The Gippsland languages are a family of

Pama–Nyungan languages The Pama–Nyungan languages () are the most widespread language family, family of Australian Aboriginal languages, containing 306 out of 400 Aboriginal languages in Australia. The name "Pama–Nyungan" is a merism: it is derived from the two e ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

.Bowern, Claire. 2011.
How Many Languages Were Spoken in Australia?
, ''Anggarrgoon: Australian languages on the web'', December 23, 2011
corrected
February 6, 2012) They were spoken in the

Gippsland Gippsland () is a rural region in the southeastern part of Victoria, Australia, mostly comprising the coastal plains south of the Victorian Alps (the southernmost section of the Great Dividing Range). It covers an elongated area of east of th ...

region, the southernmost part of mainland Australia, on the

Bass Strait Bass Strait () is a strait separating the island state of Tasmania from the Mainland Australia, Australian mainland (more specifically the coast of Victoria (Australia), Victoria, with the exception of the land border across Boundary Islet). The ...

. There are three rather distant branches; these are often considered single languages, though the dialects of Gaanay are sometimes counted separately: *Gippsland ** Gaanay (Kurnai) ***Muk-thang ***Nulit ***Thangquai *** Bidhawal **

Dhudhuroa The Dhudhuroa people (or Duduroa) are an Indigenous Australian people of North-eastern Victoria, in the state of Victoria, Australia. About 2,000 descendants exist in Australia in the early 21st century. Name The endonym Dhudhuroa has been analys ...

** Pallanganmiddang All but Kurnai are now

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

. The Gippsland languages, especially Gaanay, have phonotactics that are unusual for mainland Australian languages, but characteristic of

Tasmanian languages The Tasmanian languages were the languages indigenous to the island of Tasmania, used by Aboriginal Tasmanians. The languages were last used for daily communication in the 1830s, although the terminal speaker, Fanny Cochrane Smith, survived u ...

References

{{Australian Aboriginal languages