Languages - Aboriginal

The Australian Aboriginal languages consist of around 290 languages belonging to an estimated 28 language families and isolates, spoken by Aboriginal Australians of mainland Australia and a few nearby islands. The relationships between these languages are not clear at present. Despite this uncertainty, the indigenous languages of Australia are collectively referred to as the "Australian languages" or the "Australian 'family'". The term can include both Tasmanian languages and the Western Torres Strait languages. Still, the genetic relationship to the mainland Australian languages of the former is unknown. At the same time, that of the latter, which shares some features with the Papuan Eastern Trans-Fly Meriam Mer tongue, has not yet been established with certainty. In the late 18th century, there were more than 250 distinct Aboriginal social groupings, and a similar number of languages or varieties. At the start of the 21st century, fewer than 150 Aboriginal languages remained in daily use, and all but 13, which are still being transmitted to children, are highly endangered. The surviving languages are located in the most isolated areas. For example, of the five least endangered Western Australian Aboriginal languages, four belong to the Ngaanyatjarra grouping of the Central and Great Victoria Desert. Your languages from north-east Arnhem Land are also currently being learned by children. Bilingual education is being used successfully in some communities. Seven of the most widely spoken Australian languages, including Warlpiri, Murrinh-patha, and Tiwi, retain between 1,000 and 3,000 speakers. Some Aboriginal communities and linguists support learning programs for language revival or only for post-vernacular maintenance (teaching Indigenous Australians some words and concepts related to the lost language). Aboriginal Tasmanians were nearly eradicated early in Australia's colonial history, and their language was lost before much was recorded. Tasmania separated from the mainland at the end of the Quaternary glaciation, and Tasmanian Aboriginal people apparently remained isolated from the outside world for around 12,000 years. Claire Bower concluded in a recent study that there were 12 Tasmanian languages and that those languages are unrelated (that is, not demonstrably related) to those on the Australian mainland. The Palawa Kani movement in Tasmania is a language revival program based on extant sources of Tasmanian languages and community memory. Which of the following are true of Australian languages?