The line graph illustrates how many people used Chinese, Arabic, Italian and Greek as their native languages in Australia from 1986 to 2011. Overall, more people started to use Chinese and Arabic as their first language in Australia towards the end of the period, while the opposite trend was true for those using Greek and Italian. The general pattern was to move away from Greek to Chinese.
Looking at the upward trends first, more than 100,000 people used Chinese for casual communication in 1986, which was nearly double the number of those who used Arabic.This figure rose significantly to about 250,000 in 2001, a year in which the number of people using Chinese overtook that of Greek and became the most common language among Australian people. The number of people who used Chinese as their first language continued to increase and reached about 350,000 in the last year. Starting at 50,000 in 1986, the lowest number, the figures for those used Arabic as their first language in Australia increased over the time and reached a peak of 150,000 in 2011.
Turning into remaining languages, the highest number of people in Australia spoke Arabic as their first language in the initial year. This number declined gradually over the period and dropped to about 180,000 in 2011, becoming the second most-spoken language. Similarly, the number of people who used Italian experienced a significant reduction to about 100,000 from 1986 to 2006. This number remained unchanged in the next five years.