The language of the western and central islands of Torres Strait is related to languages of the Australian mainland and is a member of the
Pama–Nyungan family of languages, which covers most of Australia. This language is known by its dialect names: Kalau Lagau Ya, Kalau Kawau Ya, Kulkalgau Ya and Kaiwaligau Ya (this latter also called Kowrareg, which is from the mid-19th century Kowrareg dialect form
kauraraiga/kaurarega 'islander'.
Kalau Lagau Ya is often called Kala Lagaw Ya in the literature. Sydney Ray's "Linguistics" and Rod Mitchell's "Ngalmun Lagaw Yangukudu" are the main descriptions of the language. Ray contains a vocabulary list of both Mabuiag (as called by the Cambridge Expedition) and
Meriam Mìr. In 2001 and 2003, Ron Edwards published the Torres Strait Languages vocabularies of Sydney H. Ray. This is the only dictionary available for use by Torres Strait Islanders and people who want to teach, learn and speak the Torres Strait languages. Unfortunately, neither the Ray work nor his vocabularies are very good, and contain many mistakes. The dictionaries can only be used in conjunction with knowledgeable native speakers to point out errors and corrections. The four dialects of the Kalau Lagau Ya are very close to each other, somewhat like Standard American and Standard Australian English are to each other. Its vocabulary is potentially 80% non-Australian; much of the non-Australian content is Papuan (Trans-Fly) and Austronesian (South-East Papuan). It is an interesting language in having feminine and masculine gender, though no neuter gender [this is typical among Australian languages that have gender as well as many of the neighbouring Papuan languages] – and the difference is semantically significant in that many words can be masculine or feminine according to inherent reference or culturally significant reference. For example,
za as masculine means 'an important topic/subject', and as feminine is 'thing, object'.
Gœiga when masculine means 'sun', and when feminine means 'day'. == Meriam Mir ==