The Tasmanian languages/dialects records are sparse. Crowley and Dixon (1981:402) say it is unlikely there is any close genetic connection between Port Sorell and any other Tasmanian language. Crowley (1993:54) concludes from examination of vocabulary lists and comments from colonial observations about who could and who could not understand each other, that at least eight separate languages and possibly as many as twelve belong to Tasmania. Crowley and Dixon (1981:404) conclude there is no evidence to indicate a single Tasmanian language family, available evidence indicates two, four or even eight distinct families.
Bowern (2012) groups twelve languages into four language macro-families (northeastern, Oyster Bay, southeastern (Bruny) and western) using methods from evolutionary biology to systematically investigate vocabularies from thirty five language lists.
Crowley and Dixon (1981:402-403) compare collected vocabularies from fifteen regions. This database assigns reference names for Tasmania based on this regional list. See also Northern T1; Oyster Bay T2; North-western T3; Northern Midlands T4; South-eastern T5; Macquarie Harbour T6; Ben Lomond T7; Big River T8; Cape Portland T9; South-western T10; Robbin Island T11; Circular Head T12; Piper River T14 and Little Swanport T15. The areas defined as Port Sorrell (T13) and Norther T1 in Crowley and Dixon's map (1981:394) roughly coincides with the area defined as Tommeginne by Horton in the AIATSIS map of Aboriginal Australia. Port Sorell language data, along with historical sources from all Tasmanian language varieties, form the basis of palawa kani language T16.
TAS
Search MURA people®
Search MURA language®
Search OZBIB
Search Trove
Search Worldcat
Speaker numbers were measured differently across the censuses and various other sources listed in AUSTLANG. You are encouraged to refer to the sources.
Speaker numbers for ‘NILS 2004’ and ‘2005 estimate’ come from 'Table F.3: Numbers of speakers of Australian Indigenous languages (various surveys)' in 'Appendix F NILS endangerment and absolute number results' in McConvell, Marmion and McNicol 2005, pages 198-230 (PDF, 2.5MB).