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:
“Nothing so fretful, so despicable as a Scribbler, see what I am, & what a parcel of Scoundrels I have brought about my ears, & what language I have been obliged to treat them with to deal with them in their own way;Mall this comes of Authorship.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.”
—Martin Heidegger (1889–1976)
“English general and singular terms, identity, quantification, and the whole bag of ontological tricks may be correlated with elements of the native language in any of various mutually incompatible ways, each compatible with all possible linguistic data, and none preferable to another save as favored by a rationalization of the native language that is simple and natural to us.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)