[LINK] merry christmas foreign language speaking fellow linkers

Sun Dec 27 19:35:37 AEDT 2009

Sorry Scott.

Another case where the first statistic reviewed is not necessarily the
correct number.

Background:
I was born in New Zealand of Hungarian immigrant parents.
I didn't speak English until I was almost seven years old.

If you know any foreign born persons, please ask what language they
speak at home.

Almost every European that I know speaks a language other then English
in the home with the exception of answering the phone and the door and
occasionally when talking to teenage offspring with attitude.
If we examine Australian immigration since 1986, and the birth records
of those immigrants we see another picture.
The greatest number of births in Australia are to non-English speaking
(as the main language) mothers.
If we take the 2 million or so pre schoolers and consider that they
speak the natural language of their mothers - we can immediately
disregard their numbers from the census.

What the census does show is the innate human predilection to being a
part of the team and not wanting to be seen as "different". Being an
Aussie means speaking da good English - so best we put down on the
census that we only speak English at home.

Example:

"Among 122,351 Greek speakers, 92% reported Greek ancestries, 2.6% did
not state
their ancestries, 1.4% reported South eastern Europe ancestries, 1.1%
reported
English ancestries, and 0.9% reported Australian ancestries. The
percentages for other
ancestries were each less than 0.8 and the total of them made 2.3%.

In order to predict based on the models developed, we needed to estimate
the
number of people speaking a language other than English at home as if
the language
information was not available. Therefore in the process of selecting the
population to
include in the model the following people had to be excluded:
- people who did not state their ancestries and not report their
birthplaces;
- people who reported Australian ancestry and Australian birthplace or
birthplace
not stated;
- similarly, people who reported English ancestry and their birthplaces
were, for
example, Australia, not stated, or England."

Extract from:
1351.0.55.002 - Research Paper: Modelling languages other than English
spoken in Australia from Census data, 2000-01 
<http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/free.nsf/log?openagent
<http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/free.nsf/log?openagent&1351055002_2000-0
1.pdf&1351.0.55.002&Publication&3E2A4663F70CDF38CA256FD4007F2A0B&&2000-0
1&31.03.2005&Latest>
&1351055002_2000-01.pdf&1351.0.55.002&Publication&3E2A4663F70CDF38CA256F
D4007F2A0B&&2000-01&31.03.2005&Latest>

in other words, the ABS themselves realise that 8% of some language
respondents (in this instance Greek) gave indeterminate answers.

My numbers are based on immigration numbers since 1956 and include the
average birth rate.

e.g.: From 1981, Net overseas migration equals 3,250,000.00 (In June
1981, au Pop = 14,923,300)

Population increase per annum (births) is now 300K up from 230K (1981).

According to the 2008 Year Book Australia's Population was made up of:

Total overseas-born 4 956,000
Australian-born  15 648,000
Total population(e)  20 605,000

From:  Table 7.39
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/7d12b0f6763c78caca257061001cc588
/F1C38FAE9E5F2B82CA2573D200110333?opendocument

of that 4.9 million, 1.6 million came from English speaking countries.
the other 3.3 million came from non-English speaking countries.

Australia's fertility rate has risen as a direct consequence of
immigration. Ergo, immigrants are having more children than domestically
born persons.

And of course this doesn't include a big part of the Australian
population. e.g.:

Hungarians
Croatians
Europeans of the Jewish faith.
Serbians
Russians

Because those five groups alone add up to at least a million foreign
language at home speaking people.
And anyone that eats regularly in Double bay will attest to the fact
that almost no-one eating at the next table is speaking in English.

Of course, maybe the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney are no longer counted in
the Census numbers.

But both anecdotally and empirically, the ABS reading of language spoken
at home is IMHO incorrect.

Additional reading:

Dynamics of
<http://www.multiculturalaustralia.edu.au/doc/birrell_1.pdf>
Multiculturalism in Australia
<http://www.multiculturalaustralia.edu.au/doc/birrell_1.pdf>

 Tom

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Howard [mailto:scott at doc.net.au] 
Sent: Saturday, 26 December 2009 11:03 AM
To: Tom Koltai
Cc: link at anu.edu.au
Subject: Re: [LINK] merry christmas foreign language speaking fellow
linkers

On Fri, Dec 25, 2009 at 3:22 PM, Tom Koltai <tomk at unwired.com.au> wrote:

I blogged not long ago about the fact that 66% of Australians spoke a
language other than English in the home.

According to the 2006 census, "Most people counted in the 2006 Census
spoke only English at home (79%). Small proportions of the population
spoke other languages at home. The most common languages other than
English spoken at home were Italian, Greek, Cantonese, Arabic, and
Mandarin"

Or to put that in the same terms you've used, 21% of Australia speak a
language other than English in the home.

http://tinyurl.com/5t2w9n

  Scott.

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