Australia and the World Past and Present

There were more than 150 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages spoken across Australia in 2021.

With over 25 million people in Australia the proportion that speak one of these languages is tiny.

76,978 Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders reported that they spoke one of these languages in 2021. That’s only 9.5% of the indigenous population.

Yumplatok (or Torres Straight Island Creole) is the most commonly spoken language.

The percentage of indigenous people speaking one of these languages at home has decreased since the early 1990s.

The state or territory that reported the strongest use of these languages was the Northern Territory. There, 58% of the indigenous population spoke one of these languages.

At the other end of the spectrum, which state or territory had the lowest use of indigenous languages? That would be Tasmania where only 0.6% of the indigenous community reported speaking an indigenous language.

Tasmania’s history has a lot to do with this. Europeans first colonised the area around Sydney. But not long after people began to be sent to Tasmania – especially convicts. Europeans quickly established themselves and spread throughout the island displacing the local inhabitants and disrupting their way of life. Fanny Cochrane Smith is often recognised as the last native speaker of a Tasmanian indigenous language. She passed away in 1905.

It is not entirely clear how many languages and language families existed in Tasmania at the time of European colonisation. This is mainly from the lack of data such as word lists and other linguistic information. The reality is that most of these languages were lost before there were ever recorded.

Tasmanian aboriginals were rounded up and moved to Flinders Island. It appears that the different language groups initially had difficulty in communicating with each other on Flinders Island as they had come from different parts of Tasmania. As a result, a Tasmanian lingua franca was born. There is some debate as to whether this was koine, creole, pidgin or a mixed language.

In Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland the indigenous population speaking an indigenous language varies between around 5 and 15%.

There is one factor that seems to have been crucial in preserving indigenous languages in Australia – remoteness. The Northern Territory was one of the last parts of Australia to be explored by Europeans and settled. Even when the Territory was settled, its towns were smaller than say New South Wales or Victoria – and farther apart.

The most moderate climes in Australia were along the southeastern coast. The Northern Territory has an oppressive wet season. The northern reaches could be wet and humid while the south was dry and extremely hot.

Western Australia was also explored and settled late in the game. Much of the state is remote – especially the north and center. They remain so to this very day.

Queensland too is a state of wide open spaces. There are areas in which Europeans did not settle in large numbers and the Cape York Peninsula is an example of this.

As a general pattern one can see that where indigenous languages were left alone and not overtaken by English, they had a better chance of survival.

The two most populous states – New South Wales and Victoria – see very little indigenous language use in every day life. News South Wales was the first area of Australia settled by Europeans. Both New South Wales and Victoria were colonised early and comprehensively.

The majority of languages from these two states have lost most of their native speakers. Thus what language use there is now, much of it has had to be reconstructed from historical records.

In New South Wales and Victoria the proportion of the indigenous population speaking part of an indigenous language was below 5%.

According to the last ABS census there are 50 indigenous languages with no reported users.

For the largest indigenous languages how many speakers are there?

If you have a language with 5000 to 8000 speakers, you are doing incredibly well. In fact there are only 2 that reach this status.

17 languages have between 1000 and 5000 speakers.

24 languages have between 1 and 10 speakers.

This means that Australian indigenous languages are very fragile. It is not easy for a language to maintain itself with such low numbers of speakers. They are very vulnerable to change. That is why recording the language while it is still in existence is so crucial. Much work has been done in recent decades by communities, linguists and educators to research and record these languages. If worse comes to worse and there are no more native speakers hopefully enough of the language will have been recorded so that the language can be revived in the future.

The most common indigenous languages are found in the Northern Territory and Queensland.

Here are some of the most common languages:

Yumplatok (Torres Straight Island Creole) – 7,596 individuals

Kriol (NT) – 7,403 individuals

Djambarrpuyngu (NT) – 3,839 individuals

Pitjantjatjara (SA) – 3,399 individuals

Cape York Peninsula Languages (Qld) – 2,688 individuals.

Australian indigenous languages are numerous but they typically have a small territorial base and a very small number of speakers. This was case even at the time of European colonisation. This makes them very fragile. As their linguistic reproduction depends on small numbers of individuals they are highly susceptible to disruption. As a general rule, the more isolated they have been, the stronger these languages are.

Source: Language Statistics for Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Peoples, Australian Bureau of Statistics, released 25/10/2022.