Study: Languages have single source

Rebecca Gredley

in Sydney All Australian indigenous languages are derived from one common language, NSW researchers say.

A three-year study by the University of Newcastle and Western Sydney University looked at whether languages were similar because they had the same ancestor, or because of human contact or chance.

WSU associate professor Robert Mailhammer said the results showed there were repeated similarities between languages that were not in contact, and that the language “family” most likely began in a small area in northern Australia.

“We discovered that the sounds of words we compared showed recurrent systematic differences and similarities across a set of languages that are spread out in a geographically discontinuous way,” he said. “Which makes it very unlikely that they are the result of chance or language contact.”

There were more than 250 indigenous languages across Australia at the time of European settlement in 1788, compared with about 120 spoken today, according to the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.

The research also found that Australian indigenous languages spread after the end of the last ice age, about 10,000-12,000 years ago.

The findings have been published in Diachronica, a journal of historical linguistics.

— AAP