New research has revealed that Greek is the third most common language other than English, spoken at home in Australia.
The study of languages that had been established in Australia by 1974, was done by Professor Anastasios Tamis and the University of Notre Dame Australia. It shows that Greek is alive and well in Aussie homes, despite three in four Greek Australians having been born here.
The top-ranked language was Arabic, which is spoken by 11.8 per cent of respondents, followed by Vietnamese, which is spoken by 8.4 per cent.
Greek came in at 4.3 per cent. The point of difference between the languages, however, is that the numbers of Arabic-speaking and Vietnamese migrants to Australia continues to boom, while the numbers of Greek migrants has stagnated in recent years. In contrast to Greek speakers, only one quarter of Vietnamese speakers were born in Australia.
Following Greek are Mandarin with 3.7 per cent, Cantonese with 3.6 per cent, and Italian with 3 per cent. Another study, the Australian Early Development Index shows that among the 47,000 students surveyed, 12 percent spoke English as a second language.