Monday, March 14, 2016

The First Languages Map of Australia


The Gambay - Languages Map is an interactive map of the languages spoken by Australia's indigenous people. The map currently lists 795 languages across Australia.

The languages displayed on the map are color coded by language family. If you zoom in on the map the colored dots become labels indicating the different first languages.  The labels with the little head icons indicate languages which include videos. These markers feature videos of first language speakers discussing the importance of first languages to indigenous communities.

The Gambay - Languages Map has been partly designed with school students in mind and includes teacher notes and curriculum links for a number of different school subjects.


If you are interested in Australia's indigenous people you might also like Monash University's Indigenous Dot Map of Australia.

Indigenous Australians make up 3% of the total Australian population. Every dot on this map shows an indigenous person counted in the 2011 Australian census. The map shows the spatial distribution of the 699,990 indigenous Australians counted in the census.

Looking at the map indigenous Australians seem to make up a larger proportion of the population in the north of the country. Apparently the Northern Territory has the largest proportion (30%) of its population who are indigenous, which appears to be borne out by the map.

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