Table 4.
Language used at home by Longitudinal Outcomes of Children with Hearing Impairment (LOCHI) children and the primary language used by children participating in Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC)
| Communication type | Languages used at home | LOCHI children at 3 years (n = 406) | LSAC children at 4 to 5 years (n = 4,983)* | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spoken language | African language | 2 | 0.6% | 7 | 0.1% |
| Arabic | 18 | 4.5% | 108 | 3.6% | |
| Australian Aboriginal | 0 | 0.0% | 22 | 0.4% | |
| Assyrian | 1 | 0.3% | 22 | 0.4% | |
| Bengali | 0 | 0.0% | 11 | 0.2% | |
| Cantonese | 9 | 2.3% | 133 | 2.7% | |
| Croatian | 0 | 0.0% | 6 | 0.1% | |
| Dutch | 1 | 0.3% | - | - | |
| English | 377 | 94.3% | 4285 | 86.0% | |
| French | 1 | 0.3% | 18 | 0.4% | |
| German | 0 | 0.0% | 12 | 0.2% | |
| Greek | 1 | 0.3% | 109 | 2.2% | |
| Hakka | 0 | 0.0% | 8 | 0.2% | |
| Hindi | 0 | 0.0% | 21 | 0.4% | |
| Indonesian | 0 | 0.0% | 8 | 0.2% | |
| Italian | 3 | 0.8% | 179 | 3.6% | |
| Japanese | 3 | 0.5% | 32 | 0.7% | |
| Kannada | 1 | 0.3% | - | - | |
| Khmer | 0 | 0.0% | 2 | 0% | |
| Korean | 0 | 0.0% | 6 | 0.1% | |
| Macedonian | 0 | 0.0% | 6 | 0.1% | |
| Maltese | 1 | 0.3% | - | - | |
| Mandarin | 3 | 0.8% | 112 | 2.2% | |
| Maori | 1 | 0.3% | 5 | 0.1% | |
| Persian | 1 | 0.3% | 1 | 0% | |
| Polish | 1 | 0.3% | 9 | 0.2% | |
| Portuguese | 0 | 0.0% | 9 | 0.2% | |
| Punjabi | 0 | 0.0% | 6 | 0.1% | |
| Russian | 0 | 0.0% | 4 | 0.1% | |
| Samoan | 1 | 0.3% | 23 | 0.5% | |
| Serbian | 0 | 0.0% | 28 | 0.5% | |
| Sinhalese | 0 | 0.0% | 8 | 0.2% | |
| Somali | 0 | 0.0% | 11 | 0.2% | |
| Spanish | 4 | 1.0% | 73 | 1.5% | |
| Tagalog | 1 | 0.3% | 13 | 0.3% | |
| Tamil | 0 | 0.0% | 15 | 0.3% | |
| Telugu | 1 | 0.3% | - | - | |
| Thai | 1 | 0.3% | 8 | 0.2% | |
| Tongan | 0 | 0.0% | 5 | 0.1% | |
| Turkish | 2 | 0.5% | 39 | 0.7% | |
| Urdu | 2 | 0.5% | 7 | 0.1% | |
| Vietnamese | 6 | 1.5% | 108 | 2.2% | |
| Other | 0 | 0.0% | 488 | 9.8% | |
| Sign language | Auslan | 47 | 11.8% | - | - |
| Sign system | Signed English | 17 | 4.3% | - | - |
| Makaton | 39 | 9.8% | - | - | |
| Sign (nfd) | - | - | |||
| Alternative and Augmentative | AAC | 10 | 2.5% | - | - |
| Missing or confidentialized data | 6 | 1.5% | 90 | 1.8% | |
Note. For LOCHI data, these figures total more than the number of participants as some participants spoke two or more languages. “nfd’ refers to no further definition, e.g., “sign” was reported but the type was not specified. Dashes indicate that this language may not have been used by anyone or may have been used by a few participants. These data may have been amalgamated under “other.” *Data analyzed in McLeod (2011).