Mantharta language
Mantharta is a partly extinct dialect cluster spoken in the southern Pilbara region of Western Australia. There were four varieties, which were distinct but largely mutually intelligible. The four were:
- Tharrgari, still spoken c. 2005
- Warriyangka, still spoken c. 1973
- Thiin, extinct by 2004
- Jiwarli, extinct by 2004
The name mantharta comes from the word for "man" in all four varieties., the Warriyangga dialect is one of 20 languages prioritised as part of the Priority Languages Support Project, being undertaken by First Languages Australia and funded by the Department of Communications and the Arts. The project aims to "identify and document critically-endangered languages — those languages for which little or no documentation exists, where no recordings have previously been made, but where there are living speakers".
