Michael Clyne and Sandra Kipp

Recent information from the 1996 Census reveals that 14.6 per cent of Australians, 26.4 per cent of Sydney residents and 25.4 per cent of Melbourne residents speak a language other than English at home. This paper explores the changing patterns of language diversity in Australia, Sydney and Melbourne between 1991 and 1996. It shows that there has been a great increase in linguistic diversity, accompanied by an overall decline in the use of ‘older’ community languages in favour of ‘newer’ languages from Asia and the Middle East.

INTRODUCTION

In this paper we will briefly discuss the language demography of Australia as evident from the first available statistics on home language use from the 1996 Census. These statistics include all 240 languages/language groups processed, and represent total population figures across all age groups, excluding persons normally resident overseas. We are currently, by means of additional crosstabulations, calculating the statistics for the maintenance of a number of these community languages and the differential rates of shift to English as the only home language.

It should be noted that the census requested information on languages other than English spoken at home by each respondent: ‘Does the person speak a language other than English at home?’ Where people used more than one community language at home, they were requested to indicate which one was used the most and that one was counted in the statistics. Six languages were printed on the census form: Italian, Greek, Cantonese, Mandarin, Arabic and German (in that order). Space was then provided to write languages not appearing on the list. The 1991 census presented a list of the same languages, but with German appearing fifth and Arabic sixth. The specification of language(s) used at home means that, for the languages of the older established migrant communities, language use is likely to be underestimated. Young people who move out of the parental home may well continue to use the community language there on visits, or in communication with other elderly relatives, or in other community settings, even though they may not employ it in their own home.¹ Also, people living on their own are deemed to be monolingual speakers as they will usually answer the question on languages other than English spoken at home in the negative. However, given that inter-generational transmission is heavily dependent on home language use, the home language question does enable researchers to make some predictions of future use of the languages concerned. The 1996 Census is the third to ask exactly the same question on language use, which facilitates comparison. It processes more languages than any previous Australian census — 240, including 48 indigenous languages. For the first time we have statistics on Kurdish, Somali, Tigrinya (from Eritrea), Pashto (from Afghanistan), Samoan, Icelandic, and Frisian, to cite only a few examples.

FINDINGS

Overall picture
 

Table 1: Community languages in Australia, 1996a
	NSW	Vic	SA	Qld	WA	Tas	NT	ACT	Aust
Aboriginal languages	1,132	319	2,149	5,038	8,250	33	27,038	58	44,017
Arabic	125,698	39,478	3,607	3,474	3,786	375	71	1,110	177,599
Cantonese	107,259	53,887	6,593	15,964	14,542	800	822	2,403	202,270
Croatian	26,218	25,429	3,894	3,909	6,204	327	65	3,106	69,152
Dutch	9,804	11,346	4,077	7,703	5,591	1,323	235	651	40,766
German	29,372	27,460	11,851	16,441	8,553	1,935	877	2,319	98,808
Greek	92,990	124,671	28,086	11,319	5,782	1,318	2,715	2,889	269,770
Italian	102,773	160,061	43,356	24,732	38,609	1,634	844	3,743	375,752
Macedonian	29,941	32,978	923	879	5,995	39	20	572	71,347
Maltese	17,749	23,713	1,330	1,741	460	31	22	196	45,242
Mandarin	40,651	25,636	2,984	11,406	9,031	432	398	1,373	91,911
Polish	18,264	20,869	8,631	5,183	7,184	1,094	65	1,479	62,769
Spanish	48,577	22,648	3,143	8,468	5,088	523	317	2,490	91,254
Tagalog	38,401	16,035	2,705	8,172	2,767	359	1,139	866	70,444
Vietnamese	56,378	54,039	11,079	11,686	10,125	125	508	2,325	146,265
a All age groups, excluding overseas visitors

According to the census,² 14.6 per cent of the total Australian population used a language other than English in the home in 1996. The proportion is highest in Sydney (26.4 per cent) and Melbourne (25.4 per cent), traditionally the multicultural centres of Australia, and in the Northern Territory (24.3 per cent), where most speakers of Aboriginal languages reside. The positions of Sydney and Melbourne have reversed in this regard since the last census, a change which can be attributed to the clustering of ‘older’ languages in Melbourne and of ‘newer’ ones in Sydney (see below). The proportion is 14.9 per cent in Adelaide, 13.5 per cent in Perth, and 9.2 per cent in Brisbane.

Table 1 gives the number of home users of the 14 most commonly employed community languages by state of residence, and also the total number of speakers of Aboriginal languages. Of the ten most widely used community languages, Cantonese has overtaken Arabic by a small margin in the years between 1991 and 1996, Vietnamese now has more home users than German, and, if we were to take all the Chinese varieties together (mutually unintelligible as they are), they would have more home users than Greek. Spanish has been displaced by Mandarin as community language no. 7.
 

Table 2: Top ten languages, Australia, 1991 and 1996
Language	1991	Language	1996	Percentage change 1991-96
Italian	418,804	Italian	375,752	- 10.3
Greek	285,700	Greek	269,770	- 5.6
Cantonese	162,899	Cantonese	202,270	+ 24.2
Arabic	162,857	Arabic	177,599	+ 9.0
German	113,336	Vietnamese	146,265	+ 32.7
Vietnamese	110,187	German	98,808	- 12.8
Spanish	90,479	Mandarin	91,911	+ 68.4
Polish	66,932	Spanish	91,254	+ 0.9
Macedonian	64,429	Macedonian	71,347	+ 10.7
Croatian	63,084	Tagalog	70,444	+ 19.2

The five-year period between the last two censuses has been marked by an increase in Australia’s linguistic diversity. Apart from the emergence of sizeable new ethnolinguistic communities cited here, there have been substantial increases in the number of home users of Mandarin (68.4 per cent), Vietnamese (32.7 per cent), Cantonese (19.2 per cent), and Macedonian (10.7 per cent), all of which are in the ‘top 10’ languages. Tagalog and Mandarin have appeared for the first time, displacing Polish and Croatian. Among languages with smaller totals (around 20,000 to 30,000), the biggest increases are to be seen in Tamil (54.9 per cent), Korean (51.4 per cent ), and Hindi (49.6 per cent), followed by Russian (27.9 per cent). On the other hand, some widely used community languages with a long history in Australia have experienced decreases in their number of home users. These include Maltese (down 13.5 per cent), Dutch (13.5 per cent), German (12.8 per cent), and Italian (10.3 per cent). For the first time since language use data have been collected in the Australian census, the numbers for Greek have declined (by 5.6 per cent). Of the medium-sized language communities, the numbers using French and Hungarian at home are down, by 13.3 per cent and 11.1 per cent respectively. At this stage we do not have the data to be able to assess why these fluctuations have occurred. Only after further cross-tabulations have been completed will we know if they translate into changes in language maintenance / shift rates. They may also be due at least in part to new migration, the deaths of many speakers in ageing communities and the birth of second-generation speakers in more recent ones.

What is clear is that there is a new group of languages making their presence felt in Australia, notably Tagalog (70,444), Indonesian (27,173) and closely related Malay (9,599), Hindi (33,988) and closely related Urdu (7689), Korean (29,911) and Japanese (25,664). It should be noted that this group, together with Mandarin (91,911) includes all the Asian languages prioritised in education at state and federal level for economic reasons.

The profile of Chinese in Australia is also beginning to change. Although 59 per cent of speakers of Chinese varieties in Australia speak Cantonese (a Southern Chinese variety, and one of the national languages of Hong Kong), the number of speakers of Mandarin has seen a far greater increase than Cantonese in the years between 1986 and 1991 (see Table 2), possibly reflecting the growing importance of Taiwan (where Mandarin is the official language) as a source of migration. Some 27 per cent of speakers of Chinese varieties in Australia now speak Mandarin (this figure does of course also include large numbers of speakers from mainland China as well as speakers from Taiwan and other parts of Southeast Asia). In addition, there are 10,035 speakers of Hokkien (the most widely used Chinese variety in Singapore), 7,163 speakers of Hakka (spoken in East Timor, Vietnam, Taiwan, and many other regions of Southeast Asia), and 5,092 speakers of Teochew (spoken in Singapore and Malaysia, among other countries).

Geographical spread

The divergent trends in the ethnolinguistic profiles of Sydney and Melbourne, already evident from the 1986 and 1991 censuses, continued in 1996. Melbourne’s multilingualism is still built upon the languages of postwar migration from Europe, with Italian and Greek firmly established as the two most widely used community languages. There is a larger gap between the top two languages in Melbourne and the ‘rest of the field’ than there is in Sydney (see Tables 3 and 4). In Sydney, the position of Arabic as the language most commonly used in the home was consolidated and enhanced in the 1996 Census, while Cantonese rose to second position from fourth and the position of Italian and Greek was reversed (see Table 3). Arabic only reaches position no. 5 in Melbourne with 1.2 per cent of the total population (as opposed to 3.3 per cent in Sydney). Three significant ‘Melbourne languages’ in 1996, Macedonian (no. 6), Turkish (no. 8), and Maltese (no. 9), do not figure in the top twelve in Sydney in 1996. Tagalog (no. 8), Korean (no. 10), and Hindi (no. 12) appear in the 1996 top twelve in Sydney but not in Melbourne. The number of Vietnamese home speakers in Melbourne now exceeds that for Cantonese.
 

Table 3: Top twelve community languages, Sydney,  1991 and 1996
Language	1991	Language	1996	Percentage change 1991-96
Arabic	114,565	Arabic	122,582	+7
Italian	93,397	Cantonese	102,373	+31.2
Greek	91,314	Greek	86,399	-5.4
Cantonese	77,633	Italian	84,406	-9.6
Spanish	43,521	Vietnamese	54,675	+33.8
Vietnamese	40,848	Spanish	43,902	0
Filipino	28,855	Mandarin	38,977	+77.2
German	23,376	Tagalog	35,826	0
Croatian	21,995	Croatian	23,232	+5.6
Mandarin	21,991	Korean	22,387	+42.1
Maltese	19,329	German	19,663	-15.9
Macedonian	15,921	Hindi	19,050	+54.7

 

Table 4: Top twelve community languages, Melbourne, 1991 and 1996
Language	1991	Language	1996	Percentage change 1991-96
Italian	160,241	Italian	143,406	-10.5
Greek	127,630	Greek	120,470	-5.6
Cantonese	43,668	Vietnamese	53,524	+37.5
Vietnamese	38,929	Cantonese	52,373	+19.9
Arabic	34,004	Arabic	38,775	+14
Macedonian	29,147	Macedonian	31,016	+6.4
Maltese	26,534	Mandarin	24,864	+66.1
German	25,669	Turkish	24,215	+8.4
Spanish	22,397	Maltese	22,558	-15
Turkish	22,339	German	21,772	-15.2
Croatian	20,516	Spanish	21,632	-3.4
Polish	20,131	Croatian	21,468	+4.6

The ‘major’ languages with the greatest growth in home use in Sydney have been Mandarin (77.2 per cent), Hindi (54.7 per cent), Korean (42.1 per cent), Vietnamese (33.8 per cent), and Cantonese (31.2 per cent). In Melbourne they have been Mandarin (66.1 per cent), Vietnamese (37.5 per cent), and Cantonese (19.9 per cent). The differing profiles of the two cities, and their joint position as the home of the majority of community language speakers in Australia, has led to differing concentration patterns of languages. Sydney, for example, has 69 per cent of all Arabic speakers in Australia and 75 per cent of all Korean speakers, while 52 per cent of the Turkish speakers, 50 per cent of the Maltese speakers, 43 per cent of the Macedonian speakers and 45 per cent of the Greek speakers live in Melbourne.

There have also been changes in the ethnolinguistic profiles of Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth. In Adelaide, Vietnamese has replaced German as language no. 3 after Italian and Greek. Vietnamese is followed by German, Polish, Cantonese, Arabic, Croatian, and Dutch, indicating that Adelaide, like Melbourne, is still reflecting the general pattern of postwar migration in its language demography. In Brisbane, Cantonese has displaced Italian as the most widely used community language and Vietnamese and Mandarin are now occupying the positions between Italian and the old no. 2, Greek. German, Spanish and Tagalog follow, in that order. To this extent, Brisbane, like Sydney, is reflecting more strongly the ‘newer’ migration trends. The existing base of European languages was, however, much smaller, as Brisbane attracted much less postwar migration from non-English-speaking countries of Europe than the other mainland state capitals. Italian has retained its dominant position among the community languages of Perth but the large gap between Italian (34,485) and German (6,927), the previous no. 2, has been filled by languages from Asia. Italian, still by far the most widely used community language, is followed by Cantonese (13,880), Vietnamese (9,699), and Mandarin (8,873), followed by German. The next languages are Polish, Croatian, Macedonian, and Greek, in that order (for all the above statistics, see Table 1).

The rank ordering of the first seven community languages (Italian, Croatian, Greek, Spanish, Cantonese, Vietnamese, German) indicates that the multilingualism of the national capital, Canberra, is still largely based on postwar migration from Europe with the addition of the two most significant Asian groups. The situation in Tasmania reflects even more the migrant intake of the 1950s, with German, Italian, Dutch, Greek and Polish as the main community languages, in that order (see Table 1).

In the Northern Territory we find 61.43 per cent of the home users of Aboriginal languages. Any community languages are concentrated in Darwin, where the only European language of any significance is Greek (2,448). The next most widely used community languages are Cantonese (715), Tagalog (710), and Hakka (569). Of these, Tagalog is unique in also being the home language of a significant proportion of Northern Territorians outside Darwin (429).

Community languages in Australia have tended to be more concentrated in urban than in rural areas, and in most states the concentration has occurred within the capital cities. Only in Queensland, the most decentralised state, are significant numbers of community language speakers to be found outside the state capital. However, even within Queensland, certain languages, such as German, Italian, and Japanese, are concentrated outside Brisbane, while others, such as Greek, Cantonese, and Vietnamese are concentrated in Brisbane. In Tasmania, where the overall numbers are considerably smaller, 62.8 per cent of Dutch speakers and 49.8 per cent of German speakers are to be found outside Hobart.

Many of the less widely represented languages have strong concentrations in particular parts of Australia. For instance, 81 per cent of all Yiddish speakers, 72 per cent of all Albanian speakers, 70 per cent of all Somali speakers, and 51 per cent of all speakers of Tigrinya live in Melbourne.³ Sydney, on the other hand, has 80 per cent of Assyrian, 76 per cent of Armenian, 60 per cent of Kurdish, and 59 per cent of Fijian speakers in Australia. Speakers of Burmese (53 per cent) and Icelandic (32 per cent) are concentrated in Perth, and Hmong and Finnish speakers are concentrated in Queensland (42 per cent and 37 per cent respectively).

Effects of recent political history

In the language responses to this census we are seeing for the first time the full effects of the partition of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union. In 1996 far fewer respondents called their language ‘Serbo-Croatian’ or ‘Yugoslav’ (1991: 43,319; 1996: 17,923). This has led to a concomitant increase of 53 per cent in those declaring their home language to be ‘Serbian’ (total: 37,238), a rise of 9.6 per cent in the number of home users of ‘Croatian’ (total: 69,152), and a total of 9,810 declaring their home language to be the newly codified ‘Bosnian’. The Serbs and Bosnians are the groups most likely to have previously called their language ‘Serbo-Croatian’ or ‘Yugoslav’. In the five years since the previous census, the numbers of ‘Czech’ speakers have decreased (9,357 to 7,526) and the number of those calling their home language ‘Slovak’ has increased by a slightly smaller amount (3,373 to 4,107), suggesting that this is at least partly an issue of identity. Perhaps they called their language ‘Czechoslovak’ in 1991 and this was coded as ‘Czech’. The number of Russian speakers has continued to rise.

IN CONCLUSION

We have only been able to scratch the surface of one of the most exciting collections of data on language demography available anywhere in the world. It will give language enthusiasts and researchers much enjoyment and offer valuable resources for language policies at all levels.

Acknowledgment

We are indebted to Language Australia for financial support towards this project.

References

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