Maltese language maintenance in Australia (based on the 1996 Census)Author: Sandra Kipp Second GenerationLanguage shift in the second generation is calculated as the percentage of persons born in Australia with one or both parents born in Malta who now speak only English at home. Figure 2 (see also Table 2) includes persons with both parents born in Malta ('endogamous'), persons with one parent born in Malta and the other born elsewhere ('exogamous') and a figure aggregating all persons with at least one parent born in Malta. Table 1 - Language shift in the second generation, Maltese, 1996
| Endogamous | Exogamous | All G2(aggregated) | Victoria | 65.3% | 91.4% | 78.2% | NSW | 72.1% | 93.1% | 82.8% | Australia | 70% | 92.9% | 82.1% |
| | | |
Shift rates are still slightly lower in Victoria than they are in NSW or nationally, although Maltese still falls into the high shift category in the Australian context, with only German and Dutch shifting more in the second generation. In fact, the national shift rate in the Maltese second generation from exogamous marriages (92.9%) is higher than that for German (92%) and rivals that for Dutch (96.5%), although the rate from endogamous marriages (70%) is considerably lower than that for German (80%) or Dutch (9 1. 1 %). Marriage within or outside of the same language group appears to have a significant role to play in the maintenance of Maltese, as it does with all community languages in Australia. The intergenerational shift rate for Maltese (i.e. the difference in shift rates between the first and second generations) is particularly high (higher than that for both Gen-nan and Dutch, although not as high as for some other languages with a lower shift in the first generation). Source: Maltese Background Youth - Editors Cauchi M, Borland H, Adams R, 1999, [Europe Australia Institute], p 9
    
| 
.