope everyone has a Happy Mother’s Day on Sunday.

Muku pirna

An article (available for free download here) that was published in June 2020 in the leading international scientific journal Nature contains words in the Diyari (Dieri) language, namely muku pirna meaning ‘big bones’, from muku ‘bone, bones’ and pirna ‘big’. Actually, the expression muku pirna meaning ‘big bones’ also occurs in the Malyangapa language that was traditionally spoken in north-east South Australia and far western New South Wales.

The six scientist authors report that the bones and teeth of a new species of ancient extinct large animal (related to the giant marsupials Diprotodon and Thylacoleo, whose modern relatives are wombats and koalas) were discovered in the Namba Formation of South Australia, dating from the late Oligocene period (26–25 million years ago). The location where the bones were found is near Lake Pinpa, south-east of Lake Frome in Malyangapa country.

Size estimates based on the bones and teeth suggest that the muku pirna was between 143 and 171 kg, suggesting that it was around 5 times larger than living wombats — not something you would like to wrap your bullbar around!

Diyari and Malyangapa have now entered scientists’ vocabularies, as the new species is officially called Mukupirna nambensis and is part of a new family called Mukupirnidae. The scientists note in their article that the “name is from the words muku (“bones”) and pirna (“big”) in the Dieri (Diyari) language traditionally spoken in the area around Lake Eyre and refers to the large size of the animal”. Unfortunately, they don’t mention the Malyangapa connection.

Many thanks to David Nash for letting us know about this article and its connections to Diyari (Dieri).