The line chart illustrates the number of people living in Australia who used Chinese, Arabic, Italian and Greek as their first language from 1986 to 2011.
Overall, Chinese and Arabic increased significantly while Greek and Italian decreased over the 25 year period from 1986 to 2011.
In addition, Chinese in general reached its highest level during this period,from 100,000 in 1986 to 350,000 in 2011, ahead of Greek, which fell from 230,000 to 180,000. In 1996, both languages had around 201,000 speakers, but Chinese overtook them. Greek, despite a steady decline, remained the second most spoken language in 2011.
Meanwhile, Arabic rose sharply from 50,000 in 1986 to 150,000 in 2011, overtaking Italian, which fell from 150,000 to 102,000. Around 2002, Arabic overtook Italian from the least spoken language to the third most spoken language, while Italian fell to fourth place.
