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Why is the relationship between Tasmanian languages and mainland Australian languages uncertain?

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

The relationship between Tasmanian languages and mainland Australian languages remains uncertain primarily due to a lack of sufficient data. Because these languages became extinct before they could be systematically recorded, researchers are limited to meager, fragmentary, and often poorly transcribed word lists.12

While these surviving lists exhibit the characteristic sound system found in Australian Aboriginal languages, the words themselves do not form demonstrable cognate sets with those of the mainland. Furthermore, the Tasmanian Aboriginal people were geographically isolated from the mainland for approximately 10,000 years following the flooding of the Bass Strait, and historically, their languages were reported to be unintelligible to mainland Aboriginal peoples. Consequently, no genetic connection has been successfully demonstrated.231