Mati Ke, also known as Magati-Ge, Magadige, Marti Ke, Magati Gair, is classified as one of the Western Daly languages, and bearing close affinities to Marringarr and Marrithiyel.[1] In 1983 around 30 fluent speakers of the language survived,[2] and by the early 2000s, some 50 people were thought to still speak some of it as a second or third language.[3]
By the early 2000s the last completely fluent speakers were reckoned to be three people, Johnny Chula, Patrick Nudjulu and his sister Agatha Perdjert, both of whom who moved back to a government-built outstation at Kuy on the Shores facing the Timor Sea.[4] Though living in close proximity to one another, they never spoke it together since in their social system communication between brother and sister after puberty was forbidden.[5]
Social organization
The clan and totem system was described by the Norwegian ethnologist Johannes Falkenberg in 1962, based on fieldwork conducted in 1950.[6][7]
History
The Mati Ke were one of several tribes living south of Wadeye between the Moyle and Fitzmaurice rivers. Many moved to Wadeye when a Catholic mission was set up there in the 1930s. Most descendants of the tribe dropped using their Mati Ke speech and adopted the majority language in the area, Murrinh-Patha, which is spoken by about 2500 people and serves as a lingua franca for several other ethnic groups.
