Archeological evidence indicates that Australia has been inhabited by humans for over 50,000 years. At the time of the establishment of the first British colony at Port Jackson (Sydney), in 1788, there were about 250 different languages spoken on the continent. Estimates of the Aboriginal population at that time vary from the low figure of 300 000 to several times that number.

Over a period of a little more than 100 years, Europeans took over the whole country, killing a large proportion of the indigenous population in the process. Today only 60 or so Aboriginal languages are still spo-ken, and as few as 20 or so are likely to be spoken a generation from now. For almost all the native languages, we have some record, though in some cases only a brief English– Aboriginal word list. Grammatical information is available for approximately 100 languages, the bulk of it having been collected since the 1960s, in many cases from the last speakers.

Fonte: Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World, 2009 Else-vier Ltd (adapted).