non-Pama-Nyungan (idea)

The Australian Aboriginal languages that are not Pama-Nyungan. This is not as silly as it might sound: the single huge Pama-Nyungan family covers five-sixths of the continent, whereas about 25 very small distinct language families form a patchwork over the northernmost part, Arnhem Land and the Kimberleys.

In contrast to the general pattern of the Pama-Nyungan family, they use prefixes more frequently, they have syllables ending in consonants, and may have more vowels.

One source (the useful Ethnologue website from the Summer Institute of Linguistics) classifies the families thus, with the number of languages in each. (Note that Aboriginal names can be variously transcribed, especially with P for B, K for G, T for D.)

• Bunaban 2
• Burarran 4
• Daly 19
• Djamindjungan 2
• Djeragan 3
• Enindhilyagwa 1
• Gagadu 1
• Garawa 1
• Gunwingguan 13
• Kungarakany 1
• Laragiyan 2
• Mangerrian 3
• Maran 3
• Nyulnyulan 8
• Tiwi 1
• West Barkly 3
• Wororan 7
• Yiwaidjan 4
• and three unclassified -- making less than 25 in total, but the overall classification and numbers are still doubtful

(I've used names of isolates such as Gagadu instead of the one-member family names they used. A different source says there are 13 isolates.) By comparison, they classify 176 languages as Pama-Nyungan. Although there is considerable diversity among the languages of the far north, linguists believe they can all be connected into a single Australian super-family or phylum.