Hi, Gerry:

The examples you gave are different families.  It would be equivalent asking whether a speaker of Germanic can understand a speaker of Turkic, for example, and the answer would be "No".  Nobody speaks Germanic, they speak English or German or Norwegian.  Likewise, nobody speaks Burrarran (Family), but they might speak BURARRA (language).

There might be a deep linguistic relation between families as postulated for Indo-European and Altaic, but, as I pointed out, that's in doubt for the various Australian families, but the individual languages are very different from each other. 

In sending the whole list, I think maybe I provided too much information.  Maybe I should just list the actual families.  Regarding "mega-families", until a relationship can be proven for the various Australian language families, I think the idea of an Australian macro-family is  a moot point.

Below is a list of JUST the language families:

Bunaban
Burarran
Daly
Djamindjungan
Djeragan
Enindhilygwa
Gagudjuan
Garawan
Gungaraganyan
Gunwingguan
Laragiyan
Mangerrian
Maran
Nyulnyulan
Pama-Nyungan
Tiwian
Unclassified
West Barkly
Wororan
Yiwaidjan

These are not the names of individual languages but the name of language groups, each one is at an equivalent level with, say, Finnic or Italic or Semitic.

I hope this clears things up a little.

Andy Howey

 Geraldine Reinhardt <waluk@...> wrote:

Thanks Andy. 

 

There are so many languages included.  Can a Bunaban speaker understand Burarran?  Does a Muran understand Pam-Nyungan? 

 

Ethnologue is an excellent source:  www.ethnologue.com/  but I don't see mega families being included.  Are these mega families necessary?

 

As I've often stated:  languages are as extensive as are the valleys of the world.  IOW, whenever a group moves from their parent domicile to their own abode, a new "language" arises.

 

Gerry