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Australian English is the set of varieties of the English language native to Australia. It is the country's common language and de facto national language; while Australia has no official language, English is the first language of the majority of the population, and has been entrenched as the de facto national language since European settlement, being the only language spoken in the home for 72% of Australians. It is also the main language used in compulsory education, as well as federal, state and territorial legislatures and courts.
In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies voicing and that voicelessness is the lack of phonation.
De facto describes practices that exist in reality, whether or not they are officially recognized by laws or other formal norms. It is commonly used to refer to what happens in practice, in contrast with de jure, which refers to things that happen according to official law, regardless of whether the practice exists in reality.
Melanesia is a subregion of Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It extends from Indonesia's New Guinea in the west to the Fiji Islands in the east, and includes the Arafura Sea.
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 up to possibly 363. 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. 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", or the "Australian family".
The Papuan languages are the non-Austronesian and non-Australian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands, by around 4 million people. It is a strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply a genetic relationship. The concept of Papuan (non-Austronesian) speaking Melanesians as distinct from Austronesian-speaking Melanesians was first suggested and named by Sidney Herbert Ray in 1892.
The Kimberley is the northernmost of the nine regions of Western Australia. It is bordered on the west by the Indian Ocean, on the north by the Timor Sea, on the south by the Great Sandy and Tanami deserts in the region of the Pilbara, and on the east by the Northern Territory.
The Pama–Nyungan languages are the most widespread family of Australian Aboriginal languages, containing 306 out of 400 Aboriginal languages in Australia. The name "Pama–Nyungan" is a merism: it derived from the two end-points of the range: the Pama languages of northeast Australia and the Nyungan languages of southwest Australia.
Speakers of English are also known as Anglophones, and the countries where English is natively spoken by the majority of the population are termed the Anglosphere. Over two billion people speak English as of the 2000s, making English the largest language by number of speakers, and the third largest language by number of native speakers.
Aboriginal Australians are the various Indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, such as Tasmania, Fraser Island, Hinchinbrook Island, the Tiwi Islands, and Groote Eylandt, but excluding the Torres Strait Islands. The term Indigenous Australians refers to Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders collectively. It is generally used when both groups are included in the topic being addressed. Torres Strait Islanders are ethnically and culturally distinct, despite extensive cultural exchange with some of the Aboriginal groups. The Torres Strait Islands are mostly part of Queensland but have a separate governmental status.
The Western Desert language, or Wati, is a dialect cluster of Australian Aboriginal languages in the Pama–Nyungan family.
Australia legally has no official language. However, English is by far the most commonly spoken and has been entrenched as the de facto national language since European settlement. Australian English is a major variety of the English language with a distinctive pronunciation and lexicon, and differs slightly from other varieties of English in grammar and spelling. General Australian serves as the standard dialect.
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of 7,617,930 square kilometres (2,941,300 sq mi), Australia is the largest country by area in Oceania and the world's sixth-largest country. Australia is the oldest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils. It is a megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and climates, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east, and mountain ranges in the south-east.
The North Cape York Paman languages are a subdivision of the Paman languages consisting of forty languages, all spoken on the Cape York Peninsula of Queensland, Australia. The languages are grouped largely according to R. M. W. Dixon. The only extant branches of this family are Umpila and the Wik languages. The now-extinct Northern Paman branch was unique among Pama-Nyungan languages in containing fricatives.
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then most closely related to the Low German and Frisian languages, English is genealogically West Germanic. However, its vocabulary also shows major influences from French and Latin, plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse. Speakers of English are called Anglophones.
Australians, colloquially known as Aussies, are the citizens, nationals and individuals associated with the country of Australia. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or ethno-cultural. For most Australians, several of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being Australian. Australian law does not provide for a racial or ethnic component of nationality, instead relying on citizenship as a legal status.
Awngthim is an extinct Australian Aboriginal language formerly spoken in Cape York in Queensland, Australia by the Winduwinda people. The Awngthim language region includes the areas around Weipa and the Cook Shire.
Ndwa'ngith was apparently an Australian language once spoken in the Cape York Peninsula of Queensland. It is undocumented, without even word lists to record it.
The Winduwinda were an indigenous Australian people of Queensland.
References
- 1 2 3 Y202 Ndrangith at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies