Wagiman language

Wagiman, also spelt Wageman, Wakiman, Wogeman, and other variants, is a near-extinct Aboriginal Australian language spoken by only two elderly people, who live in and around Pine Creek, in the Katherine Region of the Northern Territory. The two last speakers, who acquired Wagiman as their first language, are sister and brother in their 70s, named Teresa Muyiwey Bandison and George Jabarlgarri Huddlestone..

The Wagiman language is notable within linguistics for its complex system of verbal morphology, which remains under-investigated, its possession of a cross-linguistically rare part of speech called a coverb, its complex predicates and for its ability to derive verbs from coverb roots, which is a unique feature among Australian languages.

As of 1999 Wagiman was expected to become extinct within the next generation, as the youngest generation spoke no Wagiman and understood very little. The 2011 Australian census recorded 30 speakers, while the 2016 Australian census recorded 18 speakers. Linguist Daniel Krauße worked on the language from 2019 to 2021 and reported only two remaining speakers. Without urgent language revival programs, the language is expected to become extinct very soon.