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 his ...
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 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 Tasm ...
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 language, based on reconstructed vocabulary from the limited accounts of the various languages once spoken by the eastern Aboriginal Tasm ...
is based on many of the same languages as the lingua franca.
References
{{Aboriginal peoples in Tasmania
Indigenous Australian languages in Tasmania
Language families