A
language formerly spoken in the tropical rainforest of the
Atherton Tableland, in
Queensland. It is noteworthy for two things. First is its precise date of
extinction, with the death in
1972 of the last speaker,
Arthur Bennett.
Second is the fact that its word for 'dog' was dog, but this was not a borrowing from English! It was a genuine native word, the regular development of the reconstructed Proto-Pama-Nyungan word *gudaga.
It belonged to the Southern Pama branch of Pama-Nyungan. A grammar and nearly 400 words were collected by the linguist Bob Dixon. Its numerals went up to three and were ngdádam, mbil, ardu.