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The Pama-Nyungan languages are the most widespread subfamily of the Australian language family.
The Pama-Nyungan family was identified and named by Kenneth Hale, in his work on the classification of Native Australian languages. Hale realized that while all of the Aboriginal Australian languages were related to each other, one relatively closely-interrelated subgroup had spread and proliferated over most of the continent, while approximately a dozen other subgroups were concentrated along the North coast. While all these subgroups are taxonomic sisters, the Pama-Nyungan group accounts for most of the geographic spread, most of the Aboriginal population, and the greatest number of languages in the larger Australian family.
The name "Pama-Nyungan" was derived from the names of two widely-separated subgroups, the Pama languages from the Northeast, and the Nyungan languages from the Southwest.
The other language subfamilies indigenous to the continent of Australia are occasionally referred to, by exclusion, as Non Pama-Nyungan languages, though this is not a proper taxonomic term.
Although counting languages is not, in general, a well-defined operation, there are on the order of hundreds of Pama-Nyungan languages. Most of the Pama-Nyungan languages are spoken by small ethnic groups, with thousands of speakers or fewer. Many are considered endangered languages, and many have recently become extinct.
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