One of the interesting differences between Jiwarli (and most Australian Aboriginal languages) and a language like English is in the voicing of stops. In English, voice is a feature which is used to impart meaning. For example, the only way to talk about the sound contrast between the two English words den and ten is to say that the first consonant (d) in den is voiced whilst the first consonant (t) in ten is voiceless. t and d are otherwise identical. It is this feature alone which changes the meaning of the word. Such a pair of words in a language is called a minimal pair.

In Jiwarli, although velar stops are realized as both voiced and voiceless, this distinction is not used to impart meaning. In the word kapakurta for instance, the first k is voiceless and the second k is voiced. This variation is, however, the result of the influence of their respective environments - the second k gets its voiced quality from the vowel which precedes it; the first k has no vowel preceding it and is consequently voiceless. What you never find in Jiwarli is a minimal pair of words which only differ in the voicing of one consonant.

• Retroflex Consonants
• Nasal+Stop Clusters

Retroflex Consonants

A retroflex sound is produced by curling back the tip of the tongue until it makes contact with the roof of the mouth just behind the alveolar ridge. Jiwarli contains four types of retroflex consonant:

• Voicing
• Nasal+Stop Clusters

Nasal+Stop Clusters

For every stop in Jiwarli, there is a corresponding nasal:

When two consonants share the same place of articulation, they are called homorganic. When a nasal and a stop which share the same place of articulation occur one after the other in speech, the resulting sound may be referred to as a nasal + stop cluster. Such clusters are common to many of the world's languages. The English word window, for example, contains the alveolar nasal + stop cluster nd.

As can be seen from a reading of the story, such clusters are also common in Jiwarli. In the spoken version, however, the nasal component of these clusters is often absent. Listen to the word yartingka , for example, and you will hear something more like yartika. Listen to thurnti and you will hear thurti. And yet, when asked to pronounce these words individually, the speaker would always include the nasal.

The fact that Tharkari, a neighbouring language and a member, like Jiwarli, of the Mantharta language group, has no nasal+stop clusters at all suggests that an historical process involving the gradual loss of these sounds was underway. This process is called lenition.