14 Facts About Kaurna language

The Kaurna peoples are made up of various tribal clan groups, each with their own parnkarra district of land and local dialect.

Kaurna language ceased to be spoken on an everyday basis in the 19th century and the last known native speaker, Ivaritji, died in 1929.

The term "Kaurna language" was first recorded by Missionary Surgeon Dr William Wyatt for "Encounter Bay Bob's Tribe".

French explorer Joseph Paul Gaimard recorded the first wordlist of the Kaurna language, containing 168 words, after calling in at the Gulf St Vincent en route to Western Australia in 1826, before the colony of South Australia had been established.

Williams created a list of 377 Kaurna language words, published in the Southern Australian on 15 May 1839 and republished in The South Australian Colonist on 14 July 1840.

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Kaurna language's work entitled A vocabulary of the language of the Aborigines of the Adelaide district, and other friendly tribes, of the Province of South Australia was self-published in 1839, to be sold in London as well as Adelaide.

Kaurna had not been spoken as a native language since the Kaurna people had been pushed out of their traditional lands since the colonisation of South Australia in the 19th century, with the population in decline due to various factors.

In 2021, a printed Kaurna language dictionary was published, as well as a Ngarrindjeri one.

Efforts to reintroduce Kaurna language names, beginning in 1980 with the naming of Warriappendi School, in 1980 by Auntie Leila Rankine, have been made within the public domain.

Between 1980 and 2012, around 1000 entities were assigned Kaurna language names, including people, pets, organisations, buildings, parks, walking trails, an allele, brand names, and the Kari Munaintya tram and Tindo solar bus.

Annual Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art takes its name from the Kaurna language word meaning "to rise, come forth, spring up or appear".

Kaurna language has three different vowels with contrastive long and short lengths, and three diphthongs.

Historically, Kaurna has had ?e? and ?o? used varyingly in older versions of its orthography, but these are not reflected in the phonology of the language.

Kaurna language uses a range of suffixed case markers to convey information including subjects, objects, spacio-temporal state and other such information.