Kayardild is a moribund Tangkic language spoken by the Kaiadilt people of the South Wellesley Islands in northwest Queensland, Australia, recorded with 43 speakers in the 2021 census, down from about fifty in 1981. It is related to the other Tangkic languages Yangkaal, Lardil and Yukulta and is grammatically unusual: it permits case stacking up to four levels deep, marks case at the level of the clause, and is the only known language in which tense markers appear on both nouns and verbs. UNESCO classifies it as critically endangered, with speaker numbers reduced since the 1940s partly by Stolen Generations removal policies.
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