Marri Ngarr

also called:	Moil, Ngangikadre, Yaghanin
dialects with:	Magati Ke
various spellings:
	Marengar, Marenggar, Maringa, Maringar, Mari'ngar, Maringarr, Marri Ngarr, Marringarr, Merringar, Moyle, Muringa, Muringar, Murrinnga

Western Daly Grouping   

• Western Daly
  • Marramaninjsji
  • Emmi
    Menthe
    Marranunggu
  • Marri Ngarr
    Magati Ke
  • Marrithiyel
    Marri Tjevin
    Marri Ammu
    Marri Dan

While there are stories of some disruption to its clan territories in the pre-contact area, Marri Ngarr’s traditional country is considered to extend along the middle reaches of the Moyle River and its surrounding wetlands, predominantly to the south of the Moyle, but with a small tract of land on the northern side. Much of this country is subject to wet season inundation, with the affected Marri Ngarr groups having residential and foraging rights in the higher ground of neighbouring groups during such times.

Marri Ngarr’s sister dialect, Magati Ke, occupies adjacent territory down river, to the south of the mouth of the Moyle. To the north are the Brinkin dialects, Marri Tjevin, Marri Dan, and Marrithiyel, which, like Marri Ngarr, belong to the Western Daly family. The Southern Daly languages are then to the south, with Murrinhpatha on the south-west, and the Ngan’gi Tyemerri dialects to the south-east.

Marri Ngarr people are to be found across the southern part of the Daly region, being represented at Wadeye, Peppimenarti and Nauiyu Nambiyu. However, the bulk of the community is located at Wadeye and its outstations, including Nama, Palumpa and Wudapuli.

There are now only a small number of fluent speakers of Marri Ngarr remaining – most of them living in Wadeye and all elderly. Younger Marri Ngarr people have largely shifted to Murrinhpatha, although some have some knowledge of Marri Ngarr as well. There has been little linguistic documentation of the language. Tryon’s (1974) brief overview is the only published grammatical account, while Nambatu et al’s (2009) documentation of plant and animal names provides extensive lexical material. Ian Green’s tapes and field notes, as itemised on this site, are a substantial source of further information, given that there are only limited prospects for further field work on the language. Preston’s (2012) honours thesis (University of Melbourne) draws on this material, and a fuller PhD-length study of Marri Ngarr, also at Melbourne University, is under way. A Learner’s guide to Marri Ngarr and Magati Ke by Lysbeth Ford has been produced by Batchelor College but seems to be currently unavailable (http://eprints.batchelor.edu.au/147/).

Ian Green’s corpus of Marri Ngarr consists of 36 hours of recordings and mostly includes lexical, grammatical and phonological elicitation. The recordings were made with the following speakers:

• Ngarul Jimmy Nambatu
• John Nama
• Pius Lakan Tchinburur