ABSTRACT
How many Aboriginal languages are there or were there in the Kimberley region? The answer to this depends on what is meant by the term ‘language’. 1 Linguists usually invoke the criterion of mutual intelligibility: varieties of speech that are sufficiently alike that speakers of one can immediately understand speakers of another belong to a single Language. For example, speakers of Australian English can understand speakers of American English (and vice versa), and so these belong to the same language: they are Dialects of a single language. Distinct languages are recognised when forms of speech are not mutually intelligible, when it is not possible for a speaker of one to understand a speaker of another without learning their form of speech. Monolingual speakers of Danish and English cannot understand one another, and therefore Danish and English are distinct languages.
