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The most frequently reported “other” mother tongues in 1971 were all of European origin. The four European mother tongues with the largest populations were German with 561,000 individuals, dropping slightly since 1961 by less than 1%, Italian with 538,000 individuals, rising sharply from 1951 to 1961 nearly fourfold and also from 1961 to 1971 by 59%, Ukrainian with 310,000 individuals, declining sharply since 1961 by 14%, and Dutch with 145,000 individuals, also declining considerably since 1961 by 15%. All of these language groups subsequently declined in number, including the Italian group (Chart 1.2). Since then, the largest increases have been in languages whose speakers come from Asia, North Africa and Latin America. The number of people reporting a Chinese mother tongue22 has, in fact, risen from slightly under 100,000 in 1971 to over one million in 2006. There has also been a very strong surge in Indo-Pakistani languages,23 where the number of respondents has leaped from 33,000 in 1971 to approximately 900,000 in 2006. The censuses have also recorded strong growth in Spanish (from 24,000 in 1971 to 345,000 in 2006) and Arabic (from 29,000 in 1971 to 262,000 in 2006).
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