Course Summary
Australia is generally perceived as being a monolingual, English-speaking country. However, you may be surprised to learn that around 200 languages are spoken in Australia by immigrant minorities and that there are even more than 250 indigenous languages in Australia alone. Throughout our major cities and their multicultural suburbs, we see the influence of a multilingual society. The number of towns and places named after Indigenous language groups in Australia does not do justice to the wealth of Indigenous languages that were spoken in the country before European settlement, many of which have now become extinct or endangered.
The aim of this course is to provide an overview of multilingual Australia, referring to minority languages as well as Indigenous languages. We recommend this course to students who wish to learn more about languages and the role they play in our society.
Suited to : Current and former language students (any language)
Prerequisites: none