Bininj Kunwok

Bininj Kunwok is an Australian Aboriginal language which includes six dialects: Kunwinjku (formerly Gunwinggu), Kuninjku, Kundjeyhmi (formerly Gundjeihmi), Manyallaluk Mayali (Mayali), Kundedjnjenghmi, and two varieties of Kune (Kune Dulerayek and Kune Narayek). Kunwinjku is the dominant dialect, and also sometimes used to refer to the group. The spellings Bininj Gun-wok and Bininj Kun-Wok have also been used in the past, however Bininj Kunwok is the current standard orthography.^[3]

The Aboriginal people who speak the dialects are the Bininj people, who live primarily in western Arnhem Land. There are over two thousand fluent speakers in an area roughly bounded by Kakadu National Park to the west, the Arafura Sea to the north, the Blyth River to the east, and the Katherine region to the south.

As a recent umbrella term for a group of mutually intelligible dialects, Bininj Kunwok itself is not included in the Australian census, however the individual dialects are. In the 2021 census, 1494 people reported being Kunwinjku language speakers, as well as 423 of Kuninjku, 257 of Kune, 71 of Mayali and 12 of Gundjeihmi (Kundjeyhmi), totalling 2,257 speakers.^[4] Kundedjnjenghmi was not offered as an option according to the Australian Standard Classification of Languages (ASCL).^[5]