Plenty of Australians speak Asian languages

| September 13, 2012

There are about two billion English speakers globally and English is spoken by about 800 million people in Asia. Benjamin Herscovitch says those statistics make him sceptical of calls to solve Australia’s Asia literacy non-problem.

Reading recent coverage of the debate about the adequacy of Australia's Asia literacy, one could be forgiven for thinking Australia faces looming skills shortages and national security crises.

Politicians, commentators and academics are all saying Australia's inability to speak Asian languages and understand Asian cultures imperils our prosperity and security.

On the back of this alarming diagnosis, Asian studies programs worth billions of dollars have been proposed, while both sides of politics at the national level have pledged to improve Australia's Asia literacy.

Yet Asia literacy alarm is out of step with Australia's multicultural reality.

New large-scale Asian studies programs are not necessary because the genius of Australian multiculturalism, to borrow an apt phrase from immigration minister Chris Bowen, has set Australia up for success in the Asian century.

Not only will multicultural Australia prosper because it already speaks the languages of Asia, but it is also home to widespread Asian cultural literacy.

According to 2011 census data, approximately 2.2 million people speak Asian languages at home, which equates to around 10 per cent of the population.

Important Asian languages are very well represented within the overall number of speakers of Asian languages.

There are more than 650,000 people who speak Chinese languages at home, most notably Mandarin and Cantonese. Indian languages, including Hindi and Punjabi, have 305,000 or so speakers, while there are 233,000 Vietnamese speakers; 137,000 speakers of Filipino languages; 80,000 Korean speakers; 56,000 Indonesian speakers; and 44,000 Japanese speakers.

Added to this, increasing numbers of immigrants from Asian countries mean increasing numbers of speakers of all major Asian languages.

Seven of the top 10 source countries in Australia's 2011-12 immigration program were from Asia: China, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.

The 2011 census data shows that the leading birthplace of immigrants who arrived in Australia between 2006 and 2011 was India (13.1 per cent, a 100 per cent increase on 2006 data). During the same period, the number of immigrants born in China increased by 54 per cent, while the number from the Philippines increased by 42 per cent.

By measuring the number of people who speak Asian languages at home, census data is also a good indicator of Asian cultural literacy.

Although the connection will not hold in all cases, there is a good chance that someone who speaks an Asian language at home will have a familial connection to the language, and as a result, will probably have some level of Asian cultural literacy.

Australia's large store of Asian cultural literacy is not just a potential asset to those with existing familial connections to Asian cultures. Multiculturalism means widespread interaction between different cultural groups in families and neighbourhoods.

The 2006 census data shows that the spouses were of different ancestries in 30 per cent of all couples, and that the rate of intermarriage has been increasing with each successive generation regardless of ethnic background.

Australia also has comparably low levels of residential segregation. Recent research suggests Australians are more likely to be living in mixed neighbourhoods than their British, Canadian, and in particular, US counterparts. In Australia's healthy multicultural society with its high levels of interaction between cultures, Asian cultural literacy is being acquired by osmosis. By importing Asia literacy through immigration, Australia has avoided the need for costly large-scale Asian studies programs.

Even if the pre-eminence of English in Asia and the rest of the world is ignored, Australia's multicultural composition alone means the often alarmist tone of the contemporary debate about Asia literacy is unwarranted.

With a multicultural society that is naturally Asia literate, Australia is well placed to prosper in the Asian century.

Benjamin Herscovitch is a policy analyst at The Centre for Independent Studies, and author of the publication, Australia's Asia Literacy Non-Problem.

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0 Comments

  1. VED

    July 20, 2013 at 2:08 am

    Teaching feudal languages in Australia: Is it advisable?

    I am a person who has done many years of research on language codes. It is from this back ground that I am commenting on this topic. Asian/Africa languages, most of them, are quite feudal and do have codes of 'respect' versus pejoratives. In that all human beings and their various attributes are variously portrayed as golden or as dirt, in them. In fact, the very words You, He, She, They, Them, His, Her, Hers, Him etc. have an array of words to define a person in various ways. Gold or dirt. If such languages are brought into English nations in a mass manner, it can affect the children's personality in a negative manner. In years to come, Australian society would come to have a splintered up looks as seen in Asian nations. Many of the word codes, if used without the proper direction component can be quite provocative. In fact, most of the so-called racially motivated attacks on Asian/African language speaker can really be connected to these codes. Skin colour is not what actually provokes. It is connected to sensing the negativity.