Bardi (also Baardi, Baard) is an endangered Australian Aboriginal language in the Nyulnyulan family, mutually intelligible with Jawi and possibly other dialects. It is spoken by the Bardi people at the tip of the Dampier peninsula and neighbouring islands (north of Broome, in Northwestern Australia). There are few fluent speakers in the 21st century, but efforts are being made to teach the Bardi language and culture at at least one school. Background Before European settlement at the end of the 19th century, the population size is estimated to have been ~1500 people, with essentially the entire community speaking Bardi. Since then, the ethnic population has increased in number (now contains about 2000 people), but is essentially monolingual in English today (with only the oldest few people still fluent in Bardi). Estimates vary as to how many fluent Bardi speakers remain, but , many middle-aged people could still understand the language, and some of them could speak it to a limited degree. The language and culture is being taught at Christ the King Catholic School in Djarindjin community by Bardi/Jabirr Jabirr man Vincent McKenzie, who grew up speaking Bardi. Classification Bardi is a member of the Western branch of the Nyulnyulan language family. According to R. M. W. Dixon (2002), Bardi was mutually intelligible with the following dialects: Jawi, Nyulnyul, Jabirr-Jabirr, Ngumbarl, and Nimanburru. Ethnologue (206) treats all but Ngumbarl as distinct languages, and this view is supported by those linguists who have worked on the languages, including Claire Bowern and William McGregor. It is also the view of Bardi speakers. Documentation There is considerable documentation of the Bardi language, but most of it is unpublished. The earliest work on the language, though now lost, dates from the 1880s. The earliest surviving records are from the start of the 20th century. Gerhardt Laves spent some time on Sunday Island in the late 1920s and recorded textual materials totalling over 1000 pages, and steady documentation has progressed since the late 1960s. In 2012, an extensive reference grammar was written by Claire Bowern and published by De Gruyter Mouton. Phonology Consonants Bardi contains 17 phonemes in its consonant inventory, across five places of articulation and five manners of articulation. There are no fricatives or voicing distinctions among Bardi consonants. The plosives are voiceless word-initially and -finally, and usually voiced elsewhere. Intervocalically, plosives are often weakly lenited to approximants. This is distinct from the