Aborigines’ 250 languages ‘all from one tongue’

RESEARCHERS in Australia have discovered that the country’s 250 Aboriginal languages all derived from one source: a 12,000-year-old tongue that existed in a small part of northern Australia.

A three-year linguistics study found the dialects all shared recurring similarities and differences even though they were spread across vast distances.

It discovered they originated from a single tongue, known as Proto-australian, which existed about 12,000 years ago and spread as the last ice age ended.

“We think the language would have spread from areas in the north and then all across Australia, either in one big wave or in two smaller waves all around the continent,” Robert Mailhammer, from Western Sydney University, told ABC News.

“The interesting question for us is why did this one language spread and why did it supersede all of the other languages that were there?” The findings, from Western Sydney University and the University of Newcastle, were published in the journal Diachronica.