Ngunnawal/Ngunawal and Gundungurra are Australian Aboriginal languages, and the traditional languages of the Ngunnawal and Gandangarra. Ngunnawal and Gundungurra are very closely related and the two were most likely highly mutually intelligible. As such they can be considered dialects of a single unnamed language, but this is the technical linguistic usage of these terms and Ngunnawal and Gundungurra peoples prefer to describe their individual varieties as separate languages in their own right.

Classification

Gundungurra/Ngunawal is generally classified to fall within the tentative (and perhaps geographic) Yuin–Kuric group of the Pama–Nyungan family.

Location

The traditional country of the Ngunnawal people is generally thought to have extended east near Goulburn, North to Boorowa, south through Canberra, perhaps even to Queanbeyan, and extending west to around the Goodradigbee River.

Phonology

Current status

The Ngunnawal community has for some years been engaged in work to revive the language with the aim being to bring it back into daily use within the community. They have been working with AIATSIS linguists to assist them with this work, and with identifying historical records that can be used for this work.

Ngunawal words

More words are compiled online in The Wiradyuri and Other Languages of New South Wales, an article by Robert H. Mathews first published in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute in 1904.