A Village Invents a Language All Its Own. Linguist Finds a Language in Its Infancy: Warlpiri rampaku in Northern Australia

Warlpiri rampaku, or Light Warlpiri, is a new language spoken only by people under 35 in Lajamanu, an isolated village of about 700 people in Australia's Northern Territory.
"There are many dying languages in the world. But at least one has recently been born, created by children living in a remote village in northern Australia.

Carmel O’Shannessy, a linguist at the University of Michigan, has been studying the young people’s speech for more than a decade and has concluded that they speak neither a dialect nor the mixture of languages called a creole, but a new language with unique grammatical rules.

The language, called Warlpiri rampaku, or Light Warlpiri, is spoken only by people under 35 in Lajamanu, an isolated village of about 700 people in Australia’s Northern Territory. In all, about 350 people speak the language as their native tongue. Dr. O’Shannessy has published several studies of Light Warlpiri, the most recent in the June issue of Language"

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