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The Australian Aboriginal languages consist of around 290–363 languages belonging to an estimated 28 language families and isolates, spoken by Aboriginal Australians of mainland Australia and a few nearby islands. The relationships between these languages are not clear at present. Despite this uncertainty, the Indigenous Australian languages are collectively covered by the technical term "Australian languages", or the "Australian family".
Warlpiri Sign Language, also known as Rdaka-rdaka, is a sign language used by the Warlpiri, an Aboriginal community in the central desert region of Australia. It is one of the most elaborate, and certainly the most studied, of all Australian Aboriginal sign languages.
Mbabaram (Barbaram) is an extinct Australian Aboriginal language of north Queensland. It was the traditional language of the Mbabaram people. Known speakers were Albert Bennett, Alick Chalk, Jimmy Taylor and Mick Burns. Recordings of Bennett and Chalk are held in the Audiovisual Archive of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. R. M. W. Dixon described his hunt for a native speaker of Mbabaram in his book Searching for Aboriginal Languages: Memoirs of a Field Worker. Most of what is known of the language is from Dixon's field research with Bennett.
Australian Aboriginal English (AAE) is a dialect of Australian English used by a large section of the Indigenous Australian population. It is made up of a number of varieties which developed differently in different parts of Australia. These varieties are generally said to fit along a continuum ranging from light forms, close to Standard Australian English, to heavy forms, closer to Kriol. There are generally distinctive features of accent, grammar, words and meanings, as well as language use. AAE is not to be confused with Kriol, which is a separate language from English spoken by over 30,000 people in Australia. Speakers have been noted to tend to change between different forms of AAE depending on whom they are speaking to, e.g. striving to speak more like Australian English when speaking to a non-Indigenous English-speaking person.
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.
Australia has no official language. However, English has been entrenched as the de facto national language since European settlement. Australian English is a major variety of the 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.
Garrwa, also spelt Garawa, Gaarwa, or Karawa and also known as Leearrawa, is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken by the Garrwa people of a northern region of the Northern Territory of Australia.
The Iwaidjan or Yiwaidjan languages are a small family of non-Pama–Nyungan Australian Aboriginal languages spoken in the Cobourg Peninsula region of Western Arnhem Land.
North Queensland or the Northern Region is the northern part of the Australian state of Queensland that lies just south of Far North Queensland. Queensland is a massive state, larger than many countries, and its tropical northern part has been historically remote and undeveloped, resulting in a distinctive regional character and identity.
The Adnyamathanha language, also known as yura ngarwala and other names, and Kuyani, also known as Guyani and other variants, are two closely related Australian Aboriginal languages. They are traditional languages of the Adnyamathanha of and the Kuyani peoples, of the Flinders Ranges and to the west of the Flinders respectively, in South Australia.
Indigenous Australians are people with familial heritage to groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They include the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia. The term Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples or the person's specific cultural group, is often preferred, though the terms First Nations of Australia, First Peoples of Australia and First Australians are also increasingly common.
Aboriginal Australian kinship comprises the systems of Aboriginal customary law governing social interaction relating to kinship in traditional Aboriginal cultures. It is an integral part of the culture of every Aboriginal group across Australia, and particularly important with regard to marriages between Aboriginal people.
The Ndjébbana language, also spelt Djeebbana and Ndjebanna and also known as Kunibidji, is a Burarran language spoken by the Gunavidji (Ndjebbana) people of North-central Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia.
Umpila is an Aboriginal Australian language, or dialect cluster, of the Cape York Peninsula. It is spoken by about 100 Aboriginals, many of them elderly.
Wadjiginy, also known as Wagaydy (Wogait) and Batjamalh, is an Australian Aboriginal language. Apart from being closely related to Kandjerramalh, it is not known to be related to any other language, though it has borrowed grammatical and lexical material from neighboring Northern Daly languages.
Bugurnidja is an Australian Aboriginal language of Arnhem Land in northern Australia. Almost nothing is known of it; apparently Nicholas Evans collected some data from a single speaker, and this showed similarities to Ngomburr.
Kandjerramalh (Kenderramalh), also known as Pungupungu or Kuwema (Kuwama), is an Australian Aboriginal language from the Northern Territory in Australia. Apart from being closely related to Wadjiginy, it is not known to be related to any other language.
The Wagaydyic languages are a pair of closely related but otherwise unclassified Australian Aboriginal languages: the moribund Wadjiginy and the extinct Kandjerramalh (Pungupungu).
The Wurango or Wurrugu are an indigenous Australian people of the Northern Territory.
References
- ↑ N37 Wurrugu at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
- Evans, N. (1996). First and last notes on Wurrugu. University of Melbourne Working Papers in Linguistics, 16, 91–98.
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