Northwestern Tasmanian, or Peerapper ("Pirapa"), is an aboriginal language of

Tasmania ) , nickname = , image_map = Tasmania in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Tasmania in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdi ...

in the reconstruction of

Claire Bowern Claire Louise Bowern () is a linguist who works with Australian Indigenous languages. She is currently a professor of linguistics at Yale University, and has a secondary appointment in the department of anthropology at Yale. Career Bowern re ...

.Claire Bowern, September 2012, "The riddle of Tasmanian languages", ''Proc. R. Soc. B'', 279, 4590–4595, doi: 10.1098/rspb.2012.1842 It was spoken along the west coast of the island, from

Macquarie Harbour Macquarie Harbour is a shallow fjord in the West Coast region of Tasmania, Australia. It is approximately , and has an average depth of , with deeper places up to . It is navigable by shallow-draft vessels. The main channel is kept clear by th ...

north to

Circular Head Circular Head Council is a Local government in Australia, local government body in Tasmania covering the far north-west mainland. It is classified as a rural local government area with a population of 8,066, and its major towns and localities ...

and Robbins Island. Northwestern Tasmanian is poorly attested from four word lists: The "west coast" vocabularies of Charles Robinson and

George Augustus Robinson George Augustus Robinson (22 March 1791 – 18 October 1866) was a British-born colonial official and self-trained preacher in colonial Australia. In 1824, Robinson travelled to Hobart, Van Diemen’s Land, where he attempted to negotiate ...

, with 246 words combined; the Robbins Island list of George Augustus Robinson, with 162 words; and the Macquarie Harbour vocabularies of Allan Cunningham (222 words), collected in 1819.Bowern (2012), supplement The list collected by George Augustus Robinson at

West Point The United States Military Academy (USMA), also known Metonymy, metonymically as West Point or simply as Army, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York. It was originally established as a f ...

("Western Tribes") is divergent, and falls out as a separate language in Bowern. However, it includes only 28 words, so little can be definitively said.

References

Western Tasmanian languages Languages extinct in the 19th century {{ia-lang-stub