Families
Australian languages divide into a dozen or so families. Note when cross-referencing that most language names have multiple spellings: rr=r, b=p, d=t, g=k, dj=j=tj=c, j=y, y=i, w=u, u=oo, e=a, and so on. A range is given for the number of languages in each family, as sources count languages differently.
- Presumptive isolates:
- Tiwi
- Giimbiyu (extinct)
- Marrgu (extinct)
- Wagiman (moribund)
- Previously established families:
- Bunaban (2)
- Daly (four to five families, with 11–19 languages)
- Iwaidjan (3–7)
- Jarrakan (3–5)
- Nyulnyulan (8)
- Wororan (7–12)
- Newly proposed families:
- Mirndi (5–7)
- Darwin Region (4)
- Arnhem macrofamily, including Gunwinyguan (22)
- Greater Pama–Nyungan:
- Tangkic (5)
- the Garawa (3)
- Pama–Nyungan proper (approximately 270 languages)
Read more about this topic: Australian Aboriginal Languages, Classification
Famous quotes containing the word families:
“Children from humble families must be taught how to command just as other children must be taught how to obey.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Whatever else American thinkers do, they psychologize, often brilliantly. The trouble is that psychology only takes us so far. The new interest in families has its merits, but it will have done us all a disservice if it turns us away from public issues to private matters. A vision of things that has no room for the inner life is bankrupt, but a psychology without social analysis or politics is both powerless and very lonely.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)
“Take two kids in competition for their parents’ love and attention. Add to that the envy that one child feels for the accomplishments of the other; the resentment that each child feels for the privileges of the other; the personal frustrations that they don’t dare let out on anyone else but a brother or sister, and it’s not hard to understand why in families across the land, the sibling relationship contains enough emotional dynamite to set off rounds of daily explosions.”
—Adele Faber (20th century)