Data from the Census conducted last year in Australia gives us countless indications and even curiosities about the country we live in. For example, speaking of the Italian language, the Census tells us that of the over 271,000 people who said they speak Italian at home, 51.7% were born in Italy - no great surprise, there - while 44.1% were born In Australia (presumably the children and grandchildren of those who chose to teach Italian to their descendants). Together, these two percentages reach 95.8%, the overwhelming majority of the total, as expected. The surprises come from the lower positions. In third place, with a number of speakers close to 2,000, there are Italophones born in Egypt. Some long-time residents in the thriving Italian colony of Alexandria, others refugees for issues related to world wars of the twentieth century. One of these people, Armida Croccolo, was recently interviewed in our segment "A Life, A Story - The Adventure of Italians in Australia". Please follow the link to listen to the interview.
After the Italo-Egyptians, we find people born in the UK, Croatia (a land that many Italians left after the post-war political treaties that redesigned the borders of Istria and neighbouring areas). They are still more than 1,500. There are also Swiss people, presumably coming from Italian-speaking cantons or children of workers who emigrated to the Confederation. Less than 500 Italian speakers were born in New Zealand, France, Libya, Argentina, Germany, South Africa, the United States and Malta. Scrolling down the ranking, we find a few hundreds Italo-Ethiopians, Eritreans and Somalis (probably the connection here is Italy’s colonial past). The census says that in Australia there are only four people born in San Marino (there were four also in 2011) and the ranking ends with just three Italophones born in Uganda, Honduras, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Senegal and Kazakhstan.
