Ngarluman

The Ngarluma are an Indigenous Australian people of the western Pilbara, coastal dwellers whose country takes in the coast around Roebourne and Karratha on the north-western shore. Their language forms a mutually intelligible dialect continuum with Kariyarra within the Ngayarda branch of the Pama-Nyungan family, although speakers treat the two as distinct languages marking separate peoples.

When European mariners first surveyed this coast in 1818, Ngarluma speakers were observed keeping the full grammar for use among themselves while using a simplified form with strangers, and a pidginized Ngarluma later served as a contact language along the coast.