Cantonese Around the World

Australia

The Chinese communities are mainly found in Melbourne (Victoria) and Sydney (New South Wales). I think that Sydney has the largest Chinatown community. Chinese people tend to frequent the large city areas more but there's definately small chinese communities in some regional areas. From what i've experienced from both states (i move around a lot), Melbourne has a more diverse mix of who can speak Cantonese and canto speaking people in sydney is somewhat limited to native speakers, that's not to say it's ONLY limited to native speakers. I've met 2 Vietnamese people who speak fluent cantonese and also mandarin! In Tasmania, there's a small chinese community as well but i'm not entirely sure about them. They can speak canto though. Also, with ABC (Australian Born Chinese) living in regional areas, they tend to be more westernised than those living in city areas (forgive my generalisation) my chinese friend has a "westernised" accent due to her speaking more english than canto.

The dominant language of the asian communities is Cantonese and there's heaps of people from HK who move to Australia to study and you can find them living around universities and hanging around the city. You will find some mandarin speakers or people who understand mandarin floating around because it's become something of a trendy language due to the influence from hong kong pop stars!

There's also heaps of malaysian people who speak Hokkien, Cantonese and Mandarin! You can also find Vietnamese people who can fluently speak Cantonese and i've mainly seen them in "Vietnamese Town" (Richmond) in Melbourne.

  - Submitted by Misu Fukihyama, November 2005

Australia’s Cantonese community largely dates from the gold rush period (1850s) when Australia was known as the "New Gold Mountain" after the original "gold mountain", California. Many of these early sojourners returned home, however significant numbers established themselves in Sydney and Melbourne. 

The phasing out of discriminatory immigration policies in the 1970s allowed more Cantonese immigration and importantly, many of the "Vietnamese boat people" who arrived in the aftermath of the Vietnam War (1975~) were in fact Cantonese speaking Hoa from the Saigon region. In more recent times, "business migration" from Hong Kong has been common, although Australia has been (sadly!) a less popular destination than Canada. 

The 2001 census revealed Cantonese to be the fourth largest language spoken at home (after English, Italian and Greek) with a total of 225,307 speakers recorded. Included in this number are the 70,000 Hong Kong-born Australians.

Today Cantonese is still the main language of Australia’s Chinatowns although its overall position as the dominant Chinese language is challenged by the large number of tertiary students from South East Asia, Taiwan and the PRC who speak Mandarin and/or Hokkien or Teochew. Many of these overseas Chinese also, of course, can use Cantonese.

  - Submitted by David M in Feb 2006

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