Darumbal is a language of Queensland in Australia declared extinct. It was spoken in the Rockhamptonarea of Queensland. Dialects were Kuinmabara, Karunbara, Rakiwara, Wapabura. It is classified with Bayali as a Kingkel language, but the two are not close, with a low 21% shared vocabulary. Indeed, Angela Terrill states that "there is no evidence on which to base a claim of a low-level genetic group including Dharumbal with any other language." .
Name
Spelling and Pronunciation
There is some variation in the naming of the language community. Walter RothspellsTa-rum-bal and Taroombal while Norman TindalerecordsDharumbal and cites the alternatives Tarumbul, Tarambol, Tarmbal and Charumbul. Nils Holmer, who undertook the first modernfield study of the language uses Darumbal, as does the . However, Holmer also uses ⟨D⟩ to indicate an interdental stop, and indeed, he alphabetises Darumbal along with other words beginning with an interdental stop, making his Darumbal equivalent in pronunciation to Dharumbal. From the available material then, Angela Terrill justifiably uses Dharumbal.
Dharumbal possesses a rare distinction between voiced and voiceless stops, which seems to be maintained intervocalically, but not in other environments, where voicing seems to be in free variation. This observation, posited by Holmer and maintained by Terrill, is supported by the consistency to which older authors transcribed certain words; intervocalically, there is greater consistency in the use of a certain symbol, while in other environments, there is more variation. Other Pama-Nyungan languages with a voicing distinction of stops include Thangatti, Marrgany-Gunya, Wangkumara, and Diyari.
Laminals
s are often realised interdentally, but may also be realised palatally in any position, except for the laminal nasal, which must be realised palatally in word-final position.
From the existing material, Terrill concludes that there were likely three phonemically distinct rhotic consonants: a retroflex continuant, and two trills, distinguished by voicing. The two trills only appear intervocalically and never word-initially. The minimal pairs given by Stephen Wurm are:
wuru "son"
wurhu "nose"
gurru "fly"
Additional minimal pairs were observed by Holmer.
Vowel inventory
i
u
a
Dharumbal has three phonemic vowels. Terrill finds no evidence for contrastive vowel length. Roth used various diacritics in his transcriptions, but no explanation for their function was provided.
