http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/16/scien ... cy.html?hp

There are many dying languages in the world. But at least one has recently been born, created by children living in a remote village in northern Australia.

Carmel O’Shannessy, a linguist at the University of Michigan, has been studying the young people’s speech for more than a decade and has concluded that they speak neither a dialect nor the mixture of languages called a creole, but a new language with unique grammatical rules.

The language, called Warlpiri rampaku, or Light Warlpiri, is spoken only by people under 35 in Lajamanu, an isolated village of about 700 people in Australia’s Northern Territory. In all, about 350 people speak the language as their native tongue. Dr. O’Shannessy has published several studies of Light Warlpiri, the most recent in the June issue of Language.

Iz thot lolcat wuz newist langwage dey haz descuverd.

Very interesting, thanks Weaver!

Hmmm well although Lajamanu is rather far from other places it is very well connected with Yuendamu which is probably the largest community in the area where Walpiri (Walbiri) is spoken and also close (in Tanami desert terms) to Kalkaringi and Daguragu and Willowra where Walpiri also spoken. This community is actually on Gurindji tribals lands so already people the language is 'foreign' for the location and speakers of English, Walpiri, Gurindji, Gurindji Kriol, Mudjaba (?spelling?) and Pitjantanjaric languages live in the area with many people speaking multiple languages. With the mixing of groups like this a creole highly likely to develop and in fact you see this very clearly to the North and East of there where 'Kriol' is recognised, that this is a new language somewhat surprising and perhaps some of our resident language specialists would like to comment on the definition being used here not a creole or a dialect but called Walbiri 'Lite' . That this is among only young people whose parents probably speak different native languages and have heavy exposure via media and school etc to the dominant outsider language (English) this is rather a strong motivator for language change

We used to teach that a creole is a fully-fledged language, but I don't know if current thinking has changed in linguistics. 'We' meaning linguistics staff at a UK uni. There is some room for disagreement, since creoles often seem to develop from pidgins, which are not considered to be full language, but eventually, creoles are the first language for some speakers.

It's all Greek to me