The point I was trying to make Andy is that no one speaks a language without accompanying body movements.  Even in egroup discussions, icons such as a smiley face play an important role.  BTW, how far along are you in your language studies?  The reason I ask is that I was wondering if you have access to a sample vocabulary of Burarra and another for Bunaba. 
 
Gerry
----- Original Message -----
From: Andy Howey
To: Nostratica@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2003 9:25 PM
Subject: RE: [Nostratica] Inventory of Australian languages as per Ethnologue

That may be so in this particular case, Gerry, but it doesn’t mean that English and Spanish are mutually intelligible.  It merely means that you found an alternative means of communicating.  I thought we were discussing SPOKEN  languages, not sign language and gesture mimicry.  You asked “can a speaker of Burarra (one language family) understand a speaker of Bunaba (another language family)?” IOW, would people speaking languages from different Australian language families would be able to understand each other.  The key word here is “speak”.  Using that as the defining criterion, I attempted to use English and Spanish as an analogy.  Again, using “speak” as the defining criterion, then my answer would have to be “No”, they would not be able to understand each other.