Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of tables
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Aboriginal and Islander Languages
- Part II Pidgins and creoles
- Part III Transplanted languages other than English
- 14 Overview of ‘immigrant’ or community languages
- 15 Dutch in Australia: perceptions of and attitudes towards transference and other language contact phenomena
- 16 German and Dutch in Australia: structures and use
- 17 Modern Greek in Australia
- 18 Language variety among Italians: anglicisation, attrition and attitudes
- 19 First generation Serbo-Croatian speakers in Queensland: language maintenance and language shift
- Part IV Varieties of Australian English
- Part V Public policy and social issues
- References
- Index
18 - Language variety among Italians: anglicisation, attrition and attitudes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of tables
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Aboriginal and Islander Languages
- Part II Pidgins and creoles
- Part III Transplanted languages other than English
- 14 Overview of ‘immigrant’ or community languages
- 15 Dutch in Australia: perceptions of and attitudes towards transference and other language contact phenomena
- 16 German and Dutch in Australia: structures and use
- 17 Modern Greek in Australia
- 18 Language variety among Italians: anglicisation, attrition and attitudes
- 19 First generation Serbo-Croatian speakers in Queensland: language maintenance and language shift
- Part IV Varieties of Australian English
- Part V Public policy and social issues
- References
- Index
Summary
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.
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- Language in Australia , pp. 263 - 269Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991
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