Language shift

In the 1986 Census, about 430,000 out of almost a million people of Italian descent declared that they used Italian regularly. From these figures alone, language shift to English appears to be rapid, particularly in the Australian context, where Italians are the largest non-English speaking ethnic group. They also tend to live close to one another in dense concentrations, and have a long history of immigration. Shift seems even faster if patterns of language usage are analysed in more detail. From Clyne (1982: 27–56) we learn that in the first generation language shift increases from 5.4 per cent among the older population to 11.7 per cent among the younger immigrants. In the second generation, it increases from 18.5 per cent among children of intra-ethnic marriages, to 81.2 per cent among children of inter-ethnic marriages. Furthermore, in the second generation, language shift increases with age, dramatically so when children leave home in their twenties, and to an even greater extent in their later years when their parents die. Thus, Italian is mainly a language used by older parents and younger children. Given that Italian immigration almost ceased some ten years ago, we might easily predict that when the former die and the latter grow up there will be little Italian regularly spoken in Australia.