Language
The English have contributed greatly to Australian life. Today, English is the most commonly spoken language in Australia.
English was inherited from English colonisation, and it is spoken by the vast majority of the population. It serves as the official language: the language in which government business is carried out. According to the 1991 census, 94% of Australia's. population speak only English. Adding those who speak English "well" or "very well" brings this figure to 96%. Australian English is similar to British English in terms of spelling, grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and some slang usage. The differences are not usually a barrier to effective communication between an Australian English and a British English speaker, but there are certainly enough differences to cause occasional misunderstandings, usually surrounding slang or region dialect differences.
Read more about this topic: English Australian
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“UG [universal grammar] may be regarded as a characterization of the genetically determined language faculty. One may think of this faculty as a ‘language acquisition device,’ an innate component of the human mind that yields a particular language through interaction with present experience, a device that converts experience into a system of knowledge attained: knowledge of one or another language.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“Now stamp the Lord’s Prayer on a grain of rice,
A Bible-leaved of all the written woods
Strip to this tree: a rocking alphabet,
Genesis in the root, the scarecrow word,
And one light’s language in the book of trees.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“When a language creates—as it does—a community within the present, it does so only by courtesy of a community between the present and the past.”
—Christopher Ricks (b. 1933)