Australian Aboriginal languages

Australian aboriginal languages are the native languages spoken by the indigenous peoples of Australia. Before the arrival of European settlers in 1788, Australia was home to more than two hundred and fifty unique languages and five to seven hundred dialects in nearly thirty language groups. By the twenty-first century, only one hundred and fifty of these languages remained in existence, with more than one hundred considered critically endangered.

Aboriginal languages are not necessarily mutually intelligible. They are grouped together more by convention and proximity rather than through closely shared linguistic patterns.

History and Classification

The origins of the indigenous inhabitants of Australia are unclear. The Australian aboriginal population shows little genetic relation to other populations of Southeast Asia, though they are most closely related to the people of New Guinea. However, scientists are undecided as to whether this shared kinship is the result of later intermarriage resulting from their geographical proximity to one another or because of a common ancestry.

Australia was likely originally settled somewhere between forty to eighty thousand years ago. The first inhabitants initially arrived in Western Australia and traveled to the remainder of the Australian continent over the course of several thousand years. These shared origins are another primary motive for grouping Aboriginal languages into a single linguistic classification.

Linguists divide the Australian aboriginal languages into a variety of families, depending on the source. The largest accepted grouping is the Pama-Nyungan family, which includes three hundred languages and dialects encompassing the lower three-quarters of Australia. The name is derived from the Pama language of the Cape York Peninsula and Nyungan of the far southwest. These names were chosen because they represent the two most geographically separated languages in the family.

Typically, the remainder of the aboriginal languages are classified as Non-Pama-Nyungan languages, which are subdivided into separate linguistic subcategories, all of which are located in a comparatively small area in Australia's far north. The Pama-Nyungan's geographical dominance over the Non-Pama-Nyungan languages may be due to differences in the relative ages of the two linguistic families, with the northern languages possibly being more recent arrivals.

All aboriginal languages seem to follow comparable phonological patterns, meaning that they share similarities in the way that the language sounds are organized. The vowel sounds of i, a, and u are the most common, with the consonants also demonstrating similarities in pronunciation. Differences in grammar (particularly with regard to grammatical case) are more pronounced, although not so dramatic as to warrant separating the languages into broader linguistic groups.

Language among the indigenous peoples of Australia serves many complex functions related to class, clan, family, and gender. Many aboriginal languages include a phenomenon called "kinship" speech, which is a language system reserved exclusively for family members. This form of dialogue can be complicated, and the language used between two individuals can sometimes indicate the nature of the relationship between them. For instance, some aboriginal languages offer unique vocabularies for use with different relations such as an aunt, uncle, or grandparent. Similarly, many aboriginal languages use a special system of restrictive speaking for honored relatives. This is referred to as a "mother-in-law language."

Geographic Distribution and Modern History

The European settlement of Australian had a disastrous effect on aboriginal languages. The initial settlers assumed that all natives spoke the same language and made little effort to document these languages upon first contact. The lack of natural resistance among natives to European disease such as smallpox, tuberculosis, and influenza, proved devastating, with native populations losing up to ninety percent of their population by the early twentieth century. In less than a single year, experts estimate that as many as half of the original indigenous population in the Sydney basin died during a single smallpox epidemic. While the indigenous population rebounded in the twenty-first century, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in 2011 aboriginals comprised only three percent of the population.

The strength of the aboriginal languages often mirrored the struggles of the aboriginal peoples themselves. The Australian government's policies of forced relocation and cultural suppression had a lethal effect on both indigenous culture and language, and many aboriginal groups and their respective languages were destroyed without record. In particular, the aboriginal residents of Tasmania—a large island located off Australia's southern coast—numbered less than one hundred by the mid-nineteenth century and had effectively disappeared by 1900; their languages vanished with them.

From 1905 to 1969, the Australian government, in collaboration with missionaries, engaged in a policy of forced education of aboriginal children that was built on a principle of child protection. While some of these children were victims of neglect, abuse, abandonment, or extreme poverty, the Australian government also acted out of alarm for the catastrophic decline of aboriginals in the nineteenth century. These children—now called the "stolen generations"—were taken from their communities and placed into camps with the intent of "resocializing" them. As a result, many indigenous children lost the capacity to speak their native tongue. By 2015, Australia had the highest rate of language extinction of any nation in the world, with dozens of languages at risk of elimination within a generation.

In the twenty-first century, 75 percent of aboriginals lived in the states of New South Wales, Western Australia, the Northern Territory, and Queensland. These areas feature the greatest concentrations of native aboriginal speakers. Roughly sixty of the remaining languages were still in use as a first language and considered healthy by linguists. Efforts to create native language programs in aboriginal schools have helped to strengthen certain languages, while restoring cultural links to previous generations. By 2015, about 50,000 Australians spoke an aboriginal language as their primary language, with Arrernte, Kala Lagaw Ya, Tiwi, Walmajarri, and Warlpiri languages having the most native speakers.

Bibliography

Blake, Barry. Australian Aboriginal Languages: A General Introduction. 2nd ed. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1991. Print.

Korff, Jens. "Aboriginal Languages." Creative Spirits. Web. 7 Jan. 2016. http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/language/#axzz3wZCfrcZD

Leitner, Gerhard, and Ian G. Malcolm, eds. The Habitat of Australia's Aboriginal Languages: Past, Present and Future. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2007. Print.

Obata, Kazuko, and Jason Lee. "Languages of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples—A Unique Australian Heritage." Australian Bureau of Statistics. Web. 7 Jan. 2016. http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Previousproducts/1301.0Feature%20Article42009%E2%80%9310

Turpin, Myfany. "Aboriginal Languages." Central Land Council. Web. 7 Jan. 2016. http://www.clc.org.au/articles/info/aboriginal-languages/