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Sydney's melting pot of language

From Afrikaans to Telugu, Hebrew to Wu, the depth and diversity of languages in Sydney rivals some of the world's largest cities.

  • Read the story: Talk of the town - you're all talking my language

    • Top non-English languages
    • English density
    • Linguistic diversity

    Nearly 40 per cent of Sydneysiders speak a non-English language at home. More than 250 languages are spoken in Sydney.

    Arabic, which dominates the western suburbs, is the most widely spoken non-English language. Mandarin and Cantonese are the next most common languages.

    Language groups in Sydney are more concentrated than in Melbourne, Australia's other great home to migrants.

    Middle Eastern

    • Arabic
    • Armenian
    • Assyrian
    • Hebrew

    Eastern Asian

    • Cantonese
    • Mandarin
    • Korean
    • Japanese

    Southeast Asian & Pacific

    • Filipino
    • Vietnamese
    • Thai
    • Samoan

    Southern Asian

    • Hindi
    • Bengali
    • Tamil
    • Punjabi
    • Gujarati

    Northern European

    • German
    • Dutch
    • Swedish

    Southern European

    • Greek
    • Italian
    • Spanish
    • French
    • Maltese
    • Portugese

    Eastern European

    • Russian
    • Macedonian
    • Serbian
    • Polish

    In one in five Sydney suburbs, people who speak a non-English language at home outnumber those who speak English at home.

    English is the second most common language in 18 suburbs and the third most common language in three suburbs: Bankstown, Lakemba and Cabramatta.

    In Cabramatta, four in 10 residents speak Vietnamese at home; only one in 10 speaks English at home.

     

    People speaking English at home

    • 12%
    • 98%

    Liverpool and Holroyd are Sydney's most linguistically diverse suburbs. They boast 20 languages with speakers comprising at least one per cent of residents.

    In Liverpool, nearly 20 per cent of residents speak Arabic and 10 per cent speak Serbian. More than two per cent of residents speak Hindi, Vietnamese, Spanish or Italian.

    Yellow Rock, in the Blue Mountains, has the lowest language diversity, with 97 per cent of residents speaking only English at home.

    Unlike many global cities, low-cost, Immigrant-rich areas in Sydney are contain a mix of ethnicities rather than a concentration of one group.

     

    No. of languages spoken by more than 1% of residents

    • 1
    • 20


    Editors: Inga Ting, Conrad Walters.