The Bunganditj (Buwandik) language of
the Mount Gambier Region
By Barry Blake
A single language appears
to have been spoken in a triangle that stretched from somewhere
north of Lacepede Bay on the coast of South Australia across
to Bordertown on the Victorian border and south to the coast
where the mouth of the Glenelg in far western Victoria formed
the south-eastern corner. A consideration of various references
indicates clearly that the territory of the Buwandik, alternatively
Bunganditj, extended to the mouth of the Glenelg and further
north it extended to Coleraine and perhaps Balmoral.
Practically all our data comes from old sources. There are
twelve sources of vocabulary for the language and two direct
sources of grammatical information on the dialect spoken by
the Booandik or Bunganditj. One source for the grammar is
a sketch of three pages by D.S. Stewart; the other is a slightly
longer sketch by R.H. Mathews, which exists in two forms,
manuscript and published. Some further grammatical information
can be obtained from the 'Mount Gambier' sentences in William
Thomas' Dialogues in six dialects (details below), and a few
further scraps can be gleaned from the word lists, specially
from the one by Stewart which accompanies his grammatical
sketch.
Published: 2003
PL 549: ISBN 0 85883 495 2
Pages: ix + 225
Prices: Australia A$39.60 (inc. GST), Overseas
A$36.00
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