Talk:Australian Aboriginal languages/Archive 1

This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Calssification

Added a language classification. This classification is tentative and evolving, better researched for some families than for others, and I'm no expert. Some good linguists don't even accept the validity of Pama-Nyungan, so feel free to expand on it. kwami 05:19, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Phonetics and phonology

I'm going to change the section titled 'Phonetics' to 'Phonetics and phonology' and insert the subsection name 'Segmental inventory' immediately after. Might be a bit pedantic, but I think it's clearer and provides slots for the clean addition of more info later on. Dougg 06:56, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Garawa under Pama-Nyungan

Where do you find Garawa as a branch of Pama-Nyungan. The Ethnologue does not have that classification. Imperialguy

As noted in the text, this classification is based on Nick Evans. Ethonologue is not generally a reliable or up-to-date source; it's just used because it's one of the very few comprehensive sources, and more up-to-date than Voegelin. (They've actually started removing languages from Ethnologue because there's no evidence they ever existed!) kwami 21:15, 2005 September 4 (UTC)

Garawa isn't PÑ proper. Nick has it as the closest relative of PÑ, and the Tankic languages as somewhat more distant. I didn't bother with that level of detail. kwami 21:17, 2005 September 4 (UTC)

OK, I have added more families of P-N, but there are more than 14 distinct branches including language isolates. I will be adding all the languages and more detail Also, Ndjebanna and Gunavidj may be the same language. I have seen them listed as Gunavidj/Ndjebanna and their vocabularies are very close from my sources. They may be two closely related languages or dialects. Imperialguy

OK, about 18 extant branches, including isolates, if you accept Pama-Maric as a valid node. (P-M corresponds to Ethnologue Paman (with Mayabic in PM but outside Paman), Maric, Yalandyic (as East Paman), Yidinic, and Dyirbalic.

Gunavidj is fixed.

It might be a good idea to make PN a separate table, both for ease of editing and navigating. Otherwise it's easy to get lost. kwami 22:09, 2005 September 4 (UTC)

Actually, if we include all the PN languages here, we'll need to split the classification off as a separate article. Probly better to add them to the Pama-Nyungan languages article instead. kwami

Good idea, I will add them to the PN page. Imperialguy

Card carrying Australianist and historical linguists here, with a couple of comments. Garrwa and Wanyi form a group and are these days generally agreed to be Non-Pama-Nyungan. It would not be hard to do better than Ethnologue for classification. Anggarrgoon 02:34, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

other spellings

Imperial guy, I see you've been bringing the names into line with the often screwy Ethnologue spelling. I don't think there's any good reason to do this; when grammars are published on these languages, for example, Ethnologue is not followed. It's easy enough to search Ethnologue with alternate spellings, and will be useful to our audience to use a more standardized spelling system, such as the vowel letters u a i rather than oo u ee, etc. kwami 04:31, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Also, when adding languages, please make the link to the language. It's getting a bit tedious correcting all those links! Thanks. kwami 04:40, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand the code you are using to highlight the languages. I can't seem to get it to work for me. It is difficult to find the "best" spelling for the various language names. The Ethnologue is used by many online groups. I guess the spellings used by the AIATSIS may be the best authority for the languages. It does seem the Ethnologue at times has a more archaic spelling first, but I guess the spelling preferred by the speakers would be the best to find. Imperial78

I agree that Ethnologue spellings are not the best ones to use. AIATSIS spellings would be best. There is currently a major project at AIATSIS to develop an on-line system to provide better information on Australian languages, including a 'reference spelling' and a list (as complete as possible) of alternate spellings. Unfortunately it won't be open to the public for some time yet. In the meantime it's probably best to have the headline spelling be (in descending order of preference):

1. the preferred spelling of the speaker community (if that can be ascertained)

2. the spelling used in the major technical work/s on the language (ie grammars and dictionaries)

3. the AIATSIS spelling

4. the Ethnologue spelling

Very often two or more of these will coincide.

Dougg 10:29, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, usually the spellings are the same since the Ethnologue probably uses many of the same sources as AIATSIS. Although his classification may be lacking, the spellings used in Ruhlen sometimes seem better than the Ethnologue's first choice at times. He has Ritharngu for Ritarngo and Dhay'yi for Dayi. Are the spellings Arrernte or Arrarnta preferred over Aranda? Imperial78

Ethnologue sources are individuals who choose to fill out the form and send it in. Much of this was done in previous decades, so spellings are often ones that are no longer used, although they seem to be gradually improving this. AIATSIS spellings were settled on some time ago and haven't changed much in the last 10-15 years. They are at the moment working on updating them. My understanding is that Arrernte is the standard spelling. 'Aranda' is very old.Dougg 05:51, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

empty links

Actually, what's the point of listing every Australian language? We can simply link to Ethnologue. Unless we are going to do a better job than Ethnologue, there's no point in a full classification. And unless we list all the spelling alternates, our readers will still have to go to Ethnologue to find the language they're interested in. Meanwhile we've got a huge list of empty links that are worse than useless, for the clutter makes the classification hard to follow. Far better to list a couple of the more prominent languages from each family, or maybe each subfamily. kwami 05:12, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

While there is a lot of common sense in this viewpoint, in some regard it runs against the idea of wikipedia as being simultaneously comprehensive and organically growing. I think (and it may be hopeless optimism; I don't know) that Wikipedia can offer better coverage than the Ethnologue; by all means we should direct people to it as a resource, but (aside from the clutter issue), it doesn't necessarily do harm to have a list of red links.

Given the growing membership, hopefully we'll have more people than just yourself who are able to add detailed factual info on Australian languages. Slac speak up! 11:46, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm the one (or one of the one's) who's been adding to the list of language names. I agree with the above who says that it is useful. I'd hope that we can eventually have a separate article for each language with more info than Ethnologue tries to include (which is fairly minimal). So, assuming it's ok, I'll keep adding to the list, as well as trying to create articles for them to link to. Dougg 01:44, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Given that we're speaking of languages, if we're going to create links to non-existant articles, I think it would be useful to link to language articles. There's a long way and a short way to do this: [[Nyungar language|Nyungar]], and {{ll|Nyungar}}. The latter isn't just quicker to type, it's also easier to read when editing. However, a link simply to [[Nyungar]] should be reserved for an article on the Nyungar people, if we're going to be consistant with the rest of Wikipedia. kwami 01:59, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

There are clearly way that Wikipedia articles can add value to the Ethnologue listing. Firstly I can't even find Kaurna language there, which was spoken in most of the currently densely populated areas of SA. Secondly, not all the spelling of a language are listed at the top level (you have to know the most common spellings to get into the article) and Wikipedia redirects for the alternate language names solves this cleanly. Thirdly, Wikipedia articles can provide a lot more detail, especially by people who are speakers or children of speakers! Donama 00:59, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Possibly relevant here is a plan I have for the class I teach on Australian languages - in future I'm hoping to make contributing to Wikipedia part of the course, or at least as an option for final assignments. This will be a long-term project of course but it will add to the amount of reliable information. Anggarrgoon 02:44, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Ngunnawal

Theres an article on Ngunnawal people which includes the ngunnawal language, not sure where it should go in this article?? Cfitzart 04:08, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps split the articles (or atleast make a redirect from Ngunnawal language too Ngunnawal people. When the same thing happened for the Kaurna article I arbitrarily decided it was about Kauran ethicity and people and made a separate article for the language at Kaurna language. Donama 00:37, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Anti-language policies

This is largely a result of a concerted effort by past Australian governments to eradicate Aboriginal culture and languages

Were these policies instigated before or after Federation? Isn't it possible some were began by the British before this? — Hippietrail 13:47, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Before federation, yes, of course, but the governments in question were always Australian in the sense that it was Australia they were governing. Let's not touch it, there's enough awkward prose on the Wiki as it is. J.K. 14:15, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

The Tasmanian genocide was carried out under British authority, but by the local govt. But sterilization campaignes were carried out until I believe 1971. I haven't heard that one govt. was much better than the other. kwami 19:15, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

This is complex - full-blood Aboriginal people were wards of the state until the 1940s (I think, it varies by state), and under the "protection" of the Chief Protector (which was a state-by-state appointment). The protectors were appointments in the colonies as well. I will find out more about the pre-federation legislation - it's relevant for issues of treaties in Tasmania, for instance, and whether the Crown considered Aboiriginal people subjects or not (there is some inconsistencies here, as there is some indication from Robinson that Tasmania was in a state of Civil war, but on the mainland Aboriginal people were on the flora and fauna list until 1967). I'll investigate this and write something on my blog (and here) Anggarrgoon 02:42, 13 January 2006 (UTC) (anggarrgoon.org)

This policy was simply a localised implementation of British policy in other areas such as Ireland, Scotland and Wales where they attempted to enforce British culture through outlawing local language and culture --Ga rr ie 00:03, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Victorian languages

hey, does anybody know about the numbers of people speaking Victorian aboriginal languages. Yorta Yorta seems to be the only language partially intact. any information would be helpful plz email doms_bakk@hotmail.com abt anything. DomDomsta333 12:23, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Try getting in touch with the Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages (VACL): http://www.vaclang.org.au/. Dougg 22:36, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

I did download a file on the Woiwurrung language of Melbourne, but it has gone ofline I think. Enlil Ninlil 04:49, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I can e-mail it too you. Enlil Ninlil 05:06, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Written languages

I have no expertise in languages; just an interested reader. I haven't seen any mention on Wiki of any written forms of Aboriginal language. Does this mean there are none!? I'm not talking about phonetic spelling of Aboriginal words. I mean--did (do) the Aborigines have any kind of written language using their own "alphabets"? AndrewAllen 24 February 2006

Not using their own; most ones still spoken around have had the Roman alphabet adapted to them. On their own, they had in message sticks, which were used to identify the carrier of a verbal message to other peoples, arguably one of the early steps toward writing, but then Captain Cook came around... ～J.K. 08:04, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Probably every Australian Aboriginal language that has speakers has had an orthography developed for it. In all cases that I'm aware of, as Jiminy Krikkitt says, these have used the Roman alphabet (and these are phonemic, not phonetic), but sometimes with various extensions by diacritcs, or use of extra symbols (sometimes borrowed from the IPA). If by 'their own alphabets?' you mean to ask if they have developed their own alphabet before the Roman alphabet arrived in Australia the answer is no. But this is hardly surprising as the idea of the alphabet has probably only been invented once, several thousand years ago. Dougg 08:55, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes Dougg, I was asking if they had developed their own written form of language (alphabet/writing system/orthography) before the Aboriginal words were represented using the Roman alphabet. I'd like to see a section added to Australian Aboriginal languages that outlines what you and Jiminy Krikkitt have explained here! AndrewAllen 06:01, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, I think it's best to have orthography details with individual language articles. But yes, I guess it would be worthwhile to put something in Australian Aboriginal languages saying that it's always the Roman alphabet used for Australian language orthographies. Dougg 01:18, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I've put in a brief para on orthography, along with a small table giving some examples. If you think it's useless let me know how it could be improved. If you think it's ugly, please feel free to clean it up! Dougg 02:18, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

What's Martuthunira doing in the table? The language is dead now, and even when it was alive it had few speakers, so the orthography never saw real use. Besides, the orthography used in the Dench's book has parna.

Also, it's incorrect that ŋ was taken from the IPA. It's been in use for writing Australian languages since before the International Phonetic Association was formed. --Ptcamn 20:16, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I put that in. I can't remember for sure which of Dench's publications I got the word from, but it might have been one of his earlier papers, so thanks for pointing it out. I'll change the example then, perhaps to Pitjantjatjara. In principle I don't see a problem with using examples from a dead language--if we can't do that then in another few decades we'll be running out of example languages (regrettably). But I guess you're saying it would be better to have examples from a living orthographic tradition (or one that at least had real life for a while?). I agree that would be best.

I know Arrernte and the Western Desert language have literacy programs, but not any specifics. --Ptcamn 00:35, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

As for ŋ, I'm interested to hear that it was used in Australia before the International Phonetic Association was formed in 1886. As far as I can tell, ŋ was in the IPA by 1900. Can you give an example of its use in Australia from before that year? Dougg 23:54, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Yep. gurre kamilaroi, 1856. --Ptcamn 00:35, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I've replaced the Martuthunira example with one from Pitjantjatjara. Dougg 04:57, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Language numbers, endangerment

I've got some problems with the second paragraph as it stands. For a start, while it's hard to count languages it's pretty well impossible to count dialects, so I think it's best to stick to numbers of languages rather than including highly speculative dialect numbers: it's usually said that there were about 260 languages in Australia before 1800 (there are a number of sources that can be cited on this). I also think that all remaining languages are rightly considered highly endangered, although it is true that a small number (20 or so) are still being passed on to children. Dougg 00:54, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

References for quoted word meanings

Many Wikipedia articles have "motherhood-type" statements such as "marayong means emu", "murrumbidgee means big river", etc.

Is there a person or project I can come to with questions about providing a real refernce for some of these statements (where they are correct) - I am all for outing "mythological aboriginal word meanings" if Wikipedia is getting it wrong but I don't know where to look. I see that quite a few of the articles are disputed on talk pages - heatedly but in a style that does not encourage participation in cleaning up the mistakes. I would like to overcome some of these issues but I need to know where to look or who to ask for confirmation etc.

Do any of the languages? dialects? have online lexicons?

Thanks --Ga rr ie 00:01, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

While most Australian languages have dictionaries or wordlists (many of which can be found in university libraries) only a few are online. I agree with what you're saying and do try to fact-check these kinds of things when I see them. If you have seen some you think should be checked feel free to list them on my talk page and I'll follow them up. Dougg 01:01, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Comments in the introductory section

in the introductory section the following is stated "as fact": This is largely a result of a concerted effort by past Australian governments to eradicate Aboriginal culture and languages, through punishment, forced relocations, sterilization, and forced removal of children from their families

Whilst I am not looking for an arguement, only one element is linked to anything - "forced removal of children from their families" has an internal link to the stolen generation article. These are pretty savage claims to be left as "stated facts" regarding Aust Aboriginal Languages. Could someone involved in either the linguistic or cultural side of Aust Aboriginal articles on Wikipedia please link these statements to existing articles where readers can validate/verify these statements are fair comments on history. --Ga rr ie 00:08, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Geographical areas for each language

This article would really be improved by a map showing where the major language families were in use at the 1800 census (if that's what there was), and another one showing what languages are used currently. --Ga rr ie 00:10, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Trouble is Aboriginal people were on the flora and fauna list until 1967, so they weren't counted in the census before that. Claire 04:28, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Australian Aboriginal English

Australian Aboriginal English currently reads simply like a list of common examples of poor grammer. Could somebody with a hint of understanding and knowledge about linguistics in Australia look at the article and identify why AAE is not simply "poor grammer"? My comments on the talk page there might easily be badly interpreted but if you read the article and "suspend your understanding of linguistics" then I hope you see where I'm coming from. I wouldn't have thought that AAE was an actual identified dialect until I saw the page through WP:Australia. --Ga rr ie 06:18, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

AAE is very well established as a dialect of English. There have been (and continue to be) numerous linguistic studies of aspects of AAE, it is not 'poor grammar' (which I don't think is a term that can be applied to any natively-spoken variety of any language). I would hope that the introductory paragraph is fairly clear about this. I agree there are problems with the second part (titled 'Lexicon' even thought it isn't about the lexicon). I agree also that it's a pretty minimal article at the moment. I'll try to expand it sometime soon. Meanwhile, let's continue discussion on the article's talk page. Dougg 09:20, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Opinions

I'm a little concerned by the tone of the second paragraph, which states that the sole reason indigenous languages died out was because they were suppressed by settler authorities. That was of course one reason they died out, but not the sole reason. The other reason is that language serves a social function, communication between people, and once indigenous people no longer lived in traditional communities, having a multitude of languages spoken by only a few thousand people each no longer served that purpose, so they stopped using them. This has happened even in places where governments have actively tried to maintain languages - Irish being the obvious example. Socially mobile people don't like living in linguistic ghettoes, no matter how desirable other people may think it is that they should do so. The paragraph also assumes that it is a good thing that indigenous communities in remote areas go on speaking indigenous languages. This is an opinion, and a contested one. There are plenty of people who think that the interests of these communities would be much better served if they became English-speaking and integrated into the wider Australian society. I would like to see this paragraph phrased in a more neutral tone. Adam 12:57, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

In fact the Irish language also suffered primarily from being suppressed in precisely the same way as indigenous Australian languages. The effort to revive Irish came generations later when most people already spoke English. The pushy nature of this revival effort certainly put most Irish people off learning their former language. — Hippietrail 21:42, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

New Poll

There's a poll here that would (hopefully) end all this "Indigenous" vs. "Aborigine" controversy. Feel free to vote. Zarbat 09:19, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Yikes! Spelling System vs. Phonetic Notation

In the Phonetics and Phonology section, some spelling system is being used where IPA definitely should be used instead.

The quotes around "retroflex" etc. should be removed while you are at it.

Whatever this system is -- actual spelling used by speaker, an Australianist phonetic system -- is interesting, but needs to be treated separately in an article on spelling/notation/whatever for Australian.

If you feel you must use this spelling system here -- it certainly needs an explanation and a link to an article with IPA equivalents.

EXAMPLE:

"A language which displays the full range of stops and laterals is Kalkutungu, which has labial p, m; "dental" th, nh, lh; "alveolar" t, n, l; "retroflex" rt, rn, rl; "palatal" ty, ny, ly; and velar k, ng. Yanyuwa has even more contrasts, with an additional true dorso-palatal series, plus prenasalized stops at all seven places of articulation, in addition to all four laterals"

These spellings are standardized and extremely common in the literature. The problem with the IPA is that, apart from retroflex ʈ ɳ ɭ, it's not so clear how they should be represented. To be precise, we'd need to subdiacritics on each letter, which is simply not legible. Even if we simplified it to t̪ t ʈ t̠, which is somewhat ambiguous, it would be hard to distinguish dental t̪ from "palatal" t̠ on most browsers. (I suppose we could copy the orthography and go t̪ tʲ, even though that's not very accurate.) The digraphs are just superior to the IPA in readability. kwami 07:32, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Eradication of Tasmanian Aborigine

The intro says "The Tasmanian people were nearly eradicated early in Australia's colonial history". Why "nearly", when the article on Tasmanian Aborigine says that they "were the indigenous people of the island state of Tasmania"? Is that because there are today descendants of Tasmanian Aborigines, even though not full-blooded descendants? invenio tc 00:39, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I think so. It would be hard to say they still are the indigenous people of Tasmania, though that may be s.t. that needs to be examined more carefully. — kwami (talk) 02:36, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Duplicate section

Sections Internal and Subgrouping should be merged or at least made contiguous. --88.73.0.115 (talk) 17:01, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Names in Ruhlen 1987

Here is the listing from Ruhlen, to verify that alt spellings & names have redirects. A few are typos, but might be looked up that way. — kwami (talk) 04:28, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Edit: full list here. Only red links kept here:

gunbudj (ngunbudj, ≈umbugarla)

guwa (Maric), yanda (Maric), giya (Maric?), yiningay (Maric?), wadjalang (Maric?), gayiri (Maric?), yiman (Maric?)

Not much to do with the Maric langs, but Gunbudj should be taken care of. Can't access AIATSIS right now. — kwami (talk) 06:04, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Relationship

Josephine Flood (2004 p. 234) states that most languages that are not Pama-Nyungan have a relationship with the proto-Australian family in in verb and sound system, of corse there is still major differences. The languages stated as not being related to Pama-Nyungan are the Tiwi language and Djingili language. Would this be a correct assessment? Enlil Ninlil 04:56, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

AFAIK the idea of a proto-Australian has pretty much been abandoned. The relationship seems to be one of a Sprachbund (geographic area of mutual influence), not genealogical. Tiwi, being on an island, was perhaps not part of the general Sprachbund, while Djingili might have diverged more recently (though perhaps it was a spot the influences passed by).

A simple thought experiment illustrates how an Australian family doesn't make much sense: At that time depth, Sahul (Oz, New Guinea, and Tasmania) was a single land mass. But there are no New Guinea languages in the Australian family, and no Australian languages in any of the New Guinea families. It's not likely that the rising sea levels would just happen to follow the boundary of a language family. That suggests either that linguists haven't done their homework, or that the connections are too remote to be found. If Oz-NG is too deep to trace, then Oz itself should be too deep, and the connections we see today must be something other than genealogical. kwami 06:24, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Suggestions have been made but linguists tend to be very conservative about accepting groupings of languages above family level. When someone tried to create a proto-Australian language it was very like the languages of the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea and most of the variety in Australian languages is nearest New Guinea so it seems likely that the Australian languages (or most of them at least) will turn out to be a subgrouping of the Trans-New Guinea languages.

It is a mistake to think of the languages being the same ones that arrived in Sahul 60,000 years ago as there wasn't just one wave of migration in. Genetics proves that there were later migrations as Y-chromosome haplogroup K common in New Guinea and Australia (in New Guinea since split into M and S) originated in India maybe 40,000 years ago so couldn't have been in the earliest migration in (which is represented by haplogroup C. Presumably the older (Indo-Pacific?) Papuan languages (which have links to Great Andamanese and, if the findings aren't a coincidence, Kusunda came in with these genes maybe 20000-30000 years ago but some may well be from a different date. Trans-New Guinea languages came in later and have even been suggested to be related to the Borean languages, but this research is too early to tell, would make a lot of sense in my opinion though

86.152.221.121 (talk) 17:09, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong, I have no idea about comparative Australian linguistics, but something like the "trihybrid theory" as related by Windschuttle (notwithstanding the odious political/ideological/racist implications unjustifiedly and illogically attached to it – compare the situation in the Pacific, the Americas or elsewhere, where different layers of immigrating or even conquering populations do not mean that the pre-European aborigines do not deserve special rights, let alone regular human rights; nobody or almost nobody is truly "indigenous" if you split hairs that finely, especially not most Europeans/whites!) makes a lot more sense in principle than the conventional idea of a single wave of immigration. In that case, there would be no reason to assume that all the immigrants came from the same region in Asia (in fact, the "trihybrid theory" explicitly says they did not), nor at the same time, so there is (even) less reason to expect that all Australian languages form a single, coherent (monophyletic) family ("phylum") and that a "Proto-Australian" language (or, more realistically, fragments thereof) can in principle be reconstructed (by the way, the "someone" who tried that and found apparent similarities to Trans-New-Guinea was Dixon himself).

Also, O'Grady, Geoff; Ken Hale. 2004. The Coherence and Distinctiveness of the Pama–Nyungan Language Family within the Australian Linguistic Phylum – does that mean that O'Grady and Hale still take the idea of a demonstrable Australian ("super/macro-")family ("phylum") seriously? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 08:54, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Map under classification header

This map gives the impression that the Aboriginal languages of Australia are only spoken in Northern Australia. If you look at a map such as this one, this one or this one, one can see that the languages are more spread over Australia rather than grouped in the north. Why are they only showed in the north on the map? --Lundgren8 (t · c) 21:29, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

They aren't. Yellow is a color too. — kwami (talk) 01:29, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your clarification. I had missed that. My confusion came from that the Pama-Nyungan languages aren’t mentioned in the legend on Commons. Interesting that no languages are from another group on the rest of the island. --Lundgren8 (t · c) 07:27, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's odd, and no-one has a convincing explanation for it. One possibility is that Pama-Nyungan is not a family but a Sprachbund: after 40,000–60,000 years they've all influenced each other to such an extent that they all seem related, and the northern families are recent arrivals from the Malay archipelago (since replaced there by the spread of Austronesian). But most Australianists accept PN as a valid family, as postulate that it spread across 7/8 of the continent replacing earlier families, though no-one can explain how that happened.

Fixed the legend at Commons. — kwami (talk) 03:11, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Just a nitpick: Australia is not (considered) an island, but a continent. As for the dominance of Pama-Nyungan, admittedly, it really seems that obvious mechanisms like conquest, agriculture, pastoralism or technological advantages cannot explain it, and the mechanism for the PN expansion (if PN is a valid family at all) must have been more subtle (but probably hard to trace archaeologically or otherwise). But patterns like this are well-familiar around the world, even in regions like pre-colonial/contact-period North America, where geographically widespread families are spoken by foraging cultures. Africa is especially similar to Australia in this respect: There are a few huge groups at least as big and old as Pama-Nyungan, whose validity is open to doubt (Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Congo), only a few isolates (Hadza, Sandawe) and perhaps a couple more, and then there are the Khoisan families in the far south, which are roughly analogous to non-Pama-Nyungan. Why the cradle of mankind appears to show so little "phylic" diversity apart from the far south, completely unlike the Americas, is a big mystery. But then, it's possible that the Greenbergian families in Africa (as in the Americas or the Pacific) are not really valid (or at least not completely) and Africa is really more like Asia and the Americas after all, with of a considerable number of small(er) families and isolates. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 09:38, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

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Relevance and datedness

This article needs major revision and updating; it does not take into account a lot of recent research from the last 5-10 years. Claire (talk) 19:48, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

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Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 02:40, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

I've just corrected the name of this map from Horton map of Australian Indigenous languages to the correct official name AIATSIS map of Aboriginal Australia as per https://aiatsis.gov.au/aboriginal-studies-press/products/aiatsis-map-indigenous-australia. It should of course be noted (as per the previous link) that this is **not** a map of languages. Dougg (talk) 03:20, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Move please

This article should be moved to Indigenous Australian languages - nobody in this country uses the term "Aboriginal" any more. Regards, William Harris • (talk) • 19:23, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

I have no stake in the discussion, but nothing seems wrong with your more modern terminology. Do you know how to do the move? (in the absence of objections from any other editors).--Quisqualis (talk) 03:37, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

It's not true that "no one" uses the term "Aboriginal" anymore. Indigenous is not a generally accepted term amongst First Peoples in Australia, though it is also often used, particularly in discussions about indigeneity more generally. Some see it as a term of erasure or euphemism. "Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander" is still preferred and widely used amongst the material I read regularly. Indigenous languages is fine, but the reason for the change is spurious (and not supported by evidence by the original poster). Claire (talk) 11:28, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Note this is an unpursued move (6 months no reply)

however as it is - there is a parallel usage here in the Australian project - and conversations in the past have ranged over the usage of

Aborigine

Aboriginal

Indigenous

as to the veracity of any one usage being the less offensive to those ascribed the various internal australian labels - australian aboriginal seems ok JarrahTree 12:03, 21 July 2017 (UTC)