Palawa Kani - History

History

The original Tasmanian languages became extinct in 1905 when the last native speaker died. As part of community efforts to retrieve as much of the original Tasmanian culture as possible, efforts are made to construct a language for the indigenous community. Due to the scarcity of records, Palawa kani is being constructed as a composite of the estimated dozen original languages.

Theresa Sainty and Jenny Longey were the first two "language workers" to work on the project in 1999.

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