Despite this gruelling introduction to learning languages, Chau — now in her 40s —has decided to enrol her children in Cantonese classes — even though she’s aware the 2,000-year-old language is gradually waning in popularity.

Chau says that over the years she has come to understand how important the language is for connection to culture.

But Chau’s attitude to language learning is at odds with dominant attitudes in Australia, where speaking English is considered sufficient and multilingualism — the ability to speak more than one language — is often framed as an asset for improving job prospects, something that experts are now questioning.

Cantonese is an endangered language

It’s spoken at home by 1.2 per cent of the Australian population (295,281 people) and is the fourth most common non-English language in Australia after Mandarin, Arabic and Vietnamese, according to the 2021 Census.

Adjunct research fellow at the University of South Australia, Andrew Scrimgeour, who is an expert in language teaching, says the dominance of Mandarin partly stems from Australia’s political relationship with China and the importance placed on the language during the period Mandarin-speaking Kevin Rudd was prime minister.

“Our language offering continues to expand and evolve over time in response to feedback from the community,” they said in a statement.

University of Queensland professor of linguistics Felicity Meakins, who contributed to the study, says Cantonese is also considered at risk, even though millions of people speak the language, because of the low number of children learning it. This reduces the likelihood of it being spoken in the future.

Fewer Australians learning languages

“But if she wanted to connect with the Cantonese side of her culture, that’ll be a lot harder.”

This decline has happened despite Australia being a multicultural country in which almost a third of the population was born overseas, and 23 per cent use a language other than English at home. Around 300 languages are spoken.

What are we at risk of losing?

Meakins, who has helped to document Indigenous languages over two decades, says health and wellbeing indicators improved in communities where people were either maintaining their traditional language or renewing it.

“Learning another language enables a better understanding of alternative perspectives which is enormously beneficial when we engage globally.”

Brenner started learning Mandarin last year and says it’s helped him to better understand Kwan’s family.

“[Russell will] randomly say something in Mandarin in our everyday conversation. It’ll make me stop and it’ll make me laugh,” Kwan says.

Is learning a language still necessary?

“The importance of human beings continuing to learn languages and being multilingual to connect the world community is still absolutely important,” Meakins says.

But it found students aged 15 years old in Australia and New Zealand spent the least amount of time in foreign-language classes compared with other OECD countries. They studied for just 1.2 hours a week compared to the OECD average of 3.6 hours in 2018.

Why we should reconsider language study

Languages are compulsory for most Australian students in primary school and the early years of high school, but Scrimgeour says the experience often doesn’t inspire them to continue.

It’s been noted for example that students in many parts of Australia could potentially converse with foreign language speakers on almost any street. The problem is they don’t have to because everyone communicates in English.

“I feel [knowing Mandarin] enhances my social skills because we can communicate in Chinese.”

How to keep languages alive

For parents who want their children to learn a language but are not native speakers at home, Meakin says it helps to pick a language that’s relevant to them, or that will be easy to continue learning at school.

A spokesperson for the federal Department of Education says the government is committed to supporting the teaching and uptake of languages in schools, although noted the responsibility of state and territory authorities.

The spokesman also noted federal funding for the Early Learning Languages Australia (ELLA) program which introduces young children to 13 languages other than English using interactive play-based digital applications (apps) including Mandarin, Indonesian, Japanese and Korean.

“We’re just going to be embedded in this warm and fuzzy view that it’s all about learning to speak — when actually it’s more about learning to understand others.”