93 per cent.
Nearly 93 in every 100 Torres Strait Island residents speak a language other than English at home. It is among the highest shares of any council in Queensland.
Yumplatok (Torres Strait Creole) is spoken by 2,917 of our residents at home, 71.1% of the council.
Kalaw Kawaw Ya/Kalaw Lagaw Ya is spoken by 380 of our residents at home, 9.3% of the council.
Meriam Mir is spoken by 55 of our residents at home, 1.3% of the council.
5 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 share this portrait because Torres Strait Island is, genuinely, not like an "average" council. Services designed for the median Queensland resident arrive here in the wrong language. This Atlas exists so nobody writing policy about us, federal, state, corporate or media, can claim they did not know.
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.
93.4% of Torres Strait Island residents speak a language other than English at home, against 15.8% for Queensland and 27.3% nationally. Drawn from the 2021 census.