[2] The Yanyuwa traded with the trepangers from the port of Makassar in Sulawesi, who had begun to explore the area of the Gulf of Carpentaria since the 1720s.
[4] The retention of their language as with Garrwa has been attributed to the relative disinterest of colonising whites in the lands both of these tribes traditionally inhabited.
[5] Taking as his starting point an observation by Edward Sapir concerning the Yahi dialect of Yana, who considered the gendered distinction in language use between Yanna men and women as very rare, or not as pervasive as in this dialect, John Bradley showed that in Yanyuwa, the differentiation was at least as structurally thorough as in Yahi.
[7] Two exceptions exist, in ribald talk, and in certain songline cycles where male figures use female speech, though the reason is not known.
[8] Bradley's conclusion is: The reasons as to why two distinct dialects for female and male speakers developed are lost in time., This feature has however served to make Yanyuwa a language unique within Aboriginal Australia, if not the world.