[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.