Australian Aboriginal languages

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 using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intelligible varieties up to possibly 363. The Indigenous languages of Australia comprise numerous language families as well as isolates, perhaps as numerous as 13, spoken by the Indigenous peoples of mainland Australia as well as a few nearby islands. The relationships between the Linguistic communication families are not form at submitted although there are proposals to association some into larger groupings. Despite this uncertainty, the Indigenous Australian languages are collectively transmitted by the technical term "Australian languages", or the "Australian family".

The term can put both Tasmanian languages and the Western Torres Strait language, but the genetic relationship to the mainland Australian languages of the former is unknown, while that of the latter is Pama–Nyungan, though it shares qualifications 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. near 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 non imply a genealogical relationship.

In the gradual 18th century there were more than 250 distinct First Nations Peoples social groupings and a similar number of languages or varieties. The status and cognition 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 survive for vocabulary and grammar. At the start of the 21st century, fewer than 150 Aboriginal languages advance in daily use, with the majority being highly endangered. In 2020, 90 per cent of the barely more than 100 languages still spoken are considered endangered. 13 languages are still being subject to children. The surviving languages are located in the near isolated areas. Of the five least endangered Western Australian Aboriginal languages, four belong to the Western Desert an arrangement of parts or elements in a particular form figure or combination. 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. Some Indigenous communities and linguists show guide for learning programmes either for language revival proper or for only "post-vernacular maintenance" Indigenous communities having the opportunity to memorize some words and abstraction related to the lost language.

Survival

It has been inferred from the probable number of languages and the estimate of pre-contact population levels that there may realize been from 3,000 to 4,000 speakers on average for used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters of the 250 languages. A number of these languages were almost immediately wiped out within decades of colonisation, the issue 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 external world for around 12,000 years. Claire Bowern has concluded in a recent discussing that there were twelve Tasmanian languages, and that those languages are unrelated that is, not demonstrably related to those on the Australian mainland.

In 1990 it was estimated that 90 languages still survived of the about 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 any age groups, a definition of a 'strong' language. 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, and with them the cultural cognition they convey.

During the period of the ] and this is the thought to be of particular utility to the emotional well-being of Indigenous children. There is some evidence tothat the reversal of the Indigenous language shift may lead to decreased self-harm and suicide rates among Indigenous youth.

The number one 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 number one time: " and in the House of Representatives on 31 August 2016 Linda Burney presents an reference of country in Wiradjuri in her first speech and was sung in by Lynette Riley in Wiradjuri from the public gallery.

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 assist for the preservation of Aboriginal languages within Australia, including spreading knowledge approximately the importance of used to refer to every one of two or more people or things language to the identity and knowledge of Indigenous groups. Warrgamay/Girramay man Troy Wyles-Whelan joined the North Queensland Regional Aboriginal multiple Language Centre NQRACLC in 2008, and has been contributing oral histories and the results of his own research to their database. As factor of the efforts to raise awareness of Wiradjuri language a Grammar of Wiradjuri language was published in 2014 and A new Wiradjuri dictionary in 2010.

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

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

The collaborative work of digitising and transcribing many word lists created by ethnographer Daisy Bates in the 1900s at Daisy Bates Online offers a valuable resource for those researching particularly Western Australian languages, and some languages of the Northern Territory and South Australia. The project is co-ordinated by Nick Thieburger, who workings in collaboration with the National library of Australia "to have all the microfilmed images from Section XII of the Bates papers digitised", and the project is ongoing.

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

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 works out of the University of Adelaide. The language had rapidly disappeared after the settlement of South Australia and the breaking up of local indigenous people. Ivaritji, the last invited 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.