MultiTree:

Name: Tasmanian Type: Language Alternate Names: Tasmanian (Oyster Bay to Pitwater); Sprachen von Tasmanien; Palawa Kani Code: xtz Code Standard: ISO 639-3 Documentation: LINGUIST List Families: Unclassified Languages Parent Subgroup: Australian Unclassified (auun) Brief Description: Tasmanian consists of a group of languages -- anywhere between 5 and 16 -- spoken by the native inhabitants of the island of Tasmania before the advent of European settlement. The last full blooded Tasmanian died in 1888 on Flinders Island, though the languages continued to be used -- perhaps in the form of a lingua franca -- until the early part of the 20th century on Flinders and Cape Barren Islands. Most of the evidence for the languages consists of word-lists, the earliest of which is ascribed to Captain Cook's visit in 1777. Because of the sparsity of evidence, the languages cannot obviously be related to any family (or even to each other), though typologically they seem similar to Australian. There may indeed have been more than one language family represented on the island. Until circa 1910.

Endangerment Status

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Linguist List Status: Extinct