Australian Aboriginal languages

Introduction
Classification and distribution
Linguistic characteristics
- Grammar
- Vocabulary and speech registers

References & Edit History Quick Facts & Related Topics

Images & Videos

Distinctive features of Australia's Indigenous languages

Learn about efforts to preserve Australia's Aboriginal languages, especially Yawuru

Distribution of the Australian Aboriginal languages.

At a Glance

Australian Aboriginal languages summary

Quizzes

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Languages & Alphabets

Related Questions

How are language-maintenance programs helping Aboriginal communities in Australia?
How are transitive subjects marked differently from intransitive subjects in Australian Aboriginal languages?
How can different word orders express the same meaning in Pama-Nyungan languages?
How did mother-in-law speech registers differ from ordinary speech in some Aboriginal languages?
How did new linguistic evidence change ideas about non-Pama-Nyungan languages?
How do Warlpiri triangular kin terms express relationships among a speaker, listener, and another person?
How do consonantal augments change verb stems in Australian Aboriginal languages?
How do kin terms change according to the person who possesses them in Aboriginal languages?
How do kinship categories affect pronouns in some Australian Aboriginal languages?
How do non-Pama-Nyungan languages mark subjects and objects on verbs?
How do personal pronouns help linguists distinguish Pama-Nyungan from non-Pama-Nyungan languages?
How does the Warlpiri antonymic ritual register use ordinary words with opposite meanings?
How many Australian Aboriginal languages have fairly complete grammars or grammatical sketches?
How many Australian Aboriginal languages were spoken at the time of European contact?
How many people have knowledge of an Australian Aboriginal language?
What are dyadic kin terms in Australian Aboriginal languages?
What evidence suggests that Tasmanian languages had an Australian-style sound system?
What was the purpose of joking speech registers in some Aboriginal languages?
When did major efforts to document surviving Australian Aboriginal languages begin?
Where are Pama-Nyungan languages spoken in Australia?
Which Aboriginal languages contributed the English words billabong and coolibah?
Which Australian Aboriginal languages have some of the largest reported numbers of speakers?
Which Australian English words were borrowed from Aboriginal languages?
Which language in the Torres Strait Islands belongs to the Papuan language family?
Why are many Australian Aboriginal languages endangered or extinct?
Why did many Aboriginal languages disappear before linguists could record them?
Why do Australian Aboriginal languages have no generally accepted genetic connection to non-Australian languages?
Why do some Indigenous Australians prefer the terms Koori or Koorie?
Why has the grammar of Dyirbal been important to linguists?
Why is it difficult to count the original number of Australian Aboriginal languages?
Why is it difficult to prove whether all Tasmanian languages were related to each other?
Why is reconstructing Proto-Australian difficult?
Why is the relationship between Tasmanian languages and mainland Australian languages uncertain?
Why was multilingualism common among Aboriginal communities in Australia?
How did the Romance languages get their name?
Why are the Romance languages gendered?
Who first used the phrase carpe diem?
Is the Urdu language the same as Hindi?
What is the Russian language?
Who created the Russian language?
Why is Russian important for astronauts?
Who created Esperanto and when?
What was the purpose of creating Esperanto?
How did World War II affect Esperanto?

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Australian Aboriginal languages

language family

Also known as: Australian languages

Written by

Jeffrey G. Heath

Professor of Historical Linguistics, Morphology, Arabic,and Linguistic Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Author of Nunggubuyu Dictionary and others. Co-editor of Languages of Kinship...

Jeffrey G. Heath

Fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....

Britannica Editors

History

Australian Aboriginal languages, family of some 200 to 300 Indigenous languages spoken in Australia and a few small offshore islands by approximately 50,000 people. Many of the languages are already extinct, and some are spoken by only dwindling numbers of elderly people, but a few are still vigorous. There is currently a resurgence of ethnic pride among Aboriginal peoples, and government programs that assist them in maintaining their languages and becoming literate in them have...