18.7% ▲ +153.3%
Higher than 59% of state electorate areas.
- 2011: 7.4%
- 2016: 8.4%
- 2021: 18.7%
Share of people who use a language other than English at home.
Cairns · State Electorate
Language in Cairns
The languages spoken in homes across the area, beyond English.
Nearly one in five people in Cairns speak a language other than English at home, making daily life more linguistically diverse than in most of Queensland. This shift is striking, as the proportion of people using another language has jumped 11 percentage points since 2011.
Languages at home
English and the largest community languages.
While 69.3% of residents speak only English, 18.7% use another language at home, which is well above the Queensland figure. This is reflected in the 2.9% of people who speak little or no English, a figure that is higher than most areas and has risen since 2016.
2.9% ▲ +174.4%
Higher than 65% of state electorate areas.
- 2016: 1.0%
- 2021: 2.9%
Share of people who use another language at home and speak English not well or not at all. No 2011 figure — that census only asked proficiency of overseas-born residents.
Sources
- Census of Population and Housing — Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2021 (CC BY 4.0).
More for Cairns
Cite this page
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2021). Language in Cairns [Census of Population and Housing]. CensusAtlas, used under CC BY 4.0. https://censusatlas.au/region/sed/SED30014/cairns/topic/language