Lower Arrernte language

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Lower Aranda
Region Australia
Native speakers
1 (2007)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 axl
Glottolog lowe1436[2]

Lower Arrernte (Lower Aranda), also known as Lower Southern Arrernte (or Aranda), is the most distinct of several varieties of the Arrernte language. Lower Arrernte is spoken in the Finke River area, close to Alice Springs.

Lower Arrernte is a dying language. Until recently only one person was known to speak it fluently enough to hold a conversation: Brownie Doolan Perrurle. Brownie, who didn't know his exact age but was most likely in his early nineties died in 2011. He learned the language from his mother and grandmother.[1]

Gavan Breen, an Australian linguist, has been able to compile a dictionary of Lower Arrernte comprising about a thousand words by recording talks he had with Doolan.


  1. ^ a b Simon Kearney, Finke. Another language faces sunset in dead centre. The Australian, September 20, 2007
  2. ^ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Lower Southern Aranda". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. 
  3. ^ Lower Aranda at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies