Boonwurrung language


Boonwurrung is an indigenous Australian language traditionally spoken by the Boonwurrung people of the Kulin Nation of Central Victoria prior to European settlement. The last remaining traditional native speakers died in the early 20th century, however there is an active revival movement underway in the Boonwurrung community.

Geographic distribution

Boonwurrung was spoken by six clans along the coast from the Werribee River, across the Mornington Peninsula, Western Port Bay to Wilsons Promontory.

Related languages

Boonwurrung is closely related to the Woiwurrung language, with which it shares over 90% of its vocabulary, and to a lesser degree with Taungurong spoken north of the Great Dividing Range in the area of the Goulburn River. Woiwurrung, Taungurong and Boonwurrung have been considered by linguists to be dialects of a single Central Victorian language, whose range stretched from almost Echuca in the north, to Wilsons Promontory in the south.
R. Brough Smyth wrote in 1878 that "The dialects of the Wooeewoorong or Wawoorong tribe and the Boonoorong tribe are the same. Twenty-three words out of thirty are, making allowances for differences of spelling and pronunciation, identical; five have evidently the same roots, and only two are widely different".

Placenames derived from Bunwurrung language terms