Why is it difficult to prove whether all Tasmanian languages were related to each other?

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

It is difficult to determine whether all Tasmanian languages were related to one another primarily because they were not extensively studied before they became extinct.1

The available evidence is limited to meager, fragmentary, and often poorly transcribed word lists collected by missionaries. While these surviving records exhibit the characteristic sound system found in Australian Aboriginal languages, the words themselves do not form demonstrable cognate sets that would allow linguists to confirm a genetic relationship between the various Tasmanian speech varieties. Consequently, while scholars have proposed that there may have been 8 to 12 distinct languages, their internal relationships remain unclear.12