Examine individual changes

'{{refimprove|date=March 2016}} poop {{Use Australian English|date=February 2017}} {{Use dmy dates|date=July 2016}} {{Languages of |country = Australia |official = N/A |main = [[Australian English]] (81%) |indigenous = [[Australian Luganda languages]], [[Tasmanian languages]], [[Torres Strait Island languages]] |minority = [[Chinese language|Chinese]] (2.9%) Italian (1.2%), [[Arabic language|Arabic]] (1.1%), [[Greek language|Greek]] (1%), [[Vietnamese language|Vietnamese]] (0.9%), [[Spanish language|Spanish]] (0.4%) |sign = [[Auslan]]<br>[[Yolŋu Sign Language]] and other [[Aboriginal sign languages]] |keyboard = [[QWERTY]]<br/>[[Image:KB United States-NoAltGr.svg|200px]] }} {{Culture of Australia}} Australia has no [[official language]], but it is largely [[monoglottism|monolingual]] with English being the [[national language|national]] and ''[[de facto]]'' [[official language]]. [[Australian English]] has a distinctive accent and vocabulary. A considerable proportion of first and second generation migrants are bilingual. According to Ethnologue, 81% of people spoke English at home, including L2 speakers. Other languages spoken at home included Mandarin 2.9%, Italian 1.2%, Arabic 1.1%, Greek 1%, Vietnamese 0.9% and Spanish 0.4%.<ref name="Census2011">{{Census 2011 AUS |id=0 |name=Australia |accessdate=26 April 2017 |quick=on}}</ref> There were almost 400 languages spoken by [[Indigenous Australians]] prior to the arrival of Europeans. Only about 70 of these languages have survived and all but 30 of these are now endangered. ==Australian Aboriginal languages== {{Main|Indigenous Australian languages}} It is believed that there were almost 400 Australian Aboriginal languages at the time of first European contact. Most of these are now either [[language death|extinct or moribund]], with only about fifteen languages still being spoken among all age groups of the relevant tribes.<ref>McConvell, P. & N.Thieberger. 2001. State of Indigenous Language Report. http://www.environment.gov.au/soe/2001/publications/technical/indigenous-languages.html</ref> An indigenous language remains the main language for about 50,000 (0.25%) people. Australia has a sign language known as [[Auslan]], which is the main language that approximately 10,000 deaf people use. Chinese is by far the most spoken foreign language, with 715,000 speakers as of 2016, and has even been considered to be put on signs across Australia, to encourage tourists to explore and interact with other people{{citation required|date=February 2017}}. [[File:Australian Census 2011 demographic map - Australia by SLA - BCP field 2571 Speaks other language Australian Indigenous Languages Persons.svg|thumb|right|300px|People who speak Australian indigenous languages as a percentage of the population in Australia divided geographically by statistical local area, as of the 2011 census]] The Aboriginal languages with the most speakers today are [[Arrernte language|Arrernte]], [[Kala Lagaw Ya]], [[Tiwi language|Tiwi]], [[Walmajarri language|Walmajarri]], [[Warlpiri language|Warlpiri]], and the [[Western Desert language]]. ===Tasmanian languages=== {{Main|Tasmanian languages}} All the indigenous languages of [[Tasmania]] are extinct today, and little reliable information about them was recorded. ===Torres Strait languages=== {{Main|Torres Strait Island languages}} Two languages are spoken on the islands of the [[Torres Strait]], within Australian territory, by the Melanesian inhabitants of the area: [[Kala Lagaw Ya]] and [[Meriam Mir language|Meriam Mir]]. Meriam Mir is a [[Papuan languages|Papuan language]], while Kala Lagaw Ya is an Australian language. ===Pidgins and creoles=== Two English-based [[creole language|creole]]s have arisen in Australia after European contact: [[Australian Kriol language|Kriol]] and [[Torres Strait Creole]]. Kriol is spoken in the [[Northern Territory]], and Torres Strait Creole in [[Queensland]]. [[Broome Pearling Lugger Pidgin]] was a [[pidgin]] used as a [[lingua franca]] between [[Malay race|Malays]], Japanese, [[Viet Nam|Vietnamese]], [[Torres Strait Islanders]] and [[Australian Aborigines|Aborigines]] on [[pearl hunting|pearling]] boats. ==Foreign Languages== There has been a steady decline in the percentage of Australians who speak only English at home since at least 2001. According to the 2001 census, English was the only language spoken in the home for around 80% of the population. By the 2006 census it had fallen to close to 79%, while in the 2011 census, that number had fallen to 76.8%. Other languages spoken at home included Mandarin 1.6%, Italian 1.4%, Arabic 1.3%, Cantonese 1.2% and Greek 1.2%.<ref name="Census2011"/> [[Image:Sydney language groups.png|right|200px|right|thumb|Sydney areas where significant population of Chinese (red), Vietnamese (yellow), Arabic (dark green), Greek (light blue), Turkish (brown), Serbian (light green) and Korean (pink) speakers lived in 2006]] [[Image:Melbourne language groups.png|right|200px|right|thumb|Melbourne areas where Chinese (red), Vietnamese (yellow), Arabic (dark green), Macedonian (orange), Turkish (brown), Italian (light green) and Maltese (pink) were predominantly spoken in 2006]] In the 2001 census, 2,843,851 Australians reported speaking a language other than English at home, including 50,978 speakers of Indigenous languages. Other languages spoken in Australia, according to [[Ethnologue]], include [[Adyghe language|Adyghe]], [[Basque language|Basque]], [[Western Cham language|Western Cham]], [[Estonian language|Estonian]], [[Fijian Hindustani]], [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]], [[Indo-Portuguese language|Indo-Portuguese]], [[Northern Kurdish]] (11,000 speakers), [[Cham language|Cham]] (25,000 speakers), [[Lithuanian language|Lithuanian]] (10,000 speakers), [[Cocos Islands Malay]], [[Mambai language (Timor)|Mambae]], (30,000 speakers), [[Chaldean Neo-Aramaic]], [[Nung language (Sino-Tibetan)|Nung]], [[Piemontese language|Piemontese]], [[Pukapuka language|Pukapuka]] (140 speakers), [[Romanian language|Romanian]], [[Traveller Scottish]], [[Senaya language|Senaya]], [[Slovene language|Slovene]], [[Sylheti language|Sylheti]], [[Tai Dam language|Tai Dam]], [[Tongan language|Tongan]], [[Turoyo language|Turoyo]] (2,000 speakers), [[Unserdeutsch]], [[Uyghur language|Uyghur]], [[Northern Uzbek]], [[Welsh language|Welsh]] and [[Yiddish language|Eastern Yiddish]]. There is also the developing [[Italo-Australian Dialect]] that is not officially recognised by the Australian government but has been noted by linguists{{citation required|date=February 2017}} throughout Italy and Australia; the number of speakers is unknown. According to [[Ethnologue]], Languages of Australia in 2016 include:{{citation required|date=March 2017}} {| | {| class="wikitable" ! Chinese (all): |style="text-align: right;"| 715,000 |- ! Other or unspecified: |style="text-align: right;"| 363,062 |- ! [[Mandarin Chinese|Mandarin]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 336,000 |- ! Italian: |style="text-align: right;"| 300,000 |- ! [[Arabic language|Arabic]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 290,000 |- ! [[Yue Chinese|Cantonese]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 264,000 |- ! [[Greek language|Greek]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 252,220 |- ! [[Vietnamese language|Vietnamese]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 233,000 |- ! [[Spanish language|Spanish]]: |style="text-align: right;"|117,000 |- ! [[Hindi language|Hindi]]: |style="text-align: right;"|111,000 |- ! [[Tagalog language|Tagalog]] ([[Filipino language|Filipino]]): |style="text-align: right;"| 89,500 |- ! German: |style="text-align: right;"| 80,000 |- ! [[Korean language|Korean]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 79,000 |- ! [[Punjabi language|Punjabi]]: |style="text-align: right;"|70000 |- ! [[Macedonian language|Macedonian]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 63,000 |- ! [[Croatian language|Croatian]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 61,000 |- ! [[Turkish language|Turkish]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 59,000 |- ! [[Indonesian language|Indonesian]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 56,000 |- ! [[Serbian language|Serbian]]: |style="text-align: right;"|55,000 |- ! [[French language|French]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 53,000 |- ! [[Polish language|Polish]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 50,700 |- ! [[Tamil language|Tamil]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 50,200 |- ! [[Sinhalese language|Sinhalese]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 48,200 |- ! Russian: |style="text-align: right;"| 44,100 |- ! Japanese: |style="text-align: right;"| 43,700 |- ! [[Dutch language|Dutch]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 37,000 |- ! [[Urdu language|Urdu]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 36,800 |- ! [[Thai language|Thai]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 36,700 |- ! [[Samoan language|Samoan]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 36,600 |- ! [[Bengali language|Bengali]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 35,600 |- ! [[Afrikaans language|Afrikaans]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 35,000 |- ! [[Persian language|Persian]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 34,600 |- ! [[Gujarati language|Gujarati]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 34,200 |- ! [[Maltese language|Maltese]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 34,000 |- ! [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 33,400 |- ! [[Khmer language|Khmer]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 29,500 |- ! [[Nepali language|Nepali]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 27,000 |- ! [[Malayalam language|Malayalam]]: |style="text-align: right;"|25,100 |- ! [[Assyrian Neo-Aramaic]]: |style="text-align: right;"|21,500 |- ! [[Hungarian language|Hungarian]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 20,900 |- ! [[Dari language|Dari]]: |style="text-align: right;"| 20,200 |} |} ==See also== [[Diminutives in Australian English]] ==References== {{Reflist|2}} ==External links== {{commons category|Languages of Australia}} * [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=AU Ethnologue report for Australia] * [http://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au Census Data (Australian government)] {{Australia topics}} {{Languages of Australia}} {{Oceania topic|Languages of}} [[Category:Languages of Australia| ]] [[Category:Australian culture]] [[an:Luengas australianas]] [[ca:Llengües australianes]] [[de:Australische Sprachen]] [[la:Linguae Australianae]] [[hu:Ausztráliai nyelvek]] [[no:Australske språk]] [[nn:Australske språk]] [[pl:Języki australijskie]] [[sv:Australiska språk]] [[uk:Австралійські мови]]'