The Tasmanians

Part 6: The Tasmanian Languages

 

Table of Contents   6.1. Languages, Dialects and Tribes 6.2. An Orphan, or with Family? 6.3. A truly Major Loss 6.4. A New Language or Rising from the Ashes?

6.1. Language, dialects and tribes

It is known that there were different Tasmanian languages that were mutually unintelligible but it is not known how closely or distantly they might have been related to each other. The available material (though more extensive than some claim) is insufficient to settle the matter. The map below shows the Tasmanian language family roughly as proposed by the German linguist Schmidt (W. Schmidt, 1952, Die Tasmanischen Sprachen. Spektrum, Utrecht-Anvers). He postulates at least three and perhaps four languages of which one, the Eastern, can be further divided into three distinct dialects (or languages). The languages probably followed roughly the known tribal borders.

One possible way to classsify the internal structure of the Tasmanian languages. For the new language click here: Palawa kani

The following examples were chosen at random from Wilhelm Schmidt, 1952 Die Tasmanischen Sprachen - Quellen, Gruppierungen, Grammatik, Wörterbücher .The special phonetic symbols used by Schmidt cannot be reproduced on the internet and have been replaced by ordinary letters here. Suffixes are shown in parentheses. Schmidt does not mention or give sample sof the Southwestern Tasmanian language. It is possible that the two western languages were in fact dialects of one language.

English	EASTERN TASMANIAN			WESTERN	NORTHERN
	North-eastern	Mid-eastern	South-eastern	North-Western
.
woman	lu(na)	lowa(na)	lowa(na)	nowa(lea)	lu(riga)
father	-	nanga	nanxa	-	-
fire	-	nuena	(n)üna	(w)üna	üna
to speak	-	ona, oana	ona, oanana	ona	-
hut	liprena	-	lari	lebri(na), libre(na)	lebirina
foot	langa(na)	logana	lo-gana	logera, löx	-
ear	-	koa	koigi, küeyi, wayi	wayi	kowan(riga)
grass	rotina	-	rori	-	rurga
mouth, sound	kane	kane(na)	kanona, kanina	kane	-
to be dead	-	mai, moi	moia, moye	moi	-
I (self)	mina	mi(na)	mi(na), ma(na)	mana	mana, mina
lips	mona	mouna, muna	moye	-	-
hair	peba	-	-	-	piba, paba

J.E. Calder in 1874 published the following Tasmanian text, a prayer to the aborigines of one of the Bruny islands south of Hobart from the Robinson diaries (J.E. Calder , 1874. "Native Tribes of Tasmania," Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. 3, page 28). The first line of each word is as written by Robinson, the second as phonemicized, and the third translated into English. The text has some unexplained oddities: for example the word "moti" is not known as a numeral for "one" from any other source. MOTTI NYRAE PARLERDI MOTTI NOVILLY RAEGEWROPPER PARLERDI NYRAE PARLERDI moti nairi palati moti nowili retji-ropa palati nairi palati one good God one bad devil God good God MAGGERER WARRANGELLY RAEGEWROPPER MAGGERER TOOGENNER UENEE NYRAE PARLERVAR LOGERNER makara waran-ngali retji-ropa makara tökana wini nairi palawa lookana stop sky devil stop below fire good native dead TAGGERER TEENNY LAWWAY WARRANGELLY PARLERDI NYRAE RAEGE (etc) NOVILLY takara tini lawey waran-ngali palati nairi redji nowili goes road up sky God good white man bad PARLERVAR LOGERNER TAGGERER TEENNY TOOGUNNER RAEGEWROPPER UENEE MAGGERER UENEE palawa lookana takara tini tökana retji-ropa wini makara wini native dead go road below devil fire stop fire

"Very little is known about the Tasmanian languages" - so say most works of the last 50 years on the subject. They are exaggerating. "Not enough" would be more accurate.

Wilhelm Schmidt in 1952 published Die Tasmanischen Sprachen - Quellen, Gruppierungen, Grammatik, Wörterbücher ("The Tasmanian languages - Sources, Groupings, Grammar, Dictionaries), Spectrum Publishers, funded by UNESCO, Utrecht-Anvers. The book was written at the time of World War 1 but not published until 1952. Unfortunately, it is written in German (though it contains quite a bit of English, too, and in some places a strange mixture of the two languages) and it was never translated properly as far as we know. Scientists interested in Tasmanian are not exactly unaware of the book's existence, but they seem to dislike using it. A. Capell in an article "What do we know pf Tasmanian language" (Records of the Queen Victoria Museum Launceston, vol. 30, dated 1 July 1968) noted:

That remarkable anthropologist-linguist, the late Fr. Wilhelm Schmidt, who worked so hard on the study of Australian languages - and never heard one spoken - worked no less hard to produce an analysis of the remains of Tasmanian. ...in which he extracted every ounce of fact that one could hope to extract from the existing documents - and perhaps a few more in excess! It was a really remarkable piece of work.

That remakable piece written in an odd mix of English and German texts contains more than 1,500 Tasmanian words in alphabetical order, most with variations of some of the different Tasmanian languages given, much additional data and cross-references, a survey of sources with register and there are more than 200 closely-packed pages with grammatical data. Of course, the book does not answer all open questions but it does contain a great deal of data. Why is it so little known, used and and quoted?

Here are two pages from Schmidt's book: one from the grammar (p. 182, left) and one from the Vocabulary (p. 297). Could it possibly be that the Tasmanian languages are "little known" only in English?

6.2. An Orphan or with Family? 

R.M.W. Dixon in his The Languages of Australia (1980, Cambridge University Press) notes the following about the Tasmanian languages:

A handful of possible cognates can be found [in Tasmanian] with mainland [Australian] languages, no more than a committed researcher could find by cocmparing the vocabularies of any two languages; nothing concerning genetic connection can be inferred from them. All that we can conclude is this - there is NO evidence that the Tasmanian languages were NOT of the regular Australian type. They have been separated off for so long, and the available materials are so poor, that the likelihood of a genetic connection cannot be confirmed. The genetic asffiliation of Tasmanian is, and must remain, unproven.

Despite Dixon's dictum, attempts to find a family home for Tasmanian have been attempted:

Theory 1. A relationship to the Australian languages is unlikely

Wilhelm Schmidt. 1952. Die Tasmanischen Sprachen - Quellen, Gruppierungen, Grammatik, Wörterbücher

(Original German text: Dass mit den Sprachen des zunächst liegenden Kontinents Australian keinerlei Beziehungen bestehen, weder im Wortschatz noch in der Grammatik, davon kann sich jedermann schon beim Durchlesen meiner "Gliederung der australischen Sprachen (Wien, 1919) und der in der "Oceania" erschienenen Arbeiten überzeugen. Die melanesischen Sprachen oder gar die polynesischen kommen, weil jünger als die australischen, schon gar nicht in Betracht. Ob in dem Sprachgewirr von Neuguinea sich Beziehungen aufdecken lassen, weiss ich nicht, es ist mir nicht sehr wahrscheinlich)
That there are no connections [of the Tasmanian languages] with the languages of the nearest continent, Australia, neither in volcabulary nor in grammar, anybody can see and be convinced by simply reading my The Classification of the Australian Languages ("Gliederung der Australischen Sprachen", Vienna 1919) and my works published in Oceans.

Encyclopaedia Britannica. 1985:

No relationship between the Tasmanian languages and any other languages of the world has been discovered.

The International Encyclopaedia of Linguistics. 1992:

vol. 1, p. 137: " At the end of the 19th century, Tasmanians were believed to be non-Australian in physical type, culture, and language. Athropologists have now re-assessed the physical and cultural evidence; it is generally believed that the Tasmanians were a group of Australian Aborigines, isolated when their island was cut off by the rising sea level about 12,000 years ago. Pitifully little information was gathered on Tasmanian languages before they ceased to be spoken., at the end of the 29th century.; there were eprobably 8 to 12 distinct languages. Information on the Tasmanian phonology suggests that the languages were typologically similar to those of Australia. No information on grammar is available. Only a few dubious lexical cognates can be recognized between Tasmanian and mainland languages. (R.M.W. Dixon)"

vol. 2, p. 308: "The poor quality of the records of the extinct Tasmanian languages make the establishment of reliable genetic affiliation at best problemastic; Greenberg 1971 suggests grouping them with the Papuan languages and Andamanese in an Indo-Pacific family, though this has gained little favor with Papuanists and Australianists (see Theory 2 below). Dixon 1980 argues that "the scant evidence does not contradict, though equally does not support, their affiliation with the Australian family."

Theory 2. The Tasmanian languages are members of a the Indo-Pacific language family

... to which Andamanese, many Newguinean, Papuan, Melanesian languages as well as languages spoken in Timor and on islands off the east coast of Papua-Newguinea also belong - but not the Australian languages! The Indo-Pacific family was proposed by Greenberg, Wurm and Ruhlen but has not been widely accepted by linguists - but neither has any other classification. The matter remains unresolved.

M. Ruhlen, A Guide to the World's Languages, vol. 1 Classification, (1987, 1991, Stanford University Press), p. 182, has the following classification of the Indo-Pacific Languages, based on Greenberg 19171 and Wurm 1982): INDO PACIFIC I. Tasmanian II. Andamanese III Trans-Newguinean A. Main Section 1. Central and Western a. Central and Huon b. East Newguinea Highlands c. Central and South Newguines-Kutubuan d. Angan e. Gogodala-Suki f. Marind g. Kayagar h. Sentani i. Dani-Kwerba j. Wissel Lakes-Kemandoga k. Mairasi-Tanah Merah l. West Bomberai 2. Eastern a. Binanderean b. Goilalan c. Koiarian d. Kwalean e. Manubaran f. Yareban g. Mailuan h. Dagan B. Mandang-Adelbert Range C. Teberan-Pawaian D. Turama-Kikorian E. Inland Gulf F. Eleman G. Trabs-Fly-Bulaka River H. Mek I. Senagi J. Pauwasi K. Northern L. Nimboran M. Kaure N. South Bird's Head O. Kolopom P. Timor-Alor IV. West Papuan V. East Bird's Head VI. Geelvink Bay VII. Sko VIII. Kwomtari-Baibai IX. Arai X. Amto-Musian XI. Torricelli XII. Sepik-Ramu XIII. East Papuan

 

Theory 3. There is some likelihood of a relationship with Australian Languages

S.A. Wurm. 1972. Languages of Australia abd Tasmania

p. 168: In pre-European times, an estimated five to eight thousand Tasmanian aborigines who were racially different from the Australians were living in Tasmania....the last full-blood Tasmanian died in 1877. The languages...survived in fragments until around the turn of the century.... "Only limited and generally quite unreliable notes and materials, mostly word-lists and some sentence materials, had been collected in the Tasmanian languages, from which only a superficial picture of them can be obtained."

S.A. Wurm and S. Hattori. 1981. Language Atlas, Pacific Area.

sheet 21, note 12: Due to the paucity of source material on the now extinct Tasmanian languages it is not possible to say with much conviction what the precise linguistic situation was.... Regarding the relationship of Tasmanian languages with other Australian languages it is unlikely that a clear answer can now be given because of lack of lexical and grammatical material to compare. The best that can be said is that there is no evidence that some or all of the Tasmanian languages are not related to Australian languages (ref. Cowley and Dixon 19981)

C. Yallop. 1982. Australian Aboriginal Languages,

p. 31: The status of the Tasmanian languages (possibly only two in number and now extinct) is not clear. They appear to have differed from mainland languages in certain respects, and it has been argued that these differences reflect a distinct ancestry rather than a relatively isolated development from the mainland stock.

pp. 38-39: At least five different dialects are thought to have been spoken [in Tasmania] but they have been extinct since the early twentieth century. The five dialects are tentatively grouped as two languages, either Western vs. Eastern or Northern vs.Southern. The relationship between Tasmanian and mainland languages is uncertain.

pp. 70-71: A note on the Tasmanian languages: What little we can reconstruct of the pronunciation of Tasmanian languages is not conclusive evidence as to their relationship with mainland languages. Their consonantal system was comparable to one of the simpler mainland languages, with perhaps four points of articulation for plosives and nasals....There seems not to have been any distinction of voicing...and there were no fricatives other than possibly _gh_ or _h_. But there may have been an unusually high number of vowels in comparison with mainland languages....

J.Mulvaney and J. Kamminga. 1999. Prehistory of Australia

pp. 339-340: Although there are reasons to believe that Tasmanian and southeastern mainland languages were related to each other before the creation of Bass Strait, all that linguists are able to say about the modern languages is that their sound system is not particularly different.

Theory 4. The Tasmanian languages are part of the Australian language family

Many Australians firmly believe that Tasmanian is a member of the Australian language family. Patriotism can be a powerful sentiment but it is not evidence - and this is the theory with the least supporting evidence.

6.3. A truly Major Loss

Why does the loss of most linguistic data on the Tasmanian languages weigh so heavily, when, after all, there are many other languages in the world about which little is known and that have also gone or will soon go extinct? The reason is that a solid knowledge of the language would be able to answer many questions far beyond linguistics, especially questions regarding the deep prehistory of Tasmania, Papua-Newguinea, Australia and perhaps still further afield.

Johanna Nichols, professor of linguistics at the University of California, in her book Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time, 1992, University of Chicago Press, pages 262-263, has this to say about the importance of the lost Tasmanian languages:

The Tasmanian languages, extinct and poorly attested, are our only hope for information about the deep linguistic prehistory of the southern periphery of Australia, and that in turn is critical to our understanding of global linguistic prehistory, For the rest of Australia, the typological picture is this: dependent-marking Pama-Nyungan occupies the southern three-quarters of the continent as the result of a major and comparatively recent spread. The northern periphery [of Australia] is a region of [linguistic] genetic and typological diversity, The extreme northern peripheral languag is Tiwi, isolated on Bathurst and Melville islands. Tiwi is almost exclusively head-marking, and has an inclusive/exclusive opposition, inalienable possession, plurality neutralization in the noun, and noun classes. ... There was, however, a tendency for head-marking to increase as one moves eastwards in northern Eurasia, which suggested that the strong head-marking tendencies [of languages] of the New Worldare due not to random founder effects but to another global cline visible only in the northern hemisphere. The main reason for not regarding this as a global pattern was the lack of equally strong head-marking preferences in Australia. The patterns that I called global (frequency of inclusive/exclusive pronouns, inalienable possession, plurality neutralization, PP's, and perhaps gender classes) were similar in Australia and the New World.

Now the fact that Tiwi, the extreme peripheral language of Australia, is radically head-marking and the languages closest to it approach the head-marking type suggests that head-marking tendencies may be archaic in Australia and may have been strong over the whole continent before the Pama-Nyungan spread. Information about the marking type of Tasmanian could give us a better understanding of whether the head-marking typology of Tiwi is due to chance or is a peripheral conservatism. If Tasmanian was predominantly head-marking, Tiwi in all likelihood represents a peripheral conservatism.

... but what morphological marking there was [in Tasmanian] would seem to have been largely head-marking. On the other hand, the more critical recent assessment of Crowley and Dixon [1981]is that no reliable conclusions can be drawn about the grammatical structure of Tasmanian.

In addition to its possible implications for the prehistory of Australia and of the entire colonized zone, Tasmanian would have had vital information to contribute to our understanding of global prehistory. Recall that Australia ... represents the earliest split after the old world from the tree of typological divergence. If, as argued in connection with global clines, Australia represents the fae east of the inhabited world, Tasmania surely represents its absolute periphery, and it has been separated from Australia for about as long as Newguinea has (and vy the same sea level rise). Was Tasmania as linguistically divergent from Australia as Australia is from Newguinea? Did it typologically resemble the southeastern Australian area that is closest to it? Either a "no" answer to the first questions or a "yes" to the second would give us an extremely early chronology for the deeper typological split... But we will probably never have these answers.

All that remains to us is the forlorn hope that, one day, an old manuscript with all the missing data on the Tasmanian languages will one day be discovered in a cellar or behind a cupboard.

6.4. A New Language or rising from the Ashes?

The original Tasmanian languages are thought to have contained between 3 to 12 languages, depending on how the few items of information available are interpreted. All these languages without exception became extinct in the 19th century, although the last speaker of a Tasmanian language, Fanny Cochrane Smith, did not die until 1905.

This is what R.M.W. Dixon inthe International Encyclopaedia of Linguistics, ed. William Bright, Oxford University Press, 1992 (vol. 1, p. 137) has to say about the Tasmanian languages:

Pitifully little information was gathered on Tasmanian languages before they ceased to be spoken, at the end of the 19th century; there were probably eight to twelve distinct languages. Information on Tasmanian phonology suggests that the languages were typologically similar to those of Australia. No information on grammar is available. Only a few dubious lexical cognates can be recognized between Tasmanian and mainland (Australian) languages.

Whatever the Palawa lack in scientific evidence and support, they more than make up for in determination and sheer cheek - even if this isn't really enough to pull off a miracle. Ignoring the fact that so little is known about the original Tasmanian languages, the activists are claiming to be able to resurrect the Tasmanian language as "a language for the indigenous Tasmanian community", calling it Palawa kani. The following notification appeared on the internet, dated 19 June 2005.

Milaythina nika milaythina-mana: Rebirth of Tasmanian language by Simon Bevilacqua New life has been breathed into the Tasmanian Aboriginal language. After more than five years' research and analysis, the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre has given the Tasmanian community a glimpse of its language, known as palawa kani. The language has been used on interpretation boards on the summit of Mt Wellington, or kunanyi as the mountain is known to Aborigines. One panel states, milaythina nika milaythina-mana: "This land is our country". In the late 1990s, the TAC embarked on a bold attempt to rejuvenate an Aboriginal language. Researchers scanned historical references, including journals of the d'Entrecasteaux expedition. There were thought to be a dozen or more Aboriginal languages in Tasmania and even more dialects. The language program has produced an amalgam of the languages. TAC spokeswoman Trudy Maluga said the Aboriginal community decided to release parts of the new language only when it benefited the Aboriginal community. "We have taken ownership of our language," Ms Maluga said. "This is a way of beating assimilation." Ms Maluga said many within the Aboriginal community could speak palawa kani fluently. Many Tasmanian towns feature Aboriginal names including Murdunna, Taroona, Teepookana and Nubeena.

In Wikipedia the following update to 2007 can be found (apart from other information).

Developed in conjunction with the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, community ownership of the language is maintained for the time being. The language project is entirely community based and the language is not taught in state schools but at various after school events, organised camps and trips. There is obvious enthusiasm for the language especially among younger people and an increasing number of people able to use the language to some extent, some to great fluency. Lutana Spotswood famously gave a eulogy in palawa kani at the funeral of the Tasmanian Premier Jim Bacon.

Palawa kani is also used on a number of signs in Tasmanian National Parks and Kunanyi has been accepted as an official name for Mt Wellington and the Asbestos Range National Park is now know formally as Narawntapu National Park.

How new "Tasmanian" place names are invented and then imposed is illustrated in the case of the important Kutikina (Fraser) cave.

Relevant Link with additional data on the Tasmanians and their languages: see Roger Blench's web-site

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 Last change 1 February 2008