Indigenous languages of Australia and their speakers

The term ‘Australian languages’ can be used to refer to the indigenous languages of Australia including the languages of the Western Torres Strait and, perhaps, Tasmania. Most of the land mass including offshore islands through territorial affiliations has been linked to speakers of an indigenous language variety. Australia therefore contrasts with nearby Papua New Guinea, where significant areas of land have been uninhabited and unaffiliated with language groups (Wurm and Hattori 1981).

Australian languages are both numerous and diverse (see map 1.1). It has been estimated that around 250 distinct languages were spoken at the time of the first (significant) European contact in the late eighteenth century. Usually each language would have a number of dialects so that the total number of named varieties would have run to many hundreds (see e.g. Sutton, this volume). These varieties were spoken by a population of around 300,000 according to estimates generally accepted until fairly recently. However, Butlin (1983) suggests that previous estimates did not sufficiently allow for the devastating effects of introduced diseases such as smallpox: he therefore proposes an original population of around 900,000. A population of this size requires a rethinking of views on the relationship between language varieties and their speakers.