Languages

• The 2006 Census also recorded that almost 400 different languages were spoken in homes across Australia. Close to 79% of Australia's population spoke only English at home, a decrease from 82% in 1996.
• As in 1996, the three most common languages other than English in 2006 were Italian (accounting for 1.6% of the population), Greek (1.3%) and Cantonese (1.2%). Of these, Cantonese was the only language which had an increase in the number of speakers since 1996 (21% growth), while Italian and Greek speakers declined in number by around 16% and 7% respectively.
• The recent growth of Asian languages and the decline of those from Europe in Australia reflects the recent trends in the birthplaces of Australia's overseas-born. Of Australia's main non-English languages*, Mandarin and Hindi have experienced the fastest proportional growth – both more than doubling in speakers since 1996. Conversely, German speakers declined the most in number, falling by around 24%.
• Between 1996 and 2006, except for Darwin, the proportion of each capital city's non-English speakers increased. In 2006, Sydney had the largest proportion of its residents speaking non-English languages at home (around 29% or 1.2 million people), while Hobart had the smallest proportion (5.1% or 10,000 people).

Ancestries

• In the 2006 Census, Australians reported more than 250 different ancestries, with many people claiming two ancestries. The most common ancestry was Australian, with 7.4 million, or 37% of all people, choosing this as at least one of their ancestries. The next most popular ancestries were English (6.3 million or 32%), Irish (1.8 million or 9.1%) and Scottish (1.5 million or 7.6%), reflecting the dominant sources of migrants to Australia since European settlement. Italian, German and Chinese were the next most common ancestries.
• Around 64% of Australian residents identified with only one ancestry, while 28% selected two ancestries.
• Of the people who selected two ancestries, the most common combinations were English-Australian (with around 1.26 million persons), English-Irish (753,000) and English-Scottish (504,000).

*Languages with more than 50,000 speakers (who speak it when at home).