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Australian Aboriginal languages

May 18, 2023

"Australian languages" redirects here. For all the languages of Australia, see Languages of Australia.

The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250[1] (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intelligible varieties) up to possibly 363.[2] The Indigenous languages of Australia comprise numerous language families and isolates, perhaps as many as 13, spoken by the Indigenous peoples of mainland Australia and a few nearby islands.[3] The relationships between the language families are not clear at present although there are proposals to link some into larger groupings. Despite this uncertainty, the Indigenous Australian languages are collectively covered by the technical term "Australian languages",[4] or the "Australian family".[a]

The primary typological division in Australian languages: Pama–Nyungan languages (tan) and non-Pama–Nyungan languages (mustard and grey)
People who speak Australian Aboriginal languages as a percentage of the population in Australia, divided geographically by statistical local area at the 2011 census

The term can include both Tasmanian languages and the Western Torres Strait language,[6] but the genetic relationship to the mainland Australian languages of the former is unknown,[7] while the latter is Pama–Nyungan, though it shares features with the neighbouring Papuan, Eastern Trans-Fly languages, in particular Meriam Mir of the Torres Strait Islands, as well as the Papuan Tip Austronesian languages.[8] Most Australian languages belong to the widespread Pama–Nyungan family, while the remainder are classified as "non-Pama–Nyungan", which is a term of convenience that does not imply a genealogical relationship.

In the late 18th century there were more than 250 distinct First Nations Peoples social groupings and a similar number of languages or varieties.[6] The status and knowledge of Aboriginal languages today varies greatly. Many languages became extinct with settlement as the encroachment of colonial society broke up Indigenous cultures. For some of these languages, few records exist for vocabulary and grammar. At the start of the 21st century, fewer than 150 Aboriginal languages remain in daily use,[9] with the majority being highly endangered. In 2020, 90 per cent of the barely more than 100 languages still spoken are considered endangered.[10] 13 languages are still being transmitted to children.[11] The surviving languages are located in the most isolated areas. Of the five least endangered Western Australian Aboriginal languages, four belong to the Western Desert grouping of the Central and Great Victoria Desert.

Yolŋu languages from north-east Arnhem Land are also currently learned by children. Bilingual education is being used successfully in some communities. Seven of the most widely spoken Australian languages, such as Warlpiri, Murrinh-patha and Tiwi, retain between 1,000 and 3,000 speakers.[12] Some Indigenous communities and linguists show support for learning programmes either for language revival proper or for only "post-vernacular maintenance" (Indigenous communities having the opportunity to learn some words and concepts related to the lost language).[13]

Living Aboriginal languages

The National Indigenous Languages Survey is a regular Australia-wide survey of the status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages[14] conducted in 2005,[15] 2014[16] and 2019.[14]

Languages with more than 100 speakers:

Total 46 languages, 42,300 speakers, with 11 having only approximately 100. 11 languages have over 1,000 speakers.

Classification

 
Australian language families. From west to east:
  Nyulnyulan
  Worrorran
  Bunuban
  Jarrakan
  Mindi (2 areas)
  Daly (4 families)
  Wagiman
  Wardaman
  Tiwi (offshore)
  Darwin Region
  Iwaidjan
  Giimbiyu
  Arnhem, incl. Gunwinyguan
  Garawan and Tangkic
  Pama–Nyungan (3 areas)

Internal

Most Australian languages are commonly held to belong to the Pama–Nyungan family, a family accepted by most linguists, with Robert M. W. Dixon as a notable exception. For convenience, the rest of the languages, all spoken in the far north, are commonly lumped together as "Non-Pama–Nyungan", although this does not necessarily imply that they constitute a valid clade. Dixon argues that after perhaps 40,000 years of mutual influence, it is no longer possible to distinguish deep genealogical relationships from areal features in Australia, and that not even Pama–Nyungan is a valid language family.[17]

However, few other linguists accept Dixon's thesis. For example, Kenneth L. Hale describes Dixon's skepticism as an erroneous phylogenetic assessment which is "such an insult to the eminently successful practitioners of Comparative Method Linguistics in Australia, that it positively demands a decisive riposte".[18] Hale provides pronominal and grammatical evidence (with suppletion) as well as more than fifty basic-vocabulary cognates (showing regular sound correspondences) between the proto-Northern-and-Middle Pamic (pNMP) family of the Cape York Peninsula on the Australian northeast coast and proto-Ngayarta of the Australian west coast, some 3,000 kilometres (1,900 mi) apart, to support the Pama–Nyungan grouping, whose age he compares to that of Proto-Indo-European.

Johanna Nichols suggests that the northern families may be relatively recent arrivals from Maritime Southeast Asia, perhaps later replaced there by the spread of Austronesian. That could explain the typological difference between Pama–Nyungan and non-Pama–Nyungan languages, but not how a single family came to be so widespread. Nicholas Evans suggests that the Pama–Nyungan family spread along with the now-dominant Aboriginal culture that includes the Australian Aboriginal kinship system.

In late 2017, Mark Harvey and Robert Mailhammer published a study in Diachronica that hypothesised, by analysing noun class prefix paradigms across both Pama-Nyungan and the minority non-Pama-Nyungan languages, that a Proto-Australian could be reconstructed from which all known Australian languages descend. This Proto-Australian language, they concluded, would have been spoken about 12,000 years ago in northern Australia.[19][20][21]

External

For a long time unsuccessful attempts were made to detect a link between Australian and Papuan languages, the latter being represented by those spoken on the coastal areas of New Guinea facing the Torres Strait and the Arafura Sea.[22] In 1986 William A. Foley noted lexical similarities between Robert M. W. Dixon's 1980 reconstruction of proto-Australian and the East New Guinea Highlands languages. He believed that it was naïve to expect to find a single Papuan or Australian language family when New Guinea and Australia had been a single landmass (called the Sahul continent) for most of their human history, having been separated by the Torres Strait only 8000 years ago, and that a deep reconstruction would likely include languages from both. Dixon, in the meantime, later abandoned his proto-Australian proposal.[23]

Families

Glottolog 4.1 (2019)

Glottolog 4.1 (2019) recognizes 23 independent families and 9 isolates in Australia, comprising a total of 32 independent language groups.[24]

Bowern (2011)

According to Claire Bowern's Australian Languages (2011), Australian languages divide into approximately 30 primary sub-groups and 5 isolates.[2]

Survival

It has been inferred from the probable number of languages and the estimate of pre-contact population levels that there may have been from 3,000 to 4,000 speakers on average for each of the 250 languages.[25] A number of these languages were almost immediately wiped out within decades of colonisation, the case of the Aboriginal Tasmanians being one notorious example of precipitous linguistic ethnocide. Tasmania had been separated from the mainland at the end of the Quaternary glaciation, and Indigenous Tasmanians remained isolated from the outside world for around 12,000 years. Claire Bowern has concluded in a recent study that there were twelve Tasmanian languages, and that those languages are unrelated (that is, not demonstrably related) to those on the Australian mainland.[26]

In 1990 it was estimated that 90 languages still survived of the approximately 250 once spoken, but with a high rate of attrition as elders died out. Of the 90, 70% by 2001 were judged as 'severely endangered' with only 17 spoken by all age groups, a definition of a 'strong' language.[27] On these grounds it is anticipated that despite efforts at linguistic preservation, many of the remaining languages will disappear within the next generation. The overall trend suggests that in the not too distant future all of the Indigenous languages will be lost, perhaps by 2050,[28] and with them the cultural knowledge they convey.[29]

During the period of the Stolen Generations, Aboriginal children were removed from their families and placed in institutions where they were punished for speaking their Indigenous language. Different, mutually unintelligible language groups were often mixed together, with Australian Aboriginal English or Australian Kriol language as the only lingua franca. The result was a disruption to the inter-generational transmission of these languages that severely impacted their future use. Today, that same transmission of language between parents and grandparents to their children is a key mechanism for reversing language shift.[30] For children, proficiency in the language of their cultural heritage has a positive influence on their ethnic identity formation,[citation needed] and it is thought to be of particular benefit to the emotional well-being of Indigenous children. There is some evidence to suggest that the reversal of the Indigenous language shift may lead to decreased self-harm and suicide rates among Indigenous youth.[31]

The first Aboriginal people to use Australian Aboriginal languages in the Australian parliament were Aden Ridgeway on 25 August 1999 in the Senate when he said "On this special occasion, I make my presence known as an Aborigine and to this chamber I say, perhaps for the first time: Nyandi baaliga Jaingatti. Nyandi mimiga Gumbayynggir. Nya jawgar yaam Gumbyynggir."[32] and in the House of Representatives on 31 August 2016 Linda Burney gave an acknowledgment of country in Wiradjuri in her first speech[33] and was sung in by Lynette Riley in Wiradjuri from the public gallery.[34]

Preservation measures

2019 was the International Year of Indigenous Languages (IYIL2019), as declared by the United Nations General Assembly. The commemoration was used to raise awareness of and support for the preservation of Aboriginal languages within Australia, including spreading knowledge about the importance of each language to the identity and knowledge of Indigenous groups. Warrgamay/Girramay man Troy Wyles-Whelan joined the North Queensland Regional Aboriginal Corporation Language Centre (NQRACLC) in 2008, and has been contributing oral histories and the results of his own research to their database.[35] As part of the efforts to raise awareness of Wiradjuri language a Grammar of Wiradjuri language[36] was published in 2014 and A new Wiradjuri dictionary[37] in 2010.[38]

The New South Wales Aboriginal Languages Act 2017 became law on 24 October 2017.[39] It was the first legislation in Australia to acknowledge the significance of first languages.[40]

In 2019 the Royal Australian Mint issued a 50-cent coin to celebrate the International Year of Indigenous Languages which features 14 different words for "money" from Australian Indigenous languages.[41][42] The coin was designed by Aleksandra Stokic in consultation with Indigenous language custodian groups.[42]

The work of digitising and transcribing many word lists created by ethnographer Daisy Bates in the 1900s at Daisy Bates Online[43] provides a valuable resource for those researching especially Western Australian languages, and some languages of the Northern Territory and South Australia.[44] The project is co-ordinated by Nick Thieberger, who works in collaboration with the National Library of Australia "to have all the microfilmed images from Section XII of the Bates papers digitised".[45] The project is succeeded by the Nyingarn Project[46] , which digitises manuscripts and crowdsources transcriptions through DigiVol.

Language revival

In recent decades, there have been attempts to revive indigenous languages.[47] Significant challenges exist, however, for the revival of languages in the dominant English language culture of Australia.[48]

The Kaurna language, spoken by the Kaurna people of the Adelaide plains, has been the subject of a concerted revival movement since the 1980s, coordinated by Kaurna Warra Pintyanthi, a unit working out of the University of Adelaide.[49] The language had rapidly disappeared after the settlement of South Australia and the breaking up of local indigenous people. Ivaritji, the last known speaker of the language, died in 1931. However, a substantial number of primary source records existed for the language, from which the language was reconstructed.[48]

Common features

"Some Aboriginal people distinguish between usership and ownership. There are even those who claim that they own a language although they only know one single word of it: its name."[50]: 212 

Whether it is due to genetic unity or some other factor such as occasional contact, typologically the Australian languages form a language area or Sprachbund, sharing much of their vocabulary and many distinctive phonological features across the entire continent.

A common feature of many Australian languages is that they display so-called avoidance speech, special speech registers used only in the presence of certain close relatives. These registers share the phonology and grammar of the standard language, but the lexicon is different and usually very restricted. There are also commonly speech taboos during extended periods of mourning or initiation that have led to numerous Aboriginal sign languages.

For morphosyntactic alignment, many Australian languages have ergative–absolutive case systems. These are typically split systems; a widespread pattern is for pronouns (or first and second persons) to have nominative–accusative case marking and for third person to be ergative–absolutive, though splits between animate and inanimate are also found. In some languages the persons in between the accusative and ergative inflections (such as second person, or third-person human) may be tripartite: that is, marked overtly as either ergative or accusative in transitive clauses, but not marked as either in intransitive clauses. There are also a few languages which employ only nominative–accusative case marking.[citation needed]

Phonetics and phonology

This section contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

The following represents a canonical 6-place Australian Aboriginal consonant system. It does not represent any single language, but is instead a simplified form of the consonant inventory of what would be found in many Australian languages, including most Arandic and Yolŋu languages.[51]

Segmental inventory

A typical Australian phonological inventory includes just three vowels, usually /i, u, a/, which may occur in both long and short variants.[52] In a few cases the [u] has been unrounded to give [i, ɯ, a].

There is almost never a voicing contrast;[53] that is, a consonant may sound like a [p] at the beginning of a word, but like a [b] between vowels, and either letter could be (and often is) chosen to represent it. Australia also stands out as being almost entirely free of fricative consonants, even of [h].[54] In the few cases where fricatives do occur, they developed recently through the lenition (weakening) of stops, and are therefore non-sibilants like [ð] rather than the sibilants like [s] that are common elsewhere in the world. Some languages also have three rhotics, typically a flap, a trill, and an approximant (that is, like the combined rhotics of English and Spanish) and many have four laterals.

Besides the lack of fricatives, the most striking feature of Australian speech sounds is the large number of places of articulation. Some 10-15% of Australian languages have four places of articulation, with two coronal places of articulation, 40-50% have five places, and 40-45% have six places of articulation, including four coronals. In contrast, the overwhelming majority of languages worldwide have only one coronal place of articulation. The four-way distinction in the coronal region is commonly accomplished through two variables: the position of the tongue (front, alveolar or dental, or retroflex), and its shape (apical or laminal).[51] There are also bilabial, velar and often palatal consonants, but a complete absence of uvular consonants and only a few languages with a glottal stop. Both stops and nasals occur at all six places, and in many languages laterals occur at all four coronal places.[51]

Butcher 2018 speculates that the unusual segmental inventories of Australian languages may be due to the very high presence of otitis media ear infections and resulting hearing loss in their populations. People with hearing loss often have trouble distinguishing different vowels and hearing fricatives and voicing contrasts. Australian Aboriginal languages thus seem to show similarities to the speech of people with hearing loss, and avoid those sounds and distinctions which are difficult for people with early childhood hearing loss to perceive. At the same time, Australian languages make full use of those distinctions, namely place of articulation distinctions, which people with otitis media-caused hearing loss can perceive more easily.[55] This hypothesis has been challenged on historical, comparative, statistical, and medical grounds.[56]

A language which displays the full range of stops, nasals and laterals is Kalkatungu, which has labial p, m; "dental" th, nh, lh; "alveolar" t, n, l; "retroflex" rt, rn, rl; "palatal" ty, ny, ly; and velar k, ng. Wangganguru has all this, as well as three rhotics. Yanyuwa has even more contrasts, with an additional true dorso-palatal series, plus prenasalised consonants at all seven places of articulation, in addition to all four laterals.

A notable exception to the above generalisations is Kalaw Lagaw Ya, spoken in the Torres Strait Islands, which has an inventory more like its Papuan neighbours than the languages of the Australian mainland, including full voice contrasts: /p b/, dental /t̪ d̪/, alveolar /t d/, the sibilants /s z/ (which have allophonic variation with [tʃ] and [dʒ] respectively) and velar /k ɡ/, as well as only one rhotic, one lateral and three nasals (labial, dental and velar) in contrast to the 5 places of articulation of stops/sibilants. Where vowels are concerned, it has 8 vowels with some morpho-syntactic as well as phonemic length contrasts (i iː, e eː, a aː, ə əː, ɔ ɔː, o oː, ʊ ʊː, u uː), and glides that distinguish between those that are in origin vowels, and those that in origin are consonants. Kunjen and other neighbouring languages have also developed contrasting aspirated consonants ([pʰ], [t̪ʰ], [tʰ], [cʰ], [kʰ]) not found further south.

Coronal consonants

Descriptions of the coronal articulations can be inconsistent.

The alveolar series t, n, l (or d, n, l) is straightforward: across the continent, these sounds are alveolar (that is, pronounced by touching the tongue to the ridge just behind the gum line of the upper teeth) and apical (that is, touching that ridge with the tip of the tongue). This is very similar to English t, d, n, l, though the Australian t is not aspirated, even in Kalaw Lagaw Ya, despite its other stops being aspirated.

The other apical series is the retroflex, rt, rn, rl (or rd, rn, rl). Here the place is further back in the mouth, in the postalveolar or prepalatal region. The articulation is actually most commonly subapical; that is, the tongue curls back so that the underside of the tip makes contact. That is, they are true retroflex consonants. It has been suggested that subapical pronunciation is characteristic of more careful speech, while these sounds tend to be apical in rapid speech. Kalaw Lagaw Ya and many other languages in North Queensland differ from most other Australian languages in not having a retroflexive series.

The dental series th, nh, lh are always laminal (that is, pronounced by touching with the surface of the tongue just above the tip, called the blade of the tongue), but may be formed in one of three different ways, depending on the language, on the speaker, and on how carefully the speaker pronounces the sound. These are interdental with the tip of the tongue visible between the teeth, as in th in English; dental with the tip of the tongue down behind the lower teeth, so that the blade is visible between the teeth; and denti-alveolar, that is, with both the tip and the blade making contact with the back of the upper teeth and alveolar ridge, as in French t, d, n, l. The first tends to be used in careful enunciation, and the last in more rapid speech, while the tongue-down articulation is less common.

Finally, the palatal series ty, ny, ly. (The stop is often spelled dj, tj, or j.) Here the contact is also laminal, but further back, spanning the alveolar to postalveolar, or the postalveolar to prepalatal regions. The tip of the tongue is typically down behind the lower teeth. This is similar to the "closed" articulation of Circassian fricatives (see Postalveolar consonant). The body of the tongue is raised towards the palate. This is similar to the "domed" English postalveolar fricative sh. Because the tongue is "peeled" from the roof of the mouth from back to front during the release of these stops, there is a fair amount of frication, giving the ty something of the impression of the English palato-alveolar affricate ch or the Polish alveolo-palatal affricate ć. That is, these consonants are not palatal in the IPA sense of the term, and indeed they contrast with true palatals in Yanyuwa. In Kalaw Lagaw Ya, the palatal consonants are sub-phonemes of the alveolar sibilants /s/ and /z/.

These descriptions do not apply exactly to all Australian languages, as the notes regarding Kalaw Lagaw Ya demonstrate. However, they do describe most of them, and are the expected norm against which languages are compared.

Phonotactics

Some have suggested that the most appropriate unit to describe the phonotactics of Australian languages is the phonological word. The most common word length is two syllables, and a typical phonological word would have the form:

(CINIT)V1C1(C2)V2(CFIN)

with the first syllable being stressed.[52] The optionality of CFIN is cross-linguistically normal, since coda consonants are weak or nonexistent in many languages, as well as in the early stages of language acquisition. The weakening of CINIT, on the other hand, is very unusual. No Australian language has consonant clusters in this position, and those languages with fortis and lenis distinctions do not make such distinctions in this position. Place of articulation distinctions are also less common in this position, and lenitions and deletions are historically common here. While in most languages the word-initial position is prominent, maintaining all a language's contrasts, that is not the case in Australia. Here the prominent position is C1(C2), in the middle of the word. C1 is typically the only position allowing all of a language's place of articulation contrasts. Fortis/lenis contrasts can only occur at C1, or at C2 when C1 is a sonorant. Consonant clusters are often restricted to the C1(C2) position, and are most commonly sonorant + obstruent sequences. In languages with pre-stopped nasals or laterals, those sounds only occur at C1.[52]

Australian languages typically resist certain connected speech processes which might blur the place of articulation of consonants at C1(C2), such as anticipatory assimilation of place of articulation, which is common around the world. In Australia, this type of assimilation seems only to have affected consonants within the apical and laminal categories. There's little evidence of assimilation between the labial, apical, laminal, and dorsal categories. Many proto-Pama–Nyungan /-np-/ and /-nk-/ clusters have been preserved across Australia. Heterorganic nasal + stop sequences remain stable even in modern connected speech, which is highly unusual.[52]

The anticipatory assimilation of nasality is quite common in various languages around the world. Typically, a vowel will become nasalized before a following nasal consonant. However, this process is resisted in Australian languages. There was a historical process in many languages where nasal + stop C1C2 clusters lost the nasal element if CINIT was a nasal. Also, many languages have morphophonemic alterations whereby initial nasals in suffixes are denasalized if the preceding stem contains a nasal consonant. While the existence of phonemic pre-stopped nasals and laterals, contrasting with plain nasals and laterals, has been documented in some Australian languages, nasals and laterals are pre-stopped on a phonetic level in most languages of the continent. These phenomena are the result of a general resistance to the anticipatory assimilation of nasality and laterality. The lack of assimilation makes coda nasals and laterals more acoustically distinct.[57]

Most speakers of Australian languages speak with a 'pressed' voice quality, with the glottal opening narrower than in modal voice, a relatively high frequency of creaky voice, and low airflow. This may be due to an avoidance of breathy voice. This pressed quality could therefore serve to enhance the clarity of speech and ensure the perception of place of articulation distinctions.[58]

The weakness of initial consonants in Australian Aboriginal languages is characteristic of hearing-impaired speech, and has been speculated to be the result of high rates of Otitis media-caused hearing loss in Aboriginal communities. Other characteristics of Australian Aboriginal languages' phonotactics, such as their avoidance of assimilation and the pressed voice quality, may be due to the result of strategies to fully exploit all the restricted auditory space caused by hearing loss and to preserve all of the place distinctions.[55]

Orthography

Main article: Transcription of Australian Aboriginal languages

Probably every Australian language with speakers remaining has had an orthography developed for it, in each case in the Latin script. Sounds not found in English are usually represented by digraphs, or more rarely by diacritics, such as underlines, or extra symbols, sometimes borrowed from the International Phonetic Alphabet. Some examples are shown in the following table.

Language Example Translation Type
Pitjantjatjara paṉa 'earth, dirt, ground; land' diacritic (underline) indicates retroflex 'n'
Wajarri nhanha 'this, this one' digraph indicating 'n' with dental articulation
Yolŋu yolŋu 'person, man' 'ŋ' (from IPA) for velar nasal

Demographics (2016)

In the Northern Territory, 62.5% of Aboriginal Australians spoke an indigenous language at home in 2016.[59][60][moved resource?] In Queensland, almost 95% of Torres Strait Islanders spoke an indigenous language at home in 2016.[60][moved resource?]

Place Population that speaks an Indigenous language Percentage that speaks an Indigenous language
Torres Strait Islands 3,159 69.9%
  Northern Territory 34,956 15%
  Western Australia 10,251 0.4%
  Queensland 13,474 0.3%
  South Australia 3,392 0.2%
  New South Wales 1,922 0%
  Victoria 526 0%
  Australian Capital Territory 132 0%
  Tasmania 70 0%

Notable linguists

A number of linguists and ethnographers have contributed greatly to the sum of knowledge about Australian languages. Of particular note are:

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "Dixon (1980) claimed that all but two or three of the 200 languages of Australia can be shown to belong to one language family – the 'Australian family'. In the same way that most of the languages of Europe and Western Asia belong to the Indo-European family."[5]

Citations

  1. ^ Dixon 2002, pp. 2.
  2. ^ a b Bowern 2011.
  3. ^ Evans 2003, p. 2.
  4. ^ Dixon 2011, pp. 253–254.
  5. ^ Dixon 1980, p. 3.
  6. ^ a b Walsh 1991, p. 27.
  7. ^ Bowern 2012, p. 4593.
  8. ^ Mitchell 2015.
  9. ^ Dalby 2015, p. 43.
  10. ^ Morse, Dana (13 November 2020). "The next generation is bringing Australia's ancient languages into the future". ABC News. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. from the original on 13 November 2020. Retrieved 13 November 2020.
  11. ^ Goldsworthy 2014.
  12. ^ UNESCO atlas (online)
  13. ^ Zuckermann 2009.
  14. ^ a b "National Indigenous Languages Report (NILR)". Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. 6 November 2018. from the original on 6 August 2020. Retrieved 6 February 2020.
  15. ^ "National Indigenous Languages Survey Report 2005". Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. 19 February 2016. from the original on 1 August 2020. Retrieved 6 February 2020.
  16. ^ "Community, identity, wellbeing: The report of the Second National Indigenous Languages Survey". Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. 16 February 2015. from the original on 16 August 2020. Retrieved 6 February 2020.
  17. ^ Dixon 2002: 48,53
  18. ^ O'Grady & Hale 2004, p. 69.
  19. ^ ABC 2018.
  20. ^ BBC 2018.
  21. ^ Harvey & Mailhammer 2017, pp. 470–515.
  22. ^ Pereltsvaig 2017, p. 278.
  23. ^ Dixon 2002, pp. xvii, xviii.
  24. ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2019). "Glottolog". 4.1. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. from the original on 11 December 2019. Retrieved 30 December 2019.
  25. ^ McConvell & Thieberger 2001, p. 16.
  26. ^ Bowern 2012, pp. 4590, 4593.
  27. ^ McConvell & Thieberger 2001, pp. 17, 61.
  28. ^ Forrest 2017, p. 1.
  29. ^ McConvell & Thieberger 2001, p. 96.
  30. ^ Forrest 2017.
  31. ^ Hallett, Chandler & Lalonde 2007, pp. 392–399.
  32. ^ "Senate Official Hansard No. 198, 1999 Wednesday 25 August 1999". Parliament of Australia. from the original on 4 June 2019. Retrieved 26 June 2019.
  33. ^ "First Speech: Hon Linda Burney MP". Commonwealth Parliament. from the original on 26 June 2019. Retrieved 26 June 2019.
  34. ^ Battin, Jacqueline (21 May 2018). "Indigenous Languages in Australian Parliaments". Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. from the original on 30 May 2019. Retrieved 26 June 2019.
  35. ^ Wyles 2019.
  36. ^ Grant, Stan; Rudder, John (2014), A grammar of Wiradjuri language, Rest, ISBN 978-0-86942-151-2
  37. ^ Grant, Stan; Grant, Stan, 1940-; Rudder, John (2010), A new Wiradjuri dictionary, Restoration House, ISBN 978-0-86942-150-5{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  38. ^ "Wiradjuri Resources". Australian Aboriginal Languages Student Blog. 6 May 2018. from the original on 26 June 2019. Retrieved 26 June 2019.
  39. ^ "Aboriginal Languages Act 2017 No 51". NSW Legislation. from the original on 29 March 2018. Retrieved 26 June 2019.
  40. ^ "Protecting NSW Aboriginal languages | Languages Legislation | Aboriginal Affairs NSW". NSW Aboriginal Affairs. from the original on 14 June 2019. Retrieved 26 June 2019.
  41. ^ "International Year of Indigenous Languages commemorated with new coins launched by Royal Australian Mint and AIATSIS". Royal Australian Mint. 8 April 2019. from the original on 26 June 2019. Retrieved 26 June 2019.
  42. ^ a b Meakins, Felicity; Walsh, Michael. "The 14 Indigenous words for money on our new 50-cent coin". The Conversation. from the original on 28 June 2019. Retrieved 26 June 2019.
  43. ^ "Digital Daisy Bates". Digital Daisy Bates. from the original on 30 December 2019. Retrieved 26 January 2020.
  44. ^ "Map". Digital Daisy Bates. from the original on 27 February 2020. Retrieved 26 January 2020.
  45. ^ "Technical details". Digital Daisy Bates. from the original on 27 February 2020. Retrieved 26 January 2020.
  46. ^ "Background". Nyingarn. Retrieved 7 September 2022.
  47. ^ "'Language is connected to all things': Why reviving Indigenous languages is so important – ABC Life". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 20 February 2019. from the original on 23 October 2020. Retrieved 17 October 2020.
  48. ^ a b Amery, Rob (2016). Warraparna Kuarna: Reclaiming an Australian Language. Adelaide: Adelaide University Press. ISBN 978-1-925261-24-0.
  49. ^ "Project brings Kaurna language back to life". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 7 October 2014. from the original on 27 November 2020. Retrieved 17 October 2020.
  50. ^ Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2020). Revivalistics: From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199812790. ISBN 9780199812776
  51. ^ a b c Butcher 2018, p. 8.
  52. ^ a b c d Butcher 2018, p. 9.
  53. ^ Butcher 2018, pp. 7–8.
  54. ^ Butcher 2018, p. 7.
  55. ^ a b Butcher 2018.
  56. ^ Fergus, Anelisa (2019). Lend Me Your Ears: Otitis Media and Aboriginal Australian languages (PDF) (BA).
  57. ^ Butcher 2018, pp. 9–10.
  58. ^ Butcher 2018, p. 10.
  59. ^ Glynn-McDonald, Rona (15 January 2021). "First Nations languages". Common Ground. from the original on 29 March 2021. Retrieved 7 November 2021.
  60. ^ a b "Request Rejected". from the original on 7 November 2021. Retrieved 7 November 2021.
  61. ^ "Lynette Oates (1921–2013)". Wycliffe Australia. 12 December 2016. from the original on 13 October 2020. Retrieved 13 October 2020.
  62. ^ "Oates, Lynette F. (Lynette Frances)", Trove, National Library of Australia, from the original on 7 November 2021, retrieved 13 October 2020

Sources

  • "Australia's indigenous languages have one source, study says". BBC News. 28 March 2018. from the original on 28 June 2018. Retrieved 21 July 2018.
  • Bowern, C. 2011. Oxford Bibliographies Online: Australian Languages 1 July 2017 at the Wayback Machine
  • Bowern, Claire (23 December 2011). "How many languages were spoken in Australia?". Anggarrgoon. from the original on 3 February 2019. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  • Bowern, Claire (2012). "The riddle of Tasmanian languages". Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 279 (1747): 4590–4595. doi:10.1098/rspb.2012.1842. PMC 3479735. PMID 23015621.
  • Bowern, Claire; Atkinson, Quentin (2012). "Computational Phylogenetics and the Internal Structure of Pama-Nyungan". Language. 84 (4): 817–845. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.691.3903. doi:10.1353/lan.2012.0081. S2CID 4375648.
  • Butcher, Andrew R. (2018). "The special nature of Australian phonologies: Why auditory constraints on human language sound systems are not universal". Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics. 176th Meeting of Acoustical Society of America. 177th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America. Vol. 35. Acoustical Society of America. p. 060004. doi:10.1121/2.0001004.
  • Dalby, Andrew (2015). Dictionary of Languages: The definitive reference to more than 400 languages. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-408-10214-5. from the original on 23 December 2019. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
  • Dixon, R. M. W. (1980). The Languages of Australia. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-29450-8. from the original on 22 December 2019. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
  • Dixon, R. M. W. (2002). Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development. Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-47378-1. from the original on 21 December 2019. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
  • Dixon, R. M. W. (2011). Searching for Aboriginal Languages: Memoirs of a Field Worker. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-02504-1. from the original on 1 December 2019. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
  • Evans, Nicholas, ed. (2003). The Non-Pama-Nyungan Languages of Northern Australia: Comparative Studies of the Continent's Most Linguistically Complex Region. Pacific Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University. ISBN 978-0-858-83538-2. from the original on 17 April 2021. Retrieved 15 October 2020.
  • Forrest, Walter (June 2017). "The intergenerational transmission of Australian Indigenous languages: why language maintenance programmes should be family-focused". Ethnic and Racial Studies. 41 (2): 303–323. doi:10.1080/01419870.2017.1334938. S2CID 149318200.
  • Goldsworthy, Anna (September 2014). "In Port Augusta, an Israeli linguist is helping the Barngarla people reclaim their language". The Monthly. from the original on 11 March 2016. Retrieved 12 September 2016.
  • Hallett, Darcy; Chandler, Michael J.; Lalonde, Christopher E. (July–September 2007). "Aboriginal language knowledge and youth suicide". Cognitive Development. 22 (3): 392–399. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.134.3386. doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2007.02.001.
  • Harvey, Mark; Mailhammer, Robert (2017). "Reconstructing remote relationships: Proto-Australian noun class prefixation". Diachronica. 34 (4): 470–515. doi:10.1163/187740911x558798. from the original on 17 January 2020. Retrieved 29 March 2018.
  • Hunter, Jessica; Bowern, Claire; Round, Erich (2011). "Reappraising the Effects of Language Contact in the Torres Strait". Journal of Language Contact. 4 (1): 106–140. doi:10.1163/187740911x558798. from the original on 7 November 2021. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
  • *Marchese, David (28 March 2018). "Indigenous languages come from just one common ancestor, researchers say". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. from the original on 30 March 2018. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  • McConvell, P.; Thieberger, Nicholas (November 2001). State of Indigenous languages in Australia 2001 (PDF). Department of the Environment and Heritage. (PDF) from the original on 26 December 2019. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
  • McConvell, Patrick; Evans, Nicholas, eds. (1997). Archaeology and linguistics: aboriginal Australia in global perspective. Oxford University Press Australia. ISBN 978-0-195-53728-4. from the original on 22 December 2019. Retrieved 29 March 2018.
  • McConvell, Patrick & Claire Bowern. 2011. The prehistory and internal relationships of Australian languages. Language and Linguistics Compass 5(1). 19–32.
  • Mitchell, Rod (April 2015), "Ngalmun Lagaw Yangukudu: The Language of our Homeland in Goemulgaw Lagal: Cultural and Natural Histories of the Island of Mabuyag, Torres Strait", Memoirs of the Queensland Museum – Culture, 8 (1): 323–446, ISSN 1440-4788
  • O'Grady, Geoffrey; Hale, Ken (2004). "The Coherence and Distinctiveness of the Pama–Nyungan Language Family within the Australian Linguistic Phylum". In Bowern, Claire; Koch, Harold (eds.). Australian Languages: Classification and the comparative method. John Benjamins Publishing. pp. 69–92. ISBN 978-9-027-29511-8. from the original on 25 December 2019. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
  • Pereltsvaig, Asya (2017). Languages of the World: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-17114-5. from the original on 22 December 2019. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
  • Walsh, Michael (1991). "Overview of indigenous languages of Australia". In Romaine, Suzanne (ed.). Language in Australia. Cambridge University Press. pp. 27–48. ISBN 978-0-521-33983-4. from the original on 24 December 2016. Retrieved 2 November 2016.
  • Wyles, Dwayne (2 June 2019). "Preserving Indigenous languages in IYIL2019 helps custodians heal, taps into knowledge of country". ABC News. from the original on 3 June 2019. Retrieved 3 June 2019.
  • Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (26 August 2009). . The Australian. Archived from the original on 23 September 2009. Retrieved 1 September 2009.
  • Zuckermann, Ghil'ad; Walsh, Michael (2011). "Stop, Revive, Survive: Lessons from the Hebrew Revival Applicable to the Reclamation, Maintenance and Empowerment of Aboriginal Languages and Cultures" (PDF). Australian Journal of Linguistics. 31 (1): 111–127. doi:10.1080/07268602.2011.532859. S2CID 145627187. (PDF) from the original on 28 September 2018. Retrieved 12 September 2016.

Further reading

 
Eastern Arrernte test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator
 
Kriol test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator
 
Noongar test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator
 
Main page/Kriol edition of Wikisource, the free library
 
Pintupi-Luritja test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator
 
Pitjantjatjara test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator
 
Torres Strait Creole test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator
 
Tiwi test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator
 
Warlpiri test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator
  • Simpson, Jane (21 January 2019). "The state of Australia's Indigenous languages – and how we can help people speak them more often". The Conversation.
  • at AIATSIS
  • Aboriginal Australia map, a guide to Aboriginal language, tribal and nation groups published by AIATSIS
  • Aboriginal Languages of Australia
  • (recorded ranges; full view
  • Languages of Australia, as listed by Ethnologue
  • Report of the Second National Indigenous Languages Survey 2014
  • Finding the meaning of an Aboriginal word
  • , Social Justice Report 2009 for more information about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages and policy.
  • Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages (Northern Territory languages only)
  • Bowern, Claire. 2016. "Chirila: Contemporary and Historical Resources for the Indigenous Languages of Australia". Language Documentation and Conservation 10 (2016): 1–44. http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/ldc/?p=1002.

External links

  • CHIRILA: A database of the languages of Australia 23 October 2020 at the Wayback Machine (Contemporary and Historical Reconstruction in the Indigenous Languages of Australia)
  • CHIRILA, Yale Pama-Nyungan Lab
  • Gambay - First Languages Map, an interactive map of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages
  • Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander word lists, State Library of Queensland.
  • Spoken: celebrating Queensland languages digital stories, State Library of Queensland

May 18, 2023
australian, aboriginal, languages, australian, languages, redirects, here, languages, australia, languages, australia, indigenous, languages, australia, number, hundreds, precise, number, being, quite, uncertain, although, there, range, estimates, from, minimu. Australian languages redirects here For all the languages of Australia see Languages of Australia The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds the precise number being quite uncertain although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 1 using the technical definition of language as non mutually intelligible varieties up to possibly 363 2 The Indigenous languages of Australia comprise numerous language families and isolates perhaps as many as 13 spoken by the Indigenous peoples of mainland Australia and a few nearby islands 3 The relationships between the language families are not clear at present although there are proposals to link some into larger groupings Despite this uncertainty the Indigenous Australian languages are collectively covered by the technical term Australian languages 4 or the Australian family a The primary typological division in Australian languages Pama Nyungan languages tan and non Pama Nyungan languages mustard and grey People who speak Australian Aboriginal languages as a percentage of the population in Australia divided geographically by statistical local area at the 2011 census The term can include both Tasmanian languages and the Western Torres Strait language 6 but the genetic relationship to the mainland Australian languages of the former is unknown 7 while the latter is Pama Nyungan though it shares features with the neighbouring Papuan Eastern Trans Fly languages in particular Meriam Mir of the Torres Strait Islands as well as the Papuan Tip Austronesian languages 8 Most Australian languages belong to the widespread Pama Nyungan family while the remainder are classified as non Pama Nyungan which is a term of convenience that does not imply a genealogical relationship In the late 18th century there were more than 250 distinct First Nations Peoples social groupings and a similar number of languages or varieties 6 The status and knowledge of Aboriginal languages today varies greatly Many languages became extinct with settlement as the encroachment of colonial society broke up Indigenous cultures For some of these languages few records exist for vocabulary and grammar At the start of the 21st century fewer than 150 Aboriginal languages remain in daily use 9 with the majority being highly endangered In 2020 90 per cent of the barely more than 100 languages still spoken are considered endangered 10 13 languages are still being transmitted to children 11 The surviving languages are located in the most isolated areas Of the five least endangered Western Australian Aboriginal languages four belong to the Western Desert grouping of the Central and Great Victoria Desert Yolŋu languages from north east Arnhem Land are also currently learned by children Bilingual education is being used successfully in some communities Seven of the most widely spoken Australian languages such as Warlpiri Murrinh patha and Tiwi retain between 1 000 and 3 000 speakers 12 Some Indigenous communities and linguists show support for learning programmes either for language revival proper or for only post vernacular maintenance Indigenous communities having the opportunity to learn some words and concepts related to the lost language 13 Contents 1 Living Aboriginal languages 2 Classification 2 1 Internal 2 2 External 2 3 Families 2 3 1 Glottolog 4 1 2019 2 3 2 Bowern 2011 3 Survival 3 1 Preservation measures 3 2 Language revival 4 Common features 4 1 Phonetics and phonology 4 1 1 Segmental inventory 4 1 2 Coronal consonants 4 1 3 Phonotactics 5 Orthography 6 Demographics 2016 7 Notable linguists 8 See also 9 Notes 9 1 Citations 10 Sources 11 Further reading 12 External linksLiving Aboriginal languages EditThe National Indigenous Languages Survey is a regular Australia wide survey of the status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages 14 conducted in 2005 15 2014 16 and 2019 14 Languages with more than 100 speakers New South Wales 3 languages 600 Yugambeh Bundjalung Bundjalung 100 Yugambeh 20 shared with Queensland Githabul 10 shared with Queensland Wiradjuri 500 Gamilaraay 100 South Australia 4 languages 3 900 Ngarrindjeri 300 Adyamathanha 100 Yankunytjatjara 400 Pitjantjatjara 3 100 shared with Northern Territory and Western Australia Queensland 5 languages 1 800 Kuku Yalanji 300 Guugu Yimidhirr 800 Kuuk Thaayore 300 Wik Mungkan 400 Western Australia 17 languages 8 000 Noongar 500 Wangkatha 300 Ngaanyatjarra 1 000 Manytjilyitjarra 100 Martu Wangka 700 Panyjima 100 Yinjibarndi 400 Nyangumarta 200 Bardi 400 Wajarri 100 Pintupi 100 shared with Northern Territory Pitjantjatjara 3 100 shared with Northern Territory and South Australia Kukatja 100 Walmatjarri 300 Gooniyandi 100 Djaru 200 Kija 200 Miriwoong 200 Northern Territory 19 languages 28 100 Luritja 1 000 Upper Arrernte 4 500 Warlpiri 2 300 Kaytetye 100 Warumungu 300 Gurindji 400 Murrinh Patha 2 000 Tiwi 2 000 Pintupi 100 shared with Western Australia Pitjantjatjara 3 100 shared with Western Australia and South Australia Iwaidja 100 Maung 400 Kunwinjku 1 800 Burarra 1 000 Dhuwal 4 200 Djinang 100 Nunggubuyu 300 Anindilyakwa 1 500 Total 46 languages 42 300 speakers with 11 having only approximately 100 11 languages have over 1 000 speakers Creoles Kriol 20 000 Classification Edit Australian language families From west to east Nyulnyulan Worrorran Bunuban Jarrakan Mindi 2 areas Daly 4 families Wagiman Wardaman Tiwi offshore Darwin Region Iwaidjan Giimbiyu Arnhem incl Gunwinyguan Garawan and Tangkic Pama Nyungan 3 areas Internal Edit Most Australian languages are commonly held to belong to the Pama Nyungan family a family accepted by most linguists with Robert M W Dixon as a notable exception For convenience the rest of the languages all spoken in the far north are commonly lumped together as Non Pama Nyungan although this does not necessarily imply that they constitute a valid clade Dixon argues that after perhaps 40 000 years of mutual influence it is no longer possible to distinguish deep genealogical relationships from areal features in Australia and that not even Pama Nyungan is a valid language family 17 However few other linguists accept Dixon s thesis For example Kenneth L Hale describes Dixon s skepticism as an erroneous phylogenetic assessment which is such an insult to the eminently successful practitioners of Comparative Method Linguistics in Australia that it positively demands a decisive riposte 18 Hale provides pronominal and grammatical evidence with suppletion as well as more than fifty basic vocabulary cognates showing regular sound correspondences between the proto Northern and Middle Pamic pNMP family of the Cape York Peninsula on the Australian northeast coast and proto Ngayarta of the Australian west coast some 3 000 kilometres 1 900 mi apart to support the Pama Nyungan grouping whose age he compares to that of Proto Indo European Johanna Nichols suggests that the northern families may be relatively recent arrivals from Maritime Southeast Asia perhaps later replaced there by the spread of Austronesian That could explain the typological difference between Pama Nyungan and non Pama Nyungan languages but not how a single family came to be so widespread Nicholas Evans suggests that the Pama Nyungan family spread along with the now dominant Aboriginal culture that includes the Australian Aboriginal kinship system In late 2017 Mark Harvey and Robert Mailhammer published a study in Diachronica that hypothesised by analysing noun class prefix paradigms across both Pama Nyungan and the minority non Pama Nyungan languages that a Proto Australian could be reconstructed from which all known Australian languages descend This Proto Australian language they concluded would have been spoken about 12 000 years ago in northern Australia 19 20 21 External Edit For a long time unsuccessful attempts were made to detect a link between Australian and Papuan languages the latter being represented by those spoken on the coastal areas of New Guinea facing the Torres Strait and the Arafura Sea 22 In 1986 William A Foley noted lexical similarities between Robert M W Dixon s 1980 reconstruction of proto Australian and the East New Guinea Highlands languages He believed that it was naive to expect to find a single Papuan or Australian language family when New Guinea and Australia had been a single landmass called the Sahul continent for most of their human history having been separated by the Torres Strait only 8000 years ago and that a deep reconstruction would likely include languages from both Dixon in the meantime later abandoned his proto Australian proposal 23 Families Edit Glottolog 4 1 2019 Edit Glottolog 4 1 2019 recognizes 23 independent families and 9 isolates in Australia comprising a total of 32 independent language groups 24 Families 23 Pama Nyungan 248 Gunwinyguan 12 Western Daly 11 Nyulnyulan 10 Worrorran 10 Mirndi 5 Iwaidjan Proper 4 Mangarrayi Maran 4 Maningrida 4 Tangkic 4 Giimbiyu 3 Jarrakan 3 Yangmanic 3 Bunaban 2 Eastern Daly 2 Northern Daly 2 Southern Daly 2 Garrwan 2 Limilngan Wulna 2 Marrku Wurrugu 2 North Eastern Tasmanian 2 South Eastern Tasmanian 2 Western Tasmanian 2 Isolates 9 Gaagudju extinct Kungarakany Laragia Minkin extinct Oyster Bay Big River Little Swanport Tiwi Umbugarla Wadjiginy Wageman Bowern 2011 Edit According to Claire Bowern s Australian Languages 2011 Australian languages divide into approximately 30 primary sub groups and 5 isolates 2 Presumptive isolates Tiwi Giimbiyu extinct Marrgu extinct Wagiman moribund Wardaman Previously established families Bunuban 2 Daly four to five families with 11 19 languages Iwaidjan 3 7 Jarrakan 3 5 Nyulnyulan 8 Worrorran 7 12 Newly proposed families Mirndi 5 7 Darwin Region 4 Macro Gunwinyguan languages 22 Greater Pama Nyungan Tangkic 5 Garawan 3 Pama Nyungan proper approximately 270 languages Western and Northern Tasmanian extinct Northeastern Tasmanian extinct Eastern Tasmanian extinct Survival EditIt has been inferred from the probable number of languages and the estimate of pre contact population levels that there may have been from 3 000 to 4 000 speakers on average for each of the 250 languages 25 A number of these languages were almost immediately wiped out within decades of colonisation the case of the Aboriginal Tasmanians being one notorious example of precipitous linguistic ethnocide Tasmania had been separated from the mainland at the end of the Quaternary glaciation and Indigenous Tasmanians remained isolated from the outside world for around 12 000 years Claire Bowern has concluded in a recent study that there were twelve Tasmanian languages and that those languages are unrelated that is not demonstrably related to those on the Australian mainland 26 In 1990 it was estimated that 90 languages still survived of the approximately 250 once spoken but with a high rate of attrition as elders died out Of the 90 70 by 2001 were judged as severely endangered with only 17 spoken by all age groups a definition of a strong language 27 On these grounds it is anticipated that despite efforts at linguistic preservation many of the remaining languages will disappear within the next generation The overall trend suggests that in the not too distant future all of the Indigenous languages will be lost perhaps by 2050 28 and with them the cultural knowledge they convey 29 During the period of the Stolen Generations Aboriginal children were removed from their families and placed in institutions where they were punished for speaking their Indigenous language Different mutually unintelligible language groups were often mixed together with Australian Aboriginal English or Australian Kriol language as the only lingua franca The result was a disruption to the inter generational transmission of these languages that severely impacted their future use Today that same transmission of language between parents and grandparents to their children is a key mechanism for reversing language shift 30 For children proficiency in the language of their cultural heritage has a positive influence on their ethnic identity formation citation needed and it is thought to be of particular benefit to the emotional well being of Indigenous children There is some evidence to suggest that the reversal of the Indigenous language shift may lead to decreased self harm and suicide rates among Indigenous youth 31 The first Aboriginal people to use Australian Aboriginal languages in the Australian parliament were Aden Ridgeway on 25 August 1999 in the Senate when he said On this special occasion I make my presence known as an Aborigine and to this chamber I say perhaps for the first time Nyandi baaliga Jaingatti Nyandi mimiga Gumbayynggir Nya jawgar yaam Gumbyynggir 32 and in the House of Representatives on 31 August 2016 Linda Burney gave an acknowledgment of country in Wiradjuri in her first speech 33 and was sung in by Lynette Riley in Wiradjuri from the public gallery 34 Preservation measures Edit 2019 was the International Year of Indigenous Languages IYIL2019 as declared by the United Nations General Assembly The commemoration was used to raise awareness of and support for the preservation of Aboriginal languages within Australia including spreading knowledge about the importance of each language to the identity and knowledge of Indigenous groups Warrgamay Girramay man Troy Wyles Whelan joined the North Queensland Regional Aboriginal Corporation Language Centre NQRACLC in 2008 and has been contributing oral histories and the results of his own research to their database 35 As part of the efforts to raise awareness of Wiradjuri language a Grammar of Wiradjuri language 36 was published in 2014 and A new Wiradjuri dictionary 37 in 2010 38 The New South Wales Aboriginal Languages Act 2017 became law on 24 October 2017 39 It was the first legislation in Australia to acknowledge the significance of first languages 40 In 2019 the Royal Australian Mint issued a 50 cent coin to celebrate the International Year of Indigenous Languages which features 14 different words for money from Australian Indigenous languages 41 42 The coin was designed by Aleksandra Stokic in consultation with Indigenous language custodian groups 42 The work of digitising and transcribing many word lists created by ethnographer Daisy Bates in the 1900s at Daisy Bates Online 43 provides a valuable resource for those researching especially Western Australian languages and some languages of the Northern Territory and South Australia 44 The project is co ordinated by Nick Thieberger who works in collaboration with the National Library of Australia to have all the microfilmed images from Section XII of the Bates papers digitised 45 The project is succeeded by the Nyingarn Project 46 which digitises manuscripts and crowdsources transcriptions through DigiVol Language revival Edit In recent decades there have been attempts to revive indigenous languages 47 Significant challenges exist however for the revival of languages in the dominant English language culture of Australia 48 The Kaurna language spoken by the Kaurna people of the Adelaide plains has been the subject of a concerted revival movement since the 1980s coordinated by Kaurna Warra Pintyanthi a unit working out of the University of Adelaide 49 The language had rapidly disappeared after the settlement of South Australia and the breaking up of local indigenous people Ivaritji the last known speaker of the language died in 1931 However a substantial number of primary source records existed for the language from which the language was reconstructed 48 Common features EditThis section includes a list of references related reading or external links but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations Please help to improve this section by introducing more precise citations December 2019 Learn how and when to remove this template message Some Aboriginal people distinguish between usership and ownership There are even those who claim that they own a language although they only know one single word of it its name 50 212 Whether it is due to genetic unity or some other factor such as occasional contact typologically the Australian languages form a language area or Sprachbund sharing much of their vocabulary and many distinctive phonological features across the entire continent A common feature of many Australian languages is that they display so called avoidance speech special speech registers used only in the presence of certain close relatives These registers share the phonology and grammar of the standard language but the lexicon is different and usually very restricted There are also commonly speech taboos during extended periods of mourning or initiation that have led to numerous Aboriginal sign languages For morphosyntactic alignment many Australian languages have ergative absolutive case systems These are typically split systems a widespread pattern is for pronouns or first and second persons to have nominative accusative case marking and for third person to be ergative absolutive though splits between animate and inanimate are also found In some languages the persons in between the accusative and ergative inflections such as second person or third person human may be tripartite that is marked overtly as either ergative or accusative in transitive clauses but not marked as either in intransitive clauses There are also a few languages which employ only nominative accusative case marking citation needed Phonetics and phonology Edit This section contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet IPA For an introductory guide on IPA symbols see Help IPA For the distinction between and see IPA Brackets and transcription delimiters The following represents a canonical 6 place Australian Aboriginal consonant system It does not represent any single language but is instead a simplified form of the consonant inventory of what would be found in many Australian languages including most Arandic and Yolŋu languages 51 Peripheral CoronalApical LaminalBilabial Velar Alveolar Retroflex Dental Alveolo palatalObstruent Plosive p k t ʈ t ȶSonorant Nasal m ŋ n ɳ n ȵLateral l ɭ l ȴRhotic r ɻGlide w jSegmental inventory Edit A typical Australian phonological inventory includes just three vowels usually i u a which may occur in both long and short variants 52 In a few cases the u has been unrounded to give i ɯ a There is almost never a voicing contrast 53 that is a consonant may sound like a p at the beginning of a word but like a b between vowels and either letter could be and often is chosen to represent it Australia also stands out as being almost entirely free of fricative consonants even of h 54 In the few cases where fricatives do occur they developed recently through the lenition weakening of stops and are therefore non sibilants like d rather than the sibilants like s that are common elsewhere in the world Some languages also have three rhotics typically a flap a trill and an approximant that is like the combined rhotics of English and Spanish and many have four laterals Besides the lack of fricatives the most striking feature of Australian speech sounds is the large number of places of articulation Some 10 15 of Australian languages have four places of articulation with two coronal places of articulation 40 50 have five places and 40 45 have six places of articulation including four coronals In contrast the overwhelming majority of languages worldwide have only one coronal place of articulation The four way distinction in the coronal region is commonly accomplished through two variables the position of the tongue front alveolar or dental or retroflex and its shape apical or laminal 51 There are also bilabial velar and often palatal consonants but a complete absence of uvular consonants and only a few languages with a glottal stop Both stops and nasals occur at all six places and in many languages laterals occur at all four coronal places 51 Butcher 2018 speculates that the unusual segmental inventories of Australian languages may be due to the very high presence of otitis media ear infections and resulting hearing loss in their populations People with hearing loss often have trouble distinguishing different vowels and hearing fricatives and voicing contrasts Australian Aboriginal languages thus seem to show similarities to the speech of people with hearing loss and avoid those sounds and distinctions which are difficult for people with early childhood hearing loss to perceive At the same time Australian languages make full use of those distinctions namely place of articulation distinctions which people with otitis media caused hearing loss can perceive more easily 55 This hypothesis has been challenged on historical comparative statistical and medical grounds 56 A language which displays the full range of stops nasals and laterals is Kalkatungu which has labial p m dental th nh lh alveolar t n l retroflex rt rn rl palatal ty ny ly and velar k ng Wangganguru has all this as well as three rhotics Yanyuwa has even more contrasts with an additional true dorso palatal series plus prenasalised consonants at all seven places of articulation in addition to all four laterals A notable exception to the above generalisations is Kalaw Lagaw Ya spoken in the Torres Strait Islands which has an inventory more like its Papuan neighbours than the languages of the Australian mainland including full voice contrasts p b dental t d alveolar t d the sibilants s z which have allophonic variation with tʃ and dʒ respectively and velar k ɡ as well as only one rhotic one lateral and three nasals labial dental and velar in contrast to the 5 places of articulation of stops sibilants Where vowels are concerned it has 8 vowels with some morpho syntactic as well as phonemic length contrasts i iː e eː a aː e eː ɔ ɔː o oː ʊ ʊː u uː and glides that distinguish between those that are in origin vowels and those that in origin are consonants Kunjen and other neighbouring languages have also developed contrasting aspirated consonants pʰ t ʰ tʰ cʰ kʰ not found further south Coronal consonants Edit Descriptions of the coronal articulations can be inconsistent The alveolar series t n l or d n l is straightforward across the continent these sounds are alveolar that is pronounced by touching the tongue to the ridge just behind the gum line of the upper teeth and apical that is touching that ridge with the tip of the tongue This is very similar to English t d n l though the Australian t is not aspirated even in Kalaw Lagaw Ya despite its other stops being aspirated The other apical series is the retroflex rt rn rl or rd rn rl Here the place is further back in the mouth in the postalveolar or prepalatal region The articulation is actually most commonly subapical that is the tongue curls back so that the underside of the tip makes contact That is they are true retroflex consonants It has been suggested that subapical pronunciation is characteristic of more careful speech while these sounds tend to be apical in rapid speech Kalaw Lagaw Ya and many other languages in North Queensland differ from most other Australian languages in not having a retroflexive series The dental series th nh lh are always laminal that is pronounced by touching with the surface of the tongue just above the tip called the blade of the tongue but may be formed in one of three different ways depending on the language on the speaker and on how carefully the speaker pronounces the sound These are interdental with the tip of the tongue visible between the teeth as in th in English dental with the tip of the tongue down behind the lower teeth so that the blade is visible between the teeth and denti alveolar that is with both the tip and the blade making contact with the back of the upper teeth and alveolar ridge as in French t d n l The first tends to be used in careful enunciation and the last in more rapid speech while the tongue down articulation is less common Finally the palatal series ty ny ly The stop is often spelled dj tj or j Here the contact is also laminal but further back spanning the alveolar to postalveolar or the postalveolar to prepalatal regions The tip of the tongue is typically down behind the lower teeth This is similar to the closed articulation of Circassian fricatives see Postalveolar consonant The body of the tongue is raised towards the palate This is similar to the domed English postalveolar fricative sh Because the tongue is peeled from the roof of the mouth from back to front during the release of these stops there is a fair amount of frication giving the ty something of the impression of the English palato alveolar affricate ch or the Polish alveolo palatal affricate c That is these consonants are not palatal in the IPA sense of the term and indeed they contrast with true palatals in Yanyuwa In Kalaw Lagaw Ya the palatal consonants are sub phonemes of the alveolar sibilants s and z These descriptions do not apply exactly to all Australian languages as the notes regarding Kalaw Lagaw Ya demonstrate However they do describe most of them and are the expected norm against which languages are compared Phonotactics Edit Some have suggested that the most appropriate unit to describe the phonotactics of Australian languages is the phonological word The most common word length is two syllables and a typical phonological word would have the form CINIT V1C1 C2 V2 CFIN with the first syllable being stressed 52 The optionality of CFIN is cross linguistically normal since coda consonants are weak or nonexistent in many languages as well as in the early stages of language acquisition The weakening of CINIT on the other hand is very unusual No Australian language has consonant clusters in this position and those languages with fortis and lenis distinctions do not make such distinctions in this position Place of articulation distinctions are also less common in this position and lenitions and deletions are historically common here While in most languages the word initial position is prominent maintaining all a language s contrasts that is not the case in Australia Here the prominent position is C1 C2 in the middle of the word C1 is typically the only position allowing all of a language s place of articulation contrasts Fortis lenis contrasts can only occur at C1 or at C2 when C1 is a sonorant Consonant clusters are often restricted to the C1 C2 position and are most commonly sonorant obstruent sequences In languages with pre stopped nasals or laterals those sounds only occur at C1 52 Australian languages typically resist certain connected speech processes which might blur the place of articulation of consonants at C1 C2 such as anticipatory assimilation of place of articulation which is common around the world In Australia this type of assimilation seems only to have affected consonants within the apical and laminal categories There s little evidence of assimilation between the labial apical laminal and dorsal categories Many proto Pama Nyungan np and nk clusters have been preserved across Australia Heterorganic nasal stop sequences remain stable even in modern connected speech which is highly unusual 52 The anticipatory assimilation of nasality is quite common in various languages around the world Typically a vowel will become nasalized before a following nasal consonant However this process is resisted in Australian languages There was a historical process in many languages where nasal stop C1C2 clusters lost the nasal element if CINIT was a nasal Also many languages have morphophonemic alterations whereby initial nasals in suffixes are denasalized if the preceding stem contains a nasal consonant While the existence of phonemic pre stopped nasals and laterals contrasting with plain nasals and laterals has been documented in some Australian languages nasals and laterals are pre stopped on a phonetic level in most languages of the continent These phenomena are the result of a general resistance to the anticipatory assimilation of nasality and laterality The lack of assimilation makes coda nasals and laterals more acoustically distinct 57 Most speakers of Australian languages speak with a pressed voice quality with the glottal opening narrower than in modal voice a relatively high frequency of creaky voice and low airflow This may be due to an avoidance of breathy voice This pressed quality could therefore serve to enhance the clarity of speech and ensure the perception of place of articulation distinctions 58 The weakness of initial consonants in Australian Aboriginal languages is characteristic of hearing impaired speech and has been speculated to be the result of high rates of Otitis media caused hearing loss in Aboriginal communities Other characteristics of Australian Aboriginal languages phonotactics such as their avoidance of assimilation and the pressed voice quality may be due to the result of strategies to fully exploit all the restricted auditory space caused by hearing loss and to preserve all of the place distinctions 55 Orthography EditMain article Transcription of Australian Aboriginal languages Probably every Australian language with speakers remaining has had an orthography developed for it in each case in the Latin script Sounds not found in English are usually represented by digraphs or more rarely by diacritics such as underlines or extra symbols sometimes borrowed from the International Phonetic Alphabet Some examples are shown in the following table Language Example Translation TypePitjantjatjara paṉa earth dirt ground land diacritic underline indicates retroflex n Wajarri nhanha this this one digraph indicating n with dental articulationYolŋu yolŋu person man ŋ from IPA for velar nasalDemographics 2016 EditIn the Northern Territory 62 5 of Aboriginal Australians spoke an indigenous language at home in 2016 59 60 moved resource In Queensland almost 95 of Torres Strait Islanders spoke an indigenous language at home in 2016 60 moved resource Place Population that speaks an Indigenous language Percentage that speaks an Indigenous languageTorres Strait Islands 3 159 69 9 Northern Territory 34 956 15 Western Australia 10 251 0 4 Queensland 13 474 0 3 South Australia 3 392 0 2 New South Wales 1 922 0 Victoria 526 0 Australian Capital Territory 132 0 Tasmania 70 0 Notable linguists EditA number of linguists and ethnographers have contributed greatly to the sum of knowledge about Australian languages Of particular note are Barry Blake Claire Bowern Gavan Breen Arthur Capell R M W Dixon Kenneth Hale Margaret Heffernan Luise Hercus David Nash Lynette Oates 1921 2013 61 62 Nicholas Evans Rachel NordlingerSee also Edit Australia portalAboriginal Australians Australian Aboriginal sign languages List of Aboriginal Australian group names List of Australian Aboriginal languages List of Aboriginal languages of New South Wales List of Australian place names of Aboriginal origin List of endangered languages with mobile apps List of reduplicated Australian place names Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages Macro Gunwinyguan languages Macro Pama Nyungan languagesNotes Edit Dixon 1980 claimed that all but two or three of the 200 languages of Australia can be shown to belong to one language family the Australian family In the same way that most of the languages of Europe and Western Asia belong to the Indo European family 5 Citations Edit Dixon 2002 pp 2 a b Bowern 2011 Evans 2003 p 2 Dixon 2011 pp 253 254 Dixon 1980 p 3 a b Walsh 1991 p 27 Bowern 2012 p 4593 Mitchell 2015 Dalby 2015 p 43 Morse Dana 13 November 2020 The next generation is bringing Australia s ancient languages into the future ABC News Australian Broadcasting Corporation Archived from the original on 13 November 2020 Retrieved 13 November 2020 Goldsworthy 2014 UNESCO atlas online Zuckermann 2009 a b National Indigenous Languages Report NILR Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies 6 November 2018 Archived from the original on 6 August 2020 Retrieved 6 February 2020 National Indigenous Languages Survey Report 2005 Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies 19 February 2016 Archived from the original on 1 August 2020 Retrieved 6 February 2020 Community identity wellbeing The report of the Second National Indigenous Languages Survey Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies 16 February 2015 Archived from the original on 16 August 2020 Retrieved 6 February 2020 Dixon 2002 48 53 O Grady amp Hale 2004 p 69 ABC 2018 BBC 2018 Harvey amp Mailhammer 2017 pp 470 515 Pereltsvaig 2017 p 278 Dixon 2002 pp xvii xviii Hammarstrom Harald Forkel Robert Haspelmath Martin eds 2019 Glottolog 4 1 Jena Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History Archived from the original on 11 December 2019 Retrieved 30 December 2019 McConvell amp Thieberger 2001 p 16 Bowern 2012 pp 4590 4593 McConvell amp Thieberger 2001 pp 17 61 Forrest 2017 p 1 McConvell amp Thieberger 2001 p 96 Forrest 2017 Hallett Chandler amp Lalonde 2007 pp 392 399 Senate Official Hansard No 198 1999 Wednesday 25 August 1999 Parliament of Australia Archived from the original on 4 June 2019 Retrieved 26 June 2019 First Speech Hon Linda Burney MP Commonwealth Parliament Archived from the original on 26 June 2019 Retrieved 26 June 2019 Battin Jacqueline 21 May 2018 Indigenous Languages in Australian Parliaments Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Archived from the original on 30 May 2019 Retrieved 26 June 2019 Wyles 2019 Grant Stan Rudder John 2014 A grammar of Wiradjuri language Rest ISBN 978 0 86942 151 2 Grant Stan Grant Stan 1940 Rudder John 2010 A new Wiradjuri dictionary Restoration House ISBN 978 0 86942 150 5 a href Template Citation html title Template Citation citation a CS1 maint multiple names authors list link Wiradjuri Resources Australian Aboriginal Languages Student Blog 6 May 2018 Archived from the original on 26 June 2019 Retrieved 26 June 2019 Aboriginal Languages Act 2017 No 51 NSW Legislation Archived from the original on 29 March 2018 Retrieved 26 June 2019 Protecting NSW Aboriginal languages Languages Legislation Aboriginal Affairs NSW NSW Aboriginal Affairs Archived from the original on 14 June 2019 Retrieved 26 June 2019 International Year of Indigenous Languages commemorated with new coins launched by Royal Australian Mint and AIATSIS Royal Australian Mint 8 April 2019 Archived from the original on 26 June 2019 Retrieved 26 June 2019 a b Meakins Felicity Walsh Michael The 14 Indigenous words for money on our new 50 cent coin The Conversation Archived from the original on 28 June 2019 Retrieved 26 June 2019 Digital Daisy Bates Digital Daisy Bates Archived from the original on 30 December 2019 Retrieved 26 January 2020 Map Digital Daisy Bates Archived from the original on 27 February 2020 Retrieved 26 January 2020 Technical details Digital Daisy Bates Archived from the original on 27 February 2020 Retrieved 26 January 2020 Background Nyingarn Retrieved 7 September 2022 Language is connected to all things Why reviving Indigenous languages is so important ABC Life Australian Broadcasting Corporation 20 February 2019 Archived from the original on 23 October 2020 Retrieved 17 October 2020 a b Amery Rob 2016 Warraparna Kuarna Reclaiming an Australian Language Adelaide Adelaide University Press ISBN 978 1 925261 24 0 Project brings Kaurna language back to life Australian Broadcasting Corporation 7 October 2014 Archived from the original on 27 November 2020 Retrieved 17 October 2020 Zuckermann Ghil ad 2020 Revivalistics From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond New York Oxford University Press ISBN 9780199812790 ISBN 9780199812776 a b c Butcher 2018 p 8 a b c d Butcher 2018 p 9 Butcher 2018 pp 7 8 Butcher 2018 p 7 a b Butcher 2018 Fergus Anelisa 2019 Lend Me Your Ears Otitis Media and Aboriginal Australian languages PDF BA Butcher 2018 pp 9 10 Butcher 2018 p 10 Glynn McDonald Rona 15 January 2021 First Nations languages Common Ground Archived from the original on 29 March 2021 Retrieved 7 November 2021 a b Request Rejected Archived from the original on 7 November 2021 Retrieved 7 November 2021 Lynette Oates 1921 2013 Wycliffe Australia 12 December 2016 Archived from the original on 13 October 2020 Retrieved 13 October 2020 Oates Lynette F Lynette Frances Trove National Library of Australia archived from the original on 7 November 2021 retrieved 13 October 2020Sources Edit Australia s indigenous languages have one source study says BBC News 28 March 2018 Archived from the original on 28 June 2018 Retrieved 21 July 2018 Bowern C 2011 Oxford Bibliographies Online Australian Languages Archived 1 July 2017 at the Wayback Machine Bowern Claire 23 December 2011 How many languages were spoken in Australia Anggarrgoon Archived from the original on 3 February 2019 Retrieved 30 March 2018 Bowern Claire 2012 The riddle of Tasmanian languages Proceedings of the Royal Society B 279 1747 4590 4595 doi 10 1098 rspb 2012 1842 PMC 3479735 PMID 23015621 Bowern Claire Atkinson Quentin 2012 Computational Phylogenetics and the Internal Structure of Pama Nyungan Language 84 4 817 845 CiteSeerX 10 1 1 691 3903 doi 10 1353 lan 2012 0081 S2CID 4375648 Butcher Andrew R 2018 The special nature of Australian phonologies Why auditory constraints on human language sound systems are not universal Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics 176th Meeting of Acoustical Society of America 177th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America Vol 35 Acoustical Society of America p 060004 doi 10 1121 2 0001004 Dalby Andrew 2015 Dictionary of Languages The definitive reference to more than 400 languages Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN 978 1 408 10214 5 Archived from the original on 23 December 2019 Retrieved 30 August 2017 Dixon R M W 1980 The Languages of Australia Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 29450 8 Archived from the original on 22 December 2019 Retrieved 30 August 2017 Dixon R M W 2002 Australian Languages Their Nature and Development Vol 1 Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 47378 1 Archived from the original on 21 December 2019 Retrieved 30 August 2017 Dixon R M W 2011 Searching for Aboriginal Languages Memoirs of a Field Worker Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 1 108 02504 1 Archived from the original on 1 December 2019 Retrieved 30 August 2017 Evans Nicholas ed 2003 The Non Pama Nyungan Languages of Northern Australia Comparative Studies of the Continent s Most Linguistically Complex Region Pacific Linguistics Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies Australian National University ISBN 978 0 858 83538 2 Archived from the original on 17 April 2021 Retrieved 15 October 2020 Forrest Walter June 2017 The intergenerational transmission of Australian Indigenous languages why language maintenance programmes should be family focused Ethnic and Racial Studies 41 2 303 323 doi 10 1080 01419870 2017 1334938 S2CID 149318200 Goldsworthy Anna September 2014 In Port Augusta an Israeli linguist is helping the Barngarla people reclaim their language The Monthly Archived from the original on 11 March 2016 Retrieved 12 September 2016 Hallett Darcy Chandler Michael J Lalonde Christopher E July September 2007 Aboriginal language knowledge and youth suicide Cognitive Development 22 3 392 399 CiteSeerX 10 1 1 134 3386 doi 10 1016 j cogdev 2007 02 001 Harvey Mark Mailhammer Robert 2017 Reconstructing remote relationships Proto Australian noun class prefixation Diachronica 34 4 470 515 doi 10 1163 187740911x558798 Archived from the original on 17 January 2020 Retrieved 29 March 2018 Hunter Jessica Bowern Claire Round Erich 2011 Reappraising the Effects of Language Contact in the Torres Strait Journal of Language Contact 4 1 106 140 doi 10 1163 187740911x558798 Archived from the original on 7 November 2021 Retrieved 30 August 2017 Marchese David 28 March 2018 Indigenous languages come from just one common ancestor researchers say Australian Broadcasting Corporation Archived from the original on 30 March 2018 Retrieved 30 March 2018 McConvell P Thieberger Nicholas November 2001 State of Indigenous languages in Australia 2001 PDF Department of the Environment and Heritage Archived PDF from the original on 26 December 2019 Retrieved 30 August 2017 McConvell Patrick Evans Nicholas eds 1997 Archaeology and linguistics aboriginal Australia in global perspective Oxford University Press Australia ISBN 978 0 195 53728 4 Archived from the original on 22 December 2019 Retrieved 29 March 2018 McConvell Patrick amp Claire Bowern 2011 The prehistory and internal relationships of Australian languages Language and Linguistics Compass 5 1 19 32 Mitchell Rod April 2015 Ngalmun Lagaw Yangukudu The Language of our Homeland in Goemulgaw Lagal Cultural and Natural Histories of the Island of Mabuyag Torres Strait Memoirs of the Queensland Museum Culture 8 1 323 446 ISSN 1440 4788 O Grady Geoffrey Hale Ken 2004 The Coherence and Distinctiveness of the Pama Nyungan Language Family within the Australian Linguistic Phylum In Bowern Claire Koch Harold eds Australian Languages Classification and the comparative method John Benjamins Publishing pp 69 92 ISBN 978 9 027 29511 8 Archived from the original on 25 December 2019 Retrieved 30 August 2017 Pereltsvaig Asya 2017 Languages of the World An Introduction Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 1 107 17114 5 Archived from the original on 22 December 2019 Retrieved 30 August 2017 Walsh Michael 1991 Overview of indigenous languages of Australia In Romaine Suzanne ed Language in Australia Cambridge University Press pp 27 48 ISBN 978 0 521 33983 4 Archived from the original on 24 December 2016 Retrieved 2 November 2016 Wyles Dwayne 2 June 2019 Preserving Indigenous languages in IYIL2019 helps custodians heal taps into knowledge of country ABC News Archived from the original on 3 June 2019 Retrieved 3 June 2019 Zuckermann Ghil ad 26 August 2009 Aboriginal languages deserve revival The Australian Archived from the original on 23 September 2009 Retrieved 1 September 2009 Zuckermann Ghil ad Walsh Michael 2011 Stop Revive Survive Lessons from the Hebrew Revival Applicable to the Reclamation Maintenance and Empowerment of Aboriginal Languages and Cultures PDF Australian Journal of Linguistics 31 1 111 127 doi 10 1080 07268602 2011 532859 S2CID 145627187 Archived PDF from the original on 28 September 2018 Retrieved 12 September 2016 Further reading Edit Eastern Arrernte test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator Kriol test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator Noongar test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator Main page Kriol edition of Wikisource the free library Pintupi Luritja test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator Pitjantjatjara test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator Torres Strait Creole test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator Tiwi test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator Warlpiri test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator Simpson Jane 21 January 2019 The state of Australia s Indigenous languages and how we can help people speak them more often The Conversation AUSTLANG Australian Indigenous Languages Database at AIATSIS Aboriginal Australia map a guide to Aboriginal language tribal and nation groups published by AIATSIS Aboriginal Languages of Australia The AIATSIS map of Aboriginal Australia recorded ranges full view here Languages of Australia as listed by Ethnologue Report of the Second National Indigenous Languages Survey 2014 Finding the meaning of an Aboriginal word Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Social Justice Report 2009 for more information about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages and policy Living Archive of Aboriginal Languages Northern Territory languages only Bowern Claire 2016 Chirila Contemporary and Historical Resources for the Indigenous Languages of Australia Language Documentation and Conservation 10 2016 1 44 http nflrc hawaii edu ldc p 1002 External links EditCHIRILA A database of the languages of Australia Archived 23 October 2020 at the Wayback Machine Contemporary and Historical Reconstruction in the Indigenous Languages of Australia CHIRILA Yale Pama Nyungan LabGambay First Languages Map an interactive map of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander word lists State Library of Queensland Spoken celebrating Queensland languages digital stories State Library of Queensland Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Australian Aboriginal languages amp oldid 1152253426, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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