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Eastern Tasmanian is an aboriginal
language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in h ...
of
Tasmania ) , nickname = , image_map = Tasmania in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Tasmania in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdi ...
in the reconstruction of
Claire Bowern Claire Louise Bowern () is a linguist who works with Australian Indigenous languages. She is currently a professor of linguistics at Yale University, and has a secondary appointment in the department of anthropology at Yale. Career Bowern re ...
.Claire Bowern, September 2012, "The riddle of Tasmanian languages", ''Proc. R. Soc. B'', 279, 4590–4595,


Languages

Bayesian phylogenetic analysis suggests that four (at p < 0.20) to five (at p < 0.15) Eastern Tasmanian languages are recorded in the 26 unmixed Tasmanian word lists (out of 35 lists known). These cannot be shown to be related to other Tasmanian languages based on existing evidence. The languages are: *Oyster Bay (Central–Eastern Tasmanian) (2) ** Oyster Bay (Oyster Bay and Big River tribes) **
Little Swanport Little Swanport is a rural locality and an estuary in the local government area of Glamorgan–Spring Bay in the South-east region of Tasmania. It is especially significant for the Little Swanport language. The locality is about north of the ...
*Bruny (Southeastern Tasmanian) (2–3, Bruny tribe) ** Southeast Tasmanian **
Bruny Island Bruny Island ( Nuenonne: Lunawanna-alonnah) is a island located off the south-eastern coast of Tasmania, Australia. The island is separated from the Tasmanian mainland by the D'Entrecasteaux Channel, and its east coast lies within the Tasman ...
Two of the lists reported to be from Oyster Bay contain substantial Northeastern admixture (see Northeastern Tasmanian languages), which Bowern believes to be responsible for several classifications linking the languages of the east coast. However, once that admixture is accounted for, the apparent links disappear.


Descendants

The Flinders Island lingua franca was based primarily on Eastern and Northeastern Tasmanian languages. The English-based
Bass Strait Pidgin Bass Strait Pidgin was an unattested English-based pidgin language spoken in the Bass Strait islands of Australia. It likely developed in the early 1800s as a result of contact between European sealers and Aboriginal women abducted from Tasm ...
continued some vocabulary from the lingua franca. The constructed language
Palawa kani Palawa kani is a constructed language created by the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre as a composite Tasmanian languages, Tasmanian language, based on reconstructed vocabulary from the limited accounts of the various languages once spoken by the eas ...
is based on many of the same languages as the lingua franca.


References

{{Aboriginal peoples in Tasmania Indigenous Australian languages in Tasmania Language families