We are Merri-bek.
Home to one of the larger Italian-speaking communities in Victoria, and 113 other language communities besides.
10,070 speakers, 6.0% of Merri-bek. -21% since 2021.
7,762 speakers, 4.6% of Merri-bek. -2% since 2021.
6,791 speakers, 4.0% of Merri-bek. -8% since 2021.
114 languages carry the conversation at home. Every one of them is spoken here.
Each block below is scaled to the number of people who speak that language at home, and tinted by how fast that community has grown since the last census.
We publish this so our residents can see themselves counted, and so the agencies, funders and neighbours who serve us can see who we actually serve. Language access is not a translation line-item in our budget. It is how an emergency notice reaches a grandparent, how an enrolment form is understood, and how a health campaign actually lands in the suburbs that make up our council.
Our linguistic character changes street by street. Click through to any suburb for its own portrait: the languages spoken there, the communities calling it home.
38.1% of Merri-bek residents speak a language other than English at home, against 32.6% for Victoria and 27.3% nationally. Drawn from the 2021 census.