Australian Aboriginal languages

Australian Aboriginal languages are the more than 250 distinct languages historically spoken by Australian Aboriginal people, most prominently grouped into the Pama-Nyungan family, which covers roughly seven eighths of the continent, alongside more than twenty smaller non-Pama-Nyungan families clustered in the northwest. Many linguists have long argued that most of these languages, including Pama-Nyungan, descend from a single higher-level ancestor, and a reconstructed Proto-Australian, dated to about 6,000 years before the present, was first proposed in 2024, though Tiwi and the Tasmanian languages are still considered unrelated isolates. Fewer than 150 of these languages remained in daily use at the start of the twenty first century, with the great majority endangered and only thirteen still being acquired by children.