HOW MANY AUSTRALIAN LANGUAGES?

December 24, 2011 by languagehat 5 Comments

How many languages were spoken in Australia at the time of European settlement? Claire of Anggarrgoon says 363 or 364, not counting Tasmania, and she should know. Her list is here (an xlsx file, which you can open in Excel or Google Docs [thanks, Sven!]); she says “this is, if I say so myself, a far better list to use than the Ethnologue’s,” and I’m perfectly happy to take her word for it.
I hope all LH readers are having a good holiday season; tomorrow I’ll provide my traditional Xmas Loot Report.

Comments

dearieme says

December 24, 2011 at 5:48 pm

Merry Christmas, Hat. Here’s your prezzie.
http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/chapel/virtual-tour/index.html
languagehat says

December 24, 2011 at 6:55 pm

Thanks! We listen to the Festival of Lessons and Carols every Christmas Eve morning, so it’s nice to see the place.
Trond Engen says

December 25, 2011 at 7:59 am

Claire Bowern has a blog? Wonderful new world! Thanks.
languagehat says

December 25, 2011 at 10:45 am

A wonderful new world since 2004!
John Cowan says

December 26, 2011 at 6:59 pm

O brave new world, that hath such bloggers in it….
Of course OpenOffice and LibreOffice (Siamese twins but recently separated) can handle .xlsx files too.

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HOW MANY AUSTRALIAN LANGUAGES?

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