Australia linguistic's history

Aboriginal Australian was multiligual in the sense that more than two hundred languages were spoken in specific territorial areas which together comprised the whole country. Because mobility was restricted, one language group had knowledge of its own language together with some knowledge of the languages spoken in the territories immediately adjacent to their own

However, from the beginning of European settlement in 1788, English was given predominance by the settlers. By 1983, about 83 percent of the Australian population spoke English as a mother tongue. Less than one percent did not use English at all. The preeminence of the English language reflects the fact that European settlement of this continent has been chiefly by English - speaking people, despite prior Portuguese and Dutch coastal exploration

The first white settlers, convicts and soldiers and, later, free settlers, came almost exclusively from the British Isles. Some of these settlers spoke the standard form of English whilst others spoke a wide variety of the non-standard form of English that flourished in various areas of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. In addition many the Celtic languages including Gaelic, Irish and Welsh. However, speaker of languages other than English did not arrive in the Australia colonies in significant numbers until the goldrushes of the 1850s, which attracted people from all over the world, including substantial numbers from China.

The reaction of the Europeans to the Chinese led to restriction on Chinese and other non-European immigration this Act hindered the spread of non-European languages in Australian colonies. In 1891, about four percent of the total population was of German origin.

Despite increased immigration from southern Europe, Germany, and Est-ern Europe during 1920s and 1930s, the period from 1900 to 1946 saw the consolidation of the English language in Australia. This process was accelerated by the xenophobia engendered by the two world wars which resulted in a decline in German in particular and of all non-English in general. As the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affaires noted, the result was that 'at the end of World War II, Australia was at its most monolingual ever 90 percent of the population tracing its ancestry to Britain.

The post-war migration program reversed the process of increasing English monolingual-ism. The post-war period also witnessed a reversal of a trend of diminishing numbers of Australians of Aboriginal and Asian descent. Dr C. Price, a demographer at the Australian National University, has estimated that in 1947 only 59000 Aborigines remained from a population of 110,000 in 1891 by 1981 their numbers had increased to 160. Between 1947 and 1971, nearly three million people came to settle in Australia. About 60 percent came from non-English speaking countries, notably, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Yugoslavia, Turkey, Germany and the Netherlands. Since 1973, Australian immigration policies have not discriminated against people on the grounds of race, and more Asian settlers have arrived, especially from South East Asia generally and, more recently, from East Timor and Vietnam in particular. Between 1971 and 1981the Asian population of Australia more than doubled to 8.5 percent of the total overseas-born population. Traditional migration from Europe, although remaining substantial. declined in relative importance during this decade. The numbers of new settlers from Lebanon and New Zealand also more than doubled during this period and there was much greater migration from Latin America, Africa and Oceania