[3] Australian Aboriginal languages. On the Indigenous Australians, part III

The majority of Aboriginal Australians speak English today, mostly their own specific accent (or accents, developed in different parts of Australia), the Australian Aboriginal English (AAE). It forms a centre of sociolect continuum with Australian English and Kriol on its extreme points. There are many lexical and grammatical influences of Aboriginal languages in it; for instance, Australian Aboriginal English drops the auxiliary verbs; the proposition ‘we are working’ would sound as ‘we workin’’¹. The Australian Kriol language, which is an English-based creole derived from a pidgin that developed during the contact between the British settlers and Aboriginals; in 2006 it was spoken by 4,200 people, generally in northern parts of Australia (ranging from Western Australia to Queensland).

At the 2006 Census, only 9,2% of Indigenous population aged 5 years and older, declared to speak an Indigenous language at home. Ethnologue.com lists 207 living Indigenous languages, but many of them actually has no known or a few L1 speakers; other sources² give us an estimation of 120 ‘still spoken’ languages, but many of them are dying. There are only 11 vigorous Indigenous languages and 3 creole or mixed languages spoken by 1,000 or more individuals; another 8 with several hundreds of speakers are considered by Ethnologue not to be endangered.

Language families

               Most of the Australian continent was covered by a single language family – Pama-Nyungan languages, called after two language groups which are (geographically) the extreme points of it: Pama languages are spoken on the Cape York Peninsula and the Nyungan languages are located on the South Western Core in the Western Australia state. The majority of the most widely spoken Australian Aboriginal languages are members of this family.

               The ‘non-Pama-Nyungan languages’ is an umbrella term for all of those languages that are not a of Pama-Nyungan languages, but not necessarily are not connected (somehow) with it: the second largest Australian family, i.e. the Arnhem languages, as well as two minor ones, forms with the Pama-Nyungan languages the Macro-Pama-Nyungan phylum or macrofamily. The Arnhem language family has several representatives amongst the most prolific Aboriginal languages. Tiwi language is an isolate and Murrinhpatha may be considered to be an isolate or a part of a small family, Southern Daly languages. A dozen or so family languages or isolates of northern Australia are composed of small numbers of mostly endangered languages.

               The Tasmanian languages are usually not included in these classification because of  lack of sufficient attestation, however some reconstructions assume that there were up to five separate language families on Tasmania; no connection with the mailand languages is established on a level of a language family.

Major indigenous languages

The Western Desert language (more exactly, a dialect cluster or continuum; it’s listed by Ethnologue as several separate languages), spoken by the Anangu people is the biggest territorially Aboriginal language of Australia – its traditional territory covers a vast area of Western and South Australia states and of the Northern Territory, about 600,000 square kilometers – twice as big as Poland. According to the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, it has 7,400 speakers; at least several thousands of them are monolingual. Until 1960s there was a little contact between these lands and the civilization of white man which helped the preservation of the language. The Ayers Rock or Uluru, the most sacred mountain of Aboriginal Australians, is located in Western Desert.
Its dialect, Pitjantjatjara, has given level 4 in language status, which means it is standardized and used in education.

Here’s a map of Wati languages, a branch of Pama-Nguyan languages that is roughly equal to the Western Desert language, except for the Wanman language that is nearly extinct:

The Yolngu language is a Pama-Nyunga language spoke by 4,500 people in the Arnhem Land. Its dialects are often considered to be separate languages; one of them, Djambarrpuyngu has been granted by Ethnologue.com the highest language states amongst  Australian Aboriginal languages: the level 3, ‘wider comunication’: The language is used in work and mass media without official status to transcend language differences across a region. The only other ones used in ‘wider comunication’ are creoles: Kriol and Torres Strait Creole.

The Aranda language is spoken by 5,500 people in Alice Spings area in Central Australia region (that once was a separate territory) of Northern Territory as well as small adjacent portions of the Queensland state. Alice Springs is famous for being one of the most remote cities on earth (1000 kilometers to the nearest big city); it’s largely a Anglo-Celtic town, but has also a substantial Aboriginal minority. It belongs to the Pama-Nyungan family.
Its Eastern dialect is listed by Ethnologue with level 4 in language status, which means it is standardized and used in education.

The Tiwi language is an isolate still largely untouched by the language shift to English, spoken by majority of inhabitants of Tiwi Islands (one of them, namely Melville Island, is the second largest Australia’s island, after Tasmania) in the Northern Territory. It has 1,700 speakers (2006 census). There’s a split in language variation between generations: the elder speak Traditional Tiwi dialect, which has a polysynthetic grammar and the language of younger generations is largely isolating one.

The Warlpiri language is a Pama-Nyungan language of Northern Territory spoken by 2,500 people out of 5,000 of ethnic population. They also live in Central Australia. Most of them are bilingual in English and Kriol; it has also a ‘Light Warlpiri’ variety which is spoken mostly by people under age of 35, which is in fact a mixed language (based on the traditional language, Kriol and English).

The Enindhilyagwa language is spoken on Groote Eylandt Island, the largest island of the Gulf of Carpentaria (and the third largest island of Australia; located in the Northern Territory) by 1,300 people (majority of its population). Is classificated as a part of Arnhem family, the second largest language family of Australia, that is possibly connected with Pama-Nungan family and together they are labeled as Macro-Pama–Nyungan macrofamily of phylum.

The Kunwinjku language is an language of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. It’s an another example of Arnhem language family, spoken by 1,200 people.

The Burarra language – yet an another example of Arhem languages, spoken by 1,070 people in – obviosly – the Arnhem Land.

The Munkan language is a Pama-Nyngan language spoken by 1,060 people on the Cape York Peninsula in the Far North Queensland.

The Murrinhpatha language is spoken by 1,800 people in town of Wadeye in the Northern Territory, 400 km west of Darwin city. It’s probably part of a small (made of 2) Southern Daly language family or an isolate.

The Western Torres Strait language or Kalaw Lagaw Ya, although not spoken by Aboriginal Australians (as I’ve written earlier, Torres Strait Islanders are a clearly distinct group) is broadly considered to be a Pama-Nyungan language (although some scientist consider it to be a mixed Papuan-Australian language or even a Papuan one).

The Gurindji Kriol language is a mixed language used amongst the Gurindji people in the Northern Territory, which has a local traditional language (now moribund; a Pama-Nyungan language) and the Australian Kriol as its basis. The new languages has 1,000 speakers, while the traditional one is severely endangered.

Impact on English

There are several widely used in English loanwords borrowed from Australian languages, notably:

1.      kangaroo /kaŋɡəˈruː/ – the donor language for this borrowing is Guguyimidjir from Queensland,

2.      koala /kəʊˈɑːlə/ – comes from the Sydney language, now extict,

3.      dingo /ˈdɪŋɡəʊ/ – is also a borrowing from the Sydney language,

4.      boomerang /ˈbuməræŋ/– yet another one loanword from the Sydney (Dharung) language,

5.      wombat /'wɒmbæt/ – as above,

6.     to yabber /ˈjæbər/ - to talk rapidly or unintelligibly – an  Australian regionalism borrowed via pidgin from Woiwurrung language on whose traditional land is located the city of Melbourne; possible contamination with ‘to jabber’ /ˈdʒæbər/, which is of Middle English origin, apparently imitative. 

[2] Not only Aborigines. On the Indigenous Australians, part II

The most people, when they hear ‘the Indigenous Australians’, ‘the Australian Aborigines’ are the first think to come to their minds. But these sets are not exactly identical. Apart from the Australian Aborigines, there are some other ethnic groups or groups of ethnicities indigenous to Australia that are distinct from Australian Aborigines.

Aboriginal Australians

The flag of Aboriginal Australians: the black symbolizes 'the Black people', the circle represents the sun and the red symbolises Australian deserts famous for the red colour

Who are the Australian Aborigines? These are the people native to the Australian continent (mainland Australia) and to the island of Tasmania, whose ancestors came there before the British colonization of 1788 (probably 44,000 years ago, as the geneticist say, or even 126,000 as some archeological methods claim). They speak (or spoke) the Australian Aboriginal languages, that is an umbrella term for several language families or phyla that are not necessary genetically connected, but probably – they are (later more about them). They are also (at least partially, if mixed) members of the Australoid race – they are one of the darkest people on the planet Earth, and that’s why they are often called ‘the Blacks’ in Australia, but believe me, this is one of their few common traits with the Sub-Saharan Africans, alongside prognathism (large jaws), the texture of hair and dolichocephaly (long skulls – when the head, seen from above, is long relatively to its width) and the genetic distance between the Australodois and the Negroids are one of the biggest within the human species. They are not the only representatives of the Australoid race (although the limits of this broad racial classification are unclear) – there are also, at least the Veddas of Ceylon and the Melanesians (including the Papuans) and the Negrito (the Asian ‘Pygmies’); a similar type of people is found as far as in Hadhramaut region in Yemen, south of the Empty Quarter; also the South Indians (Dravidians) and the non-Melanesian Austronesians do have some Australoid genetic heritage – but we must remember that these groups differ very much from each other. What is interesting, it’s quite common for the Australian Aborigines and the Melanesians to manifest blonde (and curly in the same time) hair, especially in children.

According to the population census of 2011, there are in Australia 600,000 of people of Aboriginal descendent, that is 2,7% of Australian population. Nearly one of three Territorians (i.e. inhabitants of the Northern Territory) are Aboriginal, but their biggest (by number) community lives in New South Wales and Queensland (respectively 208,000 and 188,000 persons). 

Torres Strait Islanders

Official (since 1992) flag of Torres Strait Islanders; the thing in white is not a strange horseshoe, but a traditional local headdress.

A Torres Strait Islander in the traditional headdress

But the Aboriginal Australians are not the only Indigenous Australians: this umbrella term covers also the Torres Strait Islanders who are a group distinct from Aborigines.

The Torres Strait is located between Cape York Peninsula (the farmost point of continental Australia) and the island of New Guinea. There are 14 inhabited island out of more than 200. 

The vast majority of the inhabitants are the Torres Strait Islanders who are Melanesians, culturally connected with the Papuans from New Guinea. They are traditionally sealers trading with coastal people from neighbouring lands, but today majority of them lives in continental Australia (particularly in Queensland; the Torres Strait Islands are also part of the Queensland state): out of 48,000 only 3,800 live in the traditional area, most of them on the Thursday Island, the biggest (by population) island in the region.

They speak two traditional languages: the Western Torres Strait language which is a language genetically connected to languages of people from the Australian mainland from Pama-Nyungan family or probably a mixed Australian-Papuan language (according to some linguists, it’s simply a Papuan language), spoken by 1,200 people, once was a lingua franca for the region; the Eastern Torres Strait language, spoken by 210 people is clearly a Papuan language (classified in the Eastern Trans-Fly family, made up of 4 languages).

The traditional languages are largely replaced by the Torres Strait Creole, a language known also by  a charming name ‘Brokan’. It’s an Englis-based creole developed in 19^th century and spoken by 6,000 people on Torres Strait Island, upper Cape York Peninsula and on the eastern coast of Queensland, not only  by Torres Strait Islanders, but also by some Australian Aborigines. Many of them speak also Torres Strait English which is an extreme point of sociolectal continuum, with the Brokan in the center and the traditional indigenous languages on the other side. 

[1] Are the Tasmanians dead? On the Indigenous Australians, part I

When I was a child, I had a book about the history and evolution of human species. In this book I found a picture of ‘the last [indigenous] Tasmanian’, who was a woman called Truganini.

Here’s the picture, taken circa 1866:

Truganini, supposed to be ‘the last Tasmanian’, died in 1876 in the Tasmanian capital Hobart. Until her twenties she had being taken part of her native culture and that state was disrupted by European invasion and eve of the Black War – a war between ‘Blacks’ (Australian Aborigines) and Anglo-Celtic settlers in Tasmania that lasted from the mid-1820s to 1832. There is no doubt the war was a genocide: the death toll was as big as 90% (or even more) of island’s population.

At the end of the war the remaining Aboriginal population (100 persons) was moved – voluntarily of forcibly – to Flanders Island located north to Tasmania. The settlement organized by the Protector of Aborigines, George A. Robinson did not last much time; in 1856 few survivors (47 persons) with Truganini amongst them were removed to Oyster Cove, south of Hobart. In 1873, Truganini being the last survivor of the Oyster Cove group, was moved to Hobart and became an anthropological oddity.

Her status as the last of her kind remains controversial; although she is widely considered as such,  there are also sources claiming that there were on Kangaroo Island in State of South Australia three native Tasmanian women, named Sal, Suke and Betty, who outlived Truganini (prior to the European collonisation of South Australia the island’s population consisted of white sailors and women kidnapped from Tasmania or Australian mainland, their wifes and virtually slaves). Additionally, in 1889 a woman named Fanny Cochrane Smith who was a first child born on Flanders Island after the population transfer of Tasmanians was recognized by government of Colony of Tasmania as being ‘the last Tasmanian’. She bore 11 children to an Englishmen and a significant portion of present-day Tasmanians of Aboriginal descendent are her offspings.

The dispute whenever she or Truganini was the last full blooded Tasmanian continues, but without a doubt we can say she was the last speaker of a Tasmanian language – more exactly a Tasmanian lingua franca that came to being after the resettlement to Flinders Island, because the Tasmanian languages were not mutually intelligible. The Tasmanian languages are extinct and lost, but there are some sources (like recordings of some Aboriginal songs made by Mrs. Smith) on which are based attempts to reconstruct a generic Aboriginal Tasmanian language, called by its revival movement ‘Palawa kani’.

The extinction?

A canonical science-fiction novel, “The War of the Worlds” by H. G. Wells from 1897 telling a story of Martian invasion of Earth contains a famous quote about Tasmanians:

“And before we judge them [the Martians] too harshly, we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished Bison and the Dodo, but upon its own inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?”

Contrary to the popular belief spread probably by this book and the legend of Truganini, the Tasmanians or Palawa (as they call themselves in their own language) are not extinct as ethnicity. Even if Truganini or Mrs. Smith were the last full blooded Tasmanians, they should not be considered as the last Tasmanians in general, because race does not equal ethnicity. Despite being erroneously considerate to be extinct, there are nearly as many as 26 000 people who identify as Palawa (they are mixed with white settlers, obviously, but they are still descendants of native population). They have their political and cultural representation, like for example Michael Mansell, an Aboriginal activist who has been fighting for awareness of Aboriginal Tasmanian identity since 1970s. There is also the mentioned above movement for reconstruction and reintroduction of the Tasmanian (or ‘Pan-Tasmanian’) language - Palawa kani. The reconstructions started in 1999 and the language has no ISO code yet.

Here is a picture of Michael Mansell; in the background the flag of Aboriginal Australians, one of the official flags of Commonwealth of Australia:

 

Ya tawatja!¹

^{1. Palawa kani for 'good day'.}

^{Szymon Czarnecki}