How many Australian Aboriginal languages were spoken at the time of European contact?

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Distinctive features of Australia's Indigenous languages — Australian Aboriginal languages A discussion of the languages of Indigenous Australians.

At the time of European contact, it is estimated that there were between 200 and 300 distinct Australian Aboriginal languages.12

Providing a precise count is challenging for several reasons:
* Dialect vs. Language: It is difficult to distinguish between distinct languages and variations of dialects.1
* Extinction: Many speech varieties became extinct before they could be systematically recorded, leaving behind only fragmentary or poorly transcribed missionary word lists.1

While many of these languages have since been lost, a major collective effort to record surviving languages began in the early 1970s, and grammatical documentation is now available for approximately 100 of them.1