Earliest reference to language name: 1881 (Dawson 1881)
Meaning: ‘blood lip’ (Dawson 1881)
Sub-dialects: Giraiwurrung; Wirngilgnad-dhalinanong
Very little is known about this language and its two dialects. The only vocabulary known to exist is a ‘Mortlake vocabulary’ provided by a Miss Hood from Merrang containing 185 words and published in Mathew (1899). Hood’s vocabulary has 87 percent common vocabulary with the standard Dhauwurdwurrung – Djargurdwurrung lexicon, and on this basis can be regarded as part of this language continuum. For more information see Krishna-Pillay’s (1996) analysis.
The language is known to have two dialects:
Giraiwurrung:
Earliest reference to dialect name: 1881 (Dawson 1881)
Meaning: ‘blood lip’ (see Clark 1990). Eighteen variants listed in Clark (1990). Dawson notes that a nick name for this dialect was ‘Ngutuk’ based on the pronoun ‘you’.
Wirngilgnad-dhalinanong:
Earliest reference to dialect name: 1881 (Dawson 1881)
Meaning: ‘bear language’, a reference to the concentration of koalas in this forested region (Dawson 1881).