The Tasmanian languages were the languages indigenous to the island of Tasmania, used by Aboriginal Tasmanians. The languages were last used for daily communication in the 1830s, although the terminal speaker, Fanny Cochrane Smith, survived until 1905.
The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intelligible varieties) up to possibly 363. The Indigenous languages of Australia comprise numerous language families and isolates, perhaps as many as 13, spoken by the Indigenous peoples of mainland Australia and a few nearby islands. The relationships between the language families are not clear at present although there are proposals to link some into larger groupings. Despite this uncertainty, the Indigenous Australian languages are collectively covered by the technical term "Australian languages", or the "Australian family".
The term can include both Tasmanian languages and the Western Torres Strait language, but the genetic relationship to the mainland Australian languages of the former is unknown, while the latter is Pama–Nyungan, though it shares features with the neighbouring Papuan, Eastern Trans-Fly languages, in particular Meriam Mir of the Torres Strait Islands, as well as the Papuan Tip Austronesian languages. Most Australian languages belong to the widespread Pama–Nyungan family, while the remainder are classified as "non-Pama–Nyungan", which is a term of convenience that does not imply a genealogical relationship.
Palawa kani is a constructed language created by the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre as a composite Tasmanian language, based on reconstructed vocabulary from the limited accounts of the various languages once spoken by the Aboriginal people of what is now Tasmania (palawa kani: Lutruwita).
The centre wishes to restrict the availability of the language until it is established in the Aboriginal Tasmanian community and claims copyright. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) is used to support this claim to copyright as it declares that indigenous people have the right to control their "cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions" and that states must "recognise and protect the exercise of these rights". However, the declaration is legally non-binding and languages cannot receive copyright protection in many countries, including Australia and the United States. The centre however provides a list of place names in palawa kani and consents to their free use by the public. Dictionaries and other copyrightable resources for learning the language are only provided to the Aboriginal community.