- The similarity in the personal pronouns.
- The absence (generally) of gender.
- The low level of the numerals, and the recurrence at many points far remote from one another of the same or nearly the same word for "two."
- The use of the dual.
- The use of suffixes.
- The languages or dialects of a district as small as Victoria present, in some cases and in some respects, differences as great as those observed when the languages spoken at the extreme points of the continent are compared.
To these might be added the fact that reduplication is universal throughout the continent; but as this is a characteristic of the languages of savages generally, it has not much value. That they have usually two words for the same thing is, however, of a higher value; but it is not known whether this system is maintained in all parts of Australia.
If these facts stood alone, uncorroborated by other circumstances, there might still be room for doubt, as, for instance, if the physical aspect and constitution of the natives presented remarkable differences, and if their arms and modes of life were diverse; but they are not. They are one people—oneness having more force in regard to them and their language than it has when applied to the Aryan family of nations, whose languages are traceable to that of the tribes who dwelt on the table-land lying between the mountains of Armenia and Hindoo-Kush.
The vocabularies for Victoria seem to establish the fact that in this area at any rate there is one language with many dialects, or several languages so similar in words and grammatical structure as to satisfy the enquirer that they have had a common origin. Is it possible to gather from the character of the dialects any hint as to the manner in which the most southern part of the continent was peopled? After a careful study of the tables, I am inclined to believe that the tribes followed the course of the great rivers and the margin of the coast from the north towards the south. The language of the people of Yelta, on the Lower Murray, is that of the Cornu tribe, who inhabit the tract north of the River Darling, and differs in some respects from the language spoken by the people of the Upper Murray and those living on the banks of the streams which have their sources in the western slopes of the Cordillera. The tribes who first touched the north banks of the Murray and crossed the stream appear to have followed the rivers (its affluents), such as the Wimmera, the Avoca, the Loddon, the Campaspe, the Goulburn, and the Ovens, to their sources; and it is probable that these tribes came, not across the Cordillera, but
amongst the Aborigines of Western Australia, by George Fletcher Moore, Advocate-General of Western Australia, 1842.
"It may indeed be asserted that the dialects of all New Holland, so far at least as they have been collected, from New South Wales to Swan River, constitute only one language."—Vocabulary of the Parnkalla Language spoken by the Natives inhabiting the Western Shores of Spencer's Gulf, by C. W. Schürmann, 1844.
