Uw Oykangand is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken in southern Cape York Peninsula, far north Queensland. The traditional land of the Uw Oykangand clans is concentrated around the Alice and Crosbie Rivers and further west around the Mitchell River into the Gulf Country.

Today Uw Oykangand speakers live in Kowanyama, an Aboriginal community in the Gulf country on the Mitchell River. Uw Oykangand people at Kowanyama are establishing a permanent outstation on traditional land at Oriners Station. They continue to make extensive use of the land for camping and subsistence hunting, fishing and gathering edible plant food stuffs. They also harvest the land for traditional industry.

The Aboriginal languages of Cape York Peninsula are all closely related, belonging to the Paman sub-group of the widespread Pama-Nyungan family. Uw Oykangand has a sister dialect, Uw Olkola. They are very similar and mutually intelligible, with 97% cognacy in core vocabulary. Uw Olkola and Uw Oykangand are clearly distinct from the neighbouring languages they appear to be most closely related to: Kuuk Thaayorre, Koko Bera, Yirr Yorront, Yirrk Thangedl, and Ogh Unyjan.

Phonology

In the following tables of the Uw Oykangand sound system, symbols in boldface give the practical orthography. Phonetic values in IPA are shown in [square brackets]. The International Phonetic Alphabet. ... Phonetic (pho-NET-ic) is a nationwide voicemail-to-text messaging service available for most digital mobile phones in which a subscriber is provided a custom voice mailbox for the purpose of receiving all incoming voice messages as actual transcribed text for reading via short messaging (also known as SMS... Jump to: navigation, search Unicode is an international standard whose goal is to provide the means by which text of all forms and languages can be encoded for use by computers. ... The three-letter acronym IPA can stand for any of the following (listed in alphabetical order): Independent Pilots Association India Pale Ale Institute of Public Affairs Institute for Propaganda Analysis International Phonetic Alphabet. ...

Vowels

Uw Oykangand has a standard five-vowel system. A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. ... A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... An open vowel is a vowel sound of a type used in most spoken languages. ...

Consonants

As shown in the chart, Uw Oykangand distinguishes five positions of articulation, and has oral and nasal stops at each position. The oral stops have a phonemic voice distinction. In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. ... A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. ... In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. ... Laterals are L-like consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue, while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both sides of the tongue. ... Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants. ... In spoken language, a phoneme is a basic, theoretical unit of sound that can distinguish words (i. ... Phoneticians define phonation as use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. ...

Uw Oykangand, like most Australian languages, has no fricative consonants. Jump to: navigation, search Fricatives (or spirants) are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. ...

The consonant listed in the table as a retroflex flap is actually an unusual consonant, possibly unique to Warlpiri. The tongue-tip begins in retroflex position, but then moves forward rapidly, flapping against the alveolar ridge.