Djirbalgan

Djirbalgan belongs among the Dyirbal-speaking Aboriginal peoples of northern Queensland. Dyirbal-speaking groups live on the upper Murray River of the Atherton Tableland, within a landscape of highland forests and rivers that also connects toward the wet tropical coast. The name Dyirbal is used both for one group, described as the Tully River people, and for a set of related contiguous peoples including the Yidinji, Ngadyan, Mamu, Girramay, Wargamay, Waruŋu and Mbabaɽam. Djirbalgan’s identity therefore sits within a closely connected linguistic and social landscape rather than an isolated upland community.

Dyirbal is an ergative Pama–Nyungan language with flexible word order. Its nouns are divided into four classes: masculine, feminine, edible non-flesh foods, and neuter. Numerous markers can specify a noun’s location, distance or direction, giving speech great precision about the surrounding world. A special avoidance register called Dyalŋuy, or Jalnguy, was traditionally used when certain in-laws were present. Estimates place individual dialect groups at about 500 people, with some 5,000 Dyirbal-speaking people in all before colonization; shooting, disease and dispossession reduced numbers drastically within five decades.