Vaughan and Loakes, page 1 of 27 36 Language Contact and Australian Languages JILL VAUGHAN AND DEBBIE LOAKES To appear in Raymond Hickey (Ed.), Handbook of Language Contact, Wiley. 1. Introduction The language ecology of twenty-first century Australia is one of significant diversity and rapid change. The continent is home to some 25 million people – almost 4% of whom are Aboriginal – using a great variety of language types: traditional Aboriginal languages and more recent arrivals from across the globe, contact varieties like creoles and mixed languages, and many embryonically localised Englishes. At the time of British invasion in 1788, 800 Aboriginal varieties were spoken across Australia, grouped into over 250 distinct languages. The linguistic effects of colonisation on Aboriginal communities have been catastrophic: at present fewer than 20 of these languages are still learned by children (Koch and Nordlinger 2014; McConvell et al 2005), and these are largely limited to communities across northern and central Australia where settlement and farming endeavours were less intensive (see Figure 1). Recent years have seen revitalisation efforts on behalf of traditional languages across the country (Walsh 2012) and especially in the southern states where the effects of colonisation have been most drastic, but the picture remains one of widespread language shift and loss.