It was spoken by the Yukulta people, whose traditional lands lie on the southern coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Yukulta is a member of the Tangkic language group, along with Kayardild, Lardil and Yanggal, all from the North Wellesley Islands and adjoining mainland.

[4] These languages were classified as Tangkic by Geoffrey O'Grady, with Carl and Flo Voegelin(1966).

[4] Nguburinji is known only through a word list by Walter Roth (1897),[6] which shares 90 per cent of its vocabulary with present-day Yukulta.

The clitic complex attaches to the first constituent of every Yukulta sentence that does not "emphasize a permanent, timeless state of affairs.

Yukulta word order is very free, in large part due to its relatively high level of inflection.