Australian language
The Commonwealth of Australia is a country belonging to Oceania, whose capital is Canberra (and not Sydney or Melbourne). It has a population of 25 million inhabitants (51st) and an area of 7,692,024 km 2 (6th). Its human development index is very high (3rd) and its official currency is the Australian dollar. But what language is spoken in Australia?
What language do they speak in Australia?
Although Australia does not have any official language, the de facto language is English, used by almost 73% of the population as their first language (as in New Zealand, which is also not official despite being the predominant language).).
The next most common languages are Mandarin Chinese (2.5%), Arabic (1.4%), Cantonese Chinese (1.2%), Vietnamese (1.2%), Italian (1.2%), Greek (1%), Hindi (0.7%), Spanish (0.6%) and Punjabi (0.6%).
Of the 250 aboriginal languages that existed when the first Europeans arrived, today there are approximately 130 living indigenous languages, of which 110 are spoken only by elderly people, which will disappear in the near future. Some 52,000 indigenous people (which is 12% of the indigenous population) report using an indigenous language at home.
The most widely spoken aboriginal languages are: Arrernte (4,500), Dhuwal (4,200), Pitjantjatjara (3,100), Warlpiri (2,300), Tiví (2,000) and Murrin-pata (2,000). In addition, Australian Creole has approximately 20,000 speakers.
The English language
English (English ) is the most used language in the country, by 72.7% of the population. However, it has been in decline since 2001 (when statistics began), when the language was used at home by 80% of Australians, then in 2006 (79%) and 2011 (76.8%); caused by migratory flows.
The variety spoken in the country is Australian English, which differs in accent and lexicon from the rest of the varieties. In addition, it has slight differences in terms of grammar and spelling.
Share which languages are spoken in Australia.
