Gamilaraay days of the week

Yaama Maliyaa – hi friends.

It was suggested that Gamilaraay Yuwaalaraay develop words for days of the week. There was a poll on Facebook which had responses from a number of Gamilaraay people who have been working in language for some time. The majority favoured basing the words on celestial bodies and an ending related to ‘day’. Languages sometimes base a word for day on ‘sun’ (and, like English, the word for month on ‘moon’). ‘Sun’ is yaraay in Gamilaraay and yaay/yayaay in Yuwaalaraay, so the final element of day names is ‑(y)aay. Tracey Cameron, a Gamilaraay woman who has been working on the language for a number of years, suggested the set of names below which Gamilaraay Yuwaalaraay can use. The table also has information about the source word and some comments.

We could now work on words for months of the year. Uncle Ted Fields suggested names based on fruit or other features characteristic of that time. A doc with that information will be uploaded (relatively) soon. Comments about the words and process welcome.

A ps about ‘on x-day’. In Gamilaraay One the place/Locative suffix on y final words is given as -dha, e.g. walaay ‘camp’;walaay-dha ‘at the camp’. This is actually simplified Gamilaraay. Some y-final words have a different process: the y is deleted and then -dha added; e.g. yaraay ‘sun’, yaraa-dha ‘in the sun’. Since the final part of day names comes from ‘sun’, it would be consistent to use that pattern, as set out below.

John Giacon.