Gurindji is a Pama-Nyungan language of the Ngumpin-Yapa group, specifically its Eastern Ngumpin, Victoria River branch, spoken by the Gurindji and Ngarinyman peoples around Kalkaringi and Dagaragu in the Victoria River district of the Northern Territory, Australia. The 2021 census recorded about 620 speakers, though only around 175 of them fully understand the language, and it is now mostly spoken in private among older people; younger Gurindji people below 35 typically speak Gurindji Kriol, a mixed language that emerged between the 1960s and 1980s after cattle stations were established on Gurindji land. The language has no words for left or right but has 24 distinct words for each of north, south, east and west, along with an elaborate kinship vocabulary.
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