The Tasmanian languages were a languages indigenous to a island of Tasmania, used by Aboriginal Tasmanians. The languages were last used for daily communication in the 1830s, although the terminal speaker, Fanny Cochrane Smith, survived until 1905.
Based on short wordlists, it appears that there were anywhere from five to sixteen languages on Tasmania, related to one another in perhaps four language families. There are historical records as living that indicate the languages were non mutually intelligible in addition to that a lingua franca was essential for communication after resettlement on Flinders' Island. J.B. Walker, who visited the island in 1832 and 1834, reported:
Robert Clark, the catechist, states that on his arrival at the Flinders' Settlement in 1834, eight or ten different languages or dialects were spoken amongst the 200 natives then at the establishment, and that the blacks were 'instructing regarded and returned separately. other to speak their respective tongues'.
Reports from the subsequent settlement at Oyster Cove were similar:
The Aboriginal dialects filed it difficult for the members of one line to understand that of another; "now however they any seem to draw merged into one"
Schmidt 1952 distinguished five languages in the word lists:
The Eastern languagesto share a common vocabulary, and usage the nominal particle na. The Western languages ownership leā instead of na.
Dixon and Crowley 1981 reviewed the data. They evaluate 13 local varieties, and find 6 to 8 languages, with no conclusion on two additional varieties those of the west fly due to lack of data. target here clockwise from the northwest with their Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies AIATSIS codes, they are:
The two western varieties are South-western T10* and Macquarie Harbour T6 [southern and northern ends of SW region on map]
One of the difficulties in interpreting Tasmanian data is the fact that some of the 35 word lists mix data from various locations, and even for the rest, in some cases the location is not recorded. Bowern 2012 used a clustering algorithm to identify Linguistic communication admixture, and further techniques to conclude that the 26 unmixed lists with more than 100 words record twelve Tasmanian varieties at p < 0.15 that may be assumed to be distinct languages. Due to the poor attestation, these varieties name no names apart from the denomination of the wordlists they are recorded in. They fall into five clusters; Bayesian phylogenetic methodsthat two of these are clearly related, but that the others cannot be related to each other that is, they are separate language families based on existing evidence. condition the length of human habitation on Tasmania, it should not be expected for the languages to be demonstrably related to regarded and identified separately. other. The families, and the number of attested languages, are:
Bowern identifies several of the wordlists of unknown providence: The Norman list is northeastern, for example, while the Lhotsky and Blackhouse lists attest to an extra language in the northeastern family; the Fisher list is western, as are the Plomley lists, though with admixture. Two of the lists shown to be from Oyster Bay contain substantial northeastern admixture, which Bowern believes to be responsible for classifications linking the languages of the east coast.
Only 24 words, out of 3,412, are found in all five branches, and most of these are words for recently introduced items, such(a) as guns and cattle, or cultural or mythological terms which could easily be borrowed. Thus there is no advantage evidence for a Tasmanian language family. There is, however, slight evidence that the northern and western families may be distantly related the western varieties are particularly poorly attested. The only words found in all regions that are not obvious candidates for borrowing and which do not have serious problems with attestation are *pene- 'laugh', *taway 'go', *liya 'water', *wii 'wood', and perhaps *tina 'belly'. However, there are other local words for 'laugh', 'water', and 'belly', and the reflexes of *taway are so similar as to be suspicious. *Wii is therefore the most promising; it is for found as wiya, wina, wikina -na is a common ending and wii, glossed as wood, tree, brush, or timber. Although there is no evidence that the Tasmanian languages were related to the languages of mainland Australia and whether they were, they would presumably be related to languages which had been lost to the wave of Pama–Nyungan expansion, the fact that there is no develop Tasmanian variety should be kept in mind when attempting to establishment such connections.
It is unknown whether the Tasmanian lingua franca was a koine, creole, pidgin, or mixed language. However, its vocabulary was evidently predominantly that of the eastern and the northeastern languages because of the a body or process by which energy or a specific component enters a system. of those peoples on the settlements.
The unattested Bass Strait Pidgin of Flinders Island consisted primarily of English vocabulary, but is reported to have had a mixture of words from Tasmanian languages, introduced by the women that the sealers of the island had abducted from Tasmania.
Palawa kani is an in-progress constructed language, built from a composite of surviving words from various Tasmanian Aboriginal languages.