The line chart delineates how many Australian residents spoke Chinese, Arabic, Italian, and Greek as their mother tongue from 1986 to 2011.
Overall, it is readily apparent that while the number of Australians whose native language was Italian and Greek witnessed a downward trend, the opposite was true for the figures for Chinese and Arabic throughout the examined period. Additionally, Chinese surpassed other languages and became the most popular first language in Australia.
Looking first at the downward trends, the figure for Greek-born residents occupied the highest position in 1986, at approximately 230,000, significantly higher than that for the Italian counterparts. Subsequently, the former hit bottom at slightly above 150,000 in 2011 after a steady decline to around 170,000 in the previous five years. Similarly, the quantity of Australian inhabitants who were born in Italy experienced a considerable drop from 150,000 to 100,000 in 2006, after which it stabilized until 2011. Notably, the number of Australian inhabitants of Greek birth, initially the highest, was overtaken by that of Chinese at the end of the examined period, placing it second.
Regarding the remaining data, in1986, the number of Australian citizens whose first language was Chinese accounted for 100,000, doubling that for Arabic.Thereafter, the former saw a substantial threefold increase in 2006 before reaching a peak of 350,000 in 2011, nearly four times higher than the figure for Greek-born inhabitants, which was the second highest. The years between 1986 and 2006 observed a slight rise to nearly 150,000, followed by a marginal climb to 150,000 in 2011. It is noteworthy that despite being nearly five times lower than the figure for Greek in the first year, the difference gradually narrowed and eventually became relatively comparable by the end of the period.