Eastern Tasmanian is an aboriginal

language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term ''family'' is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics ...

Tasmania Tasmania (; palawa kani: ''Lutruwita'') is an island States and territories of Australia, state of Australia. It is located to the south of the Mainland Australia, Australian mainland, and is separated from it by the Bass Strait. The sta ...

in the reconstructed classification of Claire Bowern.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: *Eastern Tasmanian **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 south of the ...

**Bruny (Southeastern Tasmanian) (2–3, Bruny tribe) *** Southeast Tasmanian ***

Bruny Island Bruny Island is a coastal island of Tasmania, Australia, located at the mouths of the Derwent River and Huon River estuaries on Storm Bay on the Tasman Sea, south of Hobart. The island is separated from the mainland by the D'Entrecasteaux C ...

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 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 Abo ...

is based on many of the same languages as the lingua franca.

References

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