There are more than six and a half thousand different languages spoken around the world but the United Nations says by the end of the century, half of those will be extinct. And in the Kimberley, Aboriginal languages are listed by the UN as being severely or critically endangered.

Frances Koford is a linguist at the Mirima Dawang Woorlab-gerring Language and Culture Centre in Kununurra and she began working with Mirruwong speakers in the 1970s. Frances says Mirruwong was not as endangered as it is now, because people were still fluent or regular speakers.

Read or listen to the full ABC Kimberley article by Vanessa Mills.