English in its degree of harshness though it could not be [sic] harsh neither". Among the words recorded were or (IPA: ), meaning a large black or grey kangaroo, which would become the general English term for all kangaroos, and (transcribed by Banks as Je-Quoll), the name of the quoll. Sydney Parkinson, who accompanied Cook, gave a useful word list in his posthumously published journal. Phonology Vowels Short may be realized as unrounded , and unstressed may be reduced to . Consonants The stops are usually voiceless and unaspirated initially and after short vowels, and voiced after consonants and long vowels. The retroflexes may not be single phonemes, but clusters of . However, there is at least one word which, for older speakers, is pronounced with a word-initial retroflex: run, which is or . The rhotic is normally a flap , but may be a trill in emphatic speech. Phonotactics All words, with the exception of a couple of interjections, begin with one consonant. The consonant can be a stop, nasal, or semivowel (that is, do not occur initially). Words can end in either a vowel or a consonant. The allowed word-final consonants are . Within words, any consonant can occur, as well as clusters of up to three consonants, which cannot occur initially or finally. Grammar Like many Australian languages, Guugu Yimithirr pronouns have accusative morphology while nouns have ergative morphology. That is, the subject of an intransitive verb has the same form as the subject of a transitive verb if the subject is a pronoun, but the same form as the object of a transitive verb otherwise. Regardless of whether nouns or pronouns are used, the usual sentence order is subject–object–verb, although other word orders are possible. The language is notable for its use of pure geographic directions (north, south, east, west) rather than egocentric directions (left, right, forward, backward), though such "purity" is disputed. Still, it has given its speakers a remarkable sense of direction. Preservation , only about half of the 1,400 Guugu Yimithirr people speak the language, with mostly only grandparents being fluent speakers. Hope Vale elders are helping to create video tutorials on teaching Guugu Yimithirr, which are being uploaded to YouTube, while the local school, Hope Vale Cape York Aboriginal Australian Academy, has a language program in its curriculum. With the schools closed and learning being done in the home, using the online