Episode 25 Australian Languages Part 1

Dr John McWhorter (2019)

Film Review

When the first Europeans arrived, there were 250-300 languages being spoken in Australia, belonging to 25 different families. Only 150 survive, most spoken by very old people. Only 12 are being passed on to future generations.

Owing to major intermarriage between language groups, it has been extremely to decipher distinct protolanguages for the different families. A handful of common words (I, hit, see, give) common to many of the Australian languages suggests there was a single protolanguage when indigenous Australians first reached reached the continent 65,000 year ago.

One language, Damin, is the only language outside Africa to use clicks.

New Guinea separated from the Australian land mass 10,000 years ago, and no similarities have been found between New Guinean and Australian languages. Except for the far north, where there were two dozen non-Pama-Ngungan languages, most indigenous Australians spoke languages belonging to the Pama-Ngungan family.

Most Australian languages use few vowels (often limited to a, i and u) and few fricatives (consonants with hissing sound). Word order is optional (ie doesn’t affect meaning) in most Australian languages.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/6120000/6120050