Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The languages of Australia are the major historic and current languages used in Australia and its offshore islands. Over 250 Australian Aboriginal languages are thought to have existed at the time of first European contact. [1] English is the majority language of Australia today.
The Indigenous languages of Australia comprise numerous language families and isolates, perhaps as many as 13, spoken by the Indigenous peoples of mainland Australia and a few nearby islands. [3] The relationships between the language families are not clear at present although there are proposals to link some into larger groupings.
Australian Aboriginal Pidgin English language: Few Nearly extinct Pidgin. Developed post-contact. Has been mostly creolized. Australian Kriol language: Creole, Pidgin English, Roper-Bamyili Creole 4,200 Vigorous WA, NT & Qld developed post-contact. 10, 000 second language speakers. Awabakal language: Awabakal 9 Dormant NSW. Being revived.
A language that uniquely represents the national identity of a state, nation, and/or country and is so designated by a country's government; some are technically minority languages. (On this page a national language is followed by parentheses that identify it as a national language status.) Some countries have more than one language with this ...
But the most recent census showed that despite more than 150 languages still being spoken in 2021, just 9.5% of Indigenous Australians reported speaking one or more at home.
Most spoken languages, Ethnologue, 2025 [6] Language Family Branch First-language (L1) speakers Second-language (L2) speakers Total speakers (L1+L2) English (excl. creole languages) Indo-European: Germanic: 390 million 1.1 billion 1.5 billion Mandarin Chinese (incl. Standard Chinese, but excl. other varieties) Sino-Tibetan: Sinitic: 990 million ...
The Pama–Nyungan languages are the most widespread family of Australian Aboriginal languages, [1] containing 306 out of 400 Aboriginal languages in Australia. [2] The name "Pama–Nyungan" is a merism: it is derived from the two end-points of the range, the Pama languages of northeast Australia (where the word for "man" is pama) and the Nyungan languages of southwest Australia (where the ...
It is the first legislation in Australia to acknowledge the significance of First Languages. [13] The Aboriginal Language and Culture Nest project in NSW draws together communities with a common language to create opportunities to "revitalise, reclaim and maintain traditional languages". [14]