Karri-borlbme Kun-wok

yawurrinj

yawurrinj

Listen Yi-biddjuyme (Click play)

English Translation
(Kun-balandaken)
young man/men
Pronunciation
(Bale ka-yime karri-ngeybun?)

jawʊrɪɲ (listen to the audio file at:
http://words.bininjgunwok.org.au/words/yawurrinj

Here are the individual sounds y-a-w-u-rr-i-nj. The only two sounds difficult for anglophones are the tapped 'r' sound and the final palatal nasal sound at the end, a bit like 'ny'. To make this sound finish the word by having your tongue flat up against the top of your mouth.

Morphology
(Karri-wokdjobdjobke)

The first syllable is yaw 'child', the rest is not meaningful on its own.

Notes
(Njalenjale)

This word can be either singular or plural. However, to really stress plurality, 'lots of young men', you can reduplicate the word to get yawuhyawurrinj (where the 'h' is a glottal stop)— YA-wuh-YA-wurrinj.

Usage
(Bale kabirri-yime?)

You can address a group of young men by this term:

Yawurrinj, baleh ngurri-re?
Where are you guys going?

Yawurrinj ma!
OK you young guys, do it!

You can also use the stative past verb -ni on the end to do things like this:

Bu nga-yawurrinjni, nga-djangkani.
When I was a young man, I used to go hunting.

Date
(Balekeno)
11 Sep 2015