Paredarerme or Oyster Bay Tasmanian is an
aboriginal language of
Tasmania
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, image_map = Tasmania in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of Tasmania in AustraliaCoordinates:
, subdivision_type = Country
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in the reconstruction of Claire Bowern.
[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 central eastern coast of the island by the Oyster Bay tribe, and in the interior by the Big River tribe. Records of the Big River dialect, ''Lairmairrener'' ("Lemerina"), indicate that it was no more distinct than the vocabularies collected along the coast around Oyster Bay; indeed,
Little Swanport appears to have been a separate language.
Big River Tasmanian is attested in a list of 268 words collected by
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 ...
. Coastal vocabularies include the Oyster Bay list of Robinson (357 words), and a second collected by Joseph Milligan of 1,040 words published in 1857 and 1859. The last is the longest vocabulary of any variety of Tasmanian.
[Bowern (2012), supplement]
References
Languages extinct in the 19th century
Eastern Tasmanian languages
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