The Wandjira were an indigenous Australian people of the Northern Territory.
Their Wanyjirra language, now moribund, is one of the Ngumbin languages. Tasaku Tsunoda made some early recordings of their speech, and these, together with fieldwork materials she gathered as a postgraduate student of Nick Evans, were the basis of a full descriptive published by Chikako Senge in 2015. Many Wandkora also spoke the closely related Standard Eastern Gurindji and conversations between these groups would often involve code-switching.
Tindale's estimate of Wandjira lands has them occupying roughly 5300mi2, stretching northwards from the Inverway Station to the margins of the plateau situated close to Mount Rose; Their western reaches ran as far as Kulungulan on the border shared with Western Australia. Eastwards they were present as far as approximately Mount Farquharson, while their southern extension ran into hard sandstone country. They were present also at Munbu on the upper Negri River.
The surviving remnants of the Wandjira now live mainly around Inverway Station, and also Birrindudu Station on the edge of the Tanami Desert.
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |
| Nasal | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |
| Lateral | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||
| Rhotic | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | ||||
| Glide | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ |
| Close | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open | pronounced as /ink/ a: |
Manyjirra possesses an ergative-absolutive alignment. There are 12 major case suffixes: ergative, absolutive, dative, locative, allative, purposive, ablative, elative, comitative, originative, proprietive, and privative. Cases can co-occur in the same noun.