Ha ha.

Resist, Hat, resist, and keep in mind that if "bell" and "belfry" are unrelated (which they are), and if "minimum" and "miniature" share no kinship (which they don't), perhaps only a nimble trick might yoke "niinbal" to "niimbal."

More to the point, I have never heard of this tongue Bardi! Though, I must say, it sounds epic.

Heh. Bardi -- and looking at that Ethnologue article, I see the primary spelling is BAADI. Goddammit, is this another of those Brit spellings where -r- is used pointlessly to extend a previous vowel??

Hi everyone,
That ethnologue spelling is as right as Bardi, ie they're both wrong. Phonemically, the language is /ba:d,i/ (long a, retroflex d). In the practical orthography, that comes out as Baardi. When the community orthography was codified in 1990 they decided to make the language name an exception to the spelling, because "Bardi" was on the store, clinic, school, community documents, etc etc. The ethnologue name comes from, I think, the Capell/Elkin/Worms/etc 1950s work, ultimately. They were ok on vowel length but had a lot of trouble with retroflection. I've pointed this out to Ethnologue, twice actually, but apparently getting the primary spelling changed is harder than the 3rd or 4th hardest thing you can think of.

I should have also mentioned re niinbal and niimbal: if I'm right, the first comes from a stem -ganbal, the second from -jambal. The ni- is the 3rd person possessive prefix. ijV and igV both get lenited and come out the same. You can see the stem in "their feet" - irrjambal, where there's no lenition.

Thanks for the elaboration! (It must be pretty cool to see your name attached to an Ethnologue article...)

"is this another of those Brit spellings where -r- is used pointlessly to extend a previous vowel"
No it's an AUSTRALIAN spelling where -r- is used pointlessly to extend a previous vowel.
Why I oughta...

but it's not pointlessly extending the previous vowel, it's non-pointlessly indicating retroflection on the following consonant.

Oops, I didn't read carefully enough and was just taking umbrage at LH's 'British' slur. But thinking about it, given that the retroflexion isn't something that most Balanda are going to manage, for non-Bardi speakers the r is going to (actually non-pointlessly) lengthen the vowel, which is probably better than nothing, dontcha reckon?

Sorry about the careless "Brit." But the point still stands: for those of us (the majority of English speakers) who actually pronounce r's, these spellings are actively misleading. They should be banned, I tell you! Wiped off the face of the earth!

yeah, and "Bardi", however it's said, is still a good deal better than some of the things I've heard my friends called by white people. Actually, your writing Balanda (

Poor language hat! think of the problems I have saying/spelling my name in the US - silent rs in both names. Maybe I should just go by my Yolngu name... but that's got a retroflex in it... barnmanarra, btw. I especially like it because the same word means "really hoopy frood" in Bardi. My yapa gave it to me, it means cabbage tree palm frond in Yan-nhangu.

Incidentally, I've heard the occasional Florider over the past few weeks...

To a Swede, writing -rd- for a retroflex -d- is a rule, to which there is no exception in most dialects. It even sometimes(?) always(?) works across a morpheme boundary -r|d-.