Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
I'd like to hear more about this. I am not really challenging you - on the one hand I've heard this before about Australia, but on the other I've been there and am quite familiar with Australian society, and didn't find it was significantly different from most of Anglo North America in terms of the overall immigrant experience.
So... I'm curious.
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Sure, I'll give you a couple of examples as the numbers seem to indicate this quite well
and this off of a couple of the earliest set of immigrants....
Australia
1. population born in Italy in 2016: 174,042
2. population that speaks Italian at home in 2016: 271,602
The population speaking Italian at home is nearly a 100,000 more than the population of those that were born in Italy -- which clearly indicates that it is being passed on.
For the sake of comparison by 1881 both Canada & Australia had similar amounts of Italians -- Canada nearly 2,000 (source:
Italian Canadians & Australia roughly 1,700 to 2,100 (source:
Italian Migration to Australia). Both countries experienced large scale migration from Italy following WWII until at least the 1970s.
Using similar metrics for...
Canada
1. population born in Italy in 2016: 242,255
2. population that speaks Italian at home in 2016: 115,415 (spoken most often at home) or another figure of language spoken at home: 318,245 (single & multiple responses).
Source: Statscan, Census 2016
Notice that the rate is much higher in Australia even if you include the largest figure in Canada using single & multiple responses?
Let's take a look at the Greek's...
Australia
1. population born in Greece in 2016: 93,743 + Cyprus 16,929 = 110,672
2. population that speaks Greek at home in 2016: 237,583
Canada
1. population born in Greece in 2016: 65,225 + Cyprus 4,200 = 69,425
2. population that speaks Greek at home in 2016: 44,545 (spoken most often at home) or another figure of language spoken at home: 114,915 (single & multiple responses).
The native language retention is still at a higher rate in Australia even when you throw in Cyprus (which has both Greeks and Turks) or not.
Hope this helps.