Nearly a quarter of Macau’s population uses English as their first or second language, according to the preliminary results of the 2011 Census released by the Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC).
According to the findings, 2.3 percent of the population aged at least three years uses English as their first language, up from just 0.7 percent in 2001 when the previous census was held.
Last year’s census shows that apart from their first language (mostly Cantonese) 21.1 percent of the population also speaks English, up from just 13.5 percent a decade earlier.
Cantonese is the first language of 83.3 percent of the population, down from 87.9 percent in 2001. A total of 90 percent of the population speaks Cantonese.
Putonghua (Mandarin) is the first language of five percent of the population, up from just 1.6 percent in 2001. A total of 41.4 percent of the population speaks Putonghua, up from 26.7 percent a decade earlier.
Fujianese and Portuguese are the first language of 3.7 percent and 0.7 percent of the population, respectively.
Some 6.9 percent of the population speaks Fujianese and three percent speaks Portuguese as a second language.
Just 4.4 percent of the population aged at least 15 is illiterate, according to last year’s census.
According to The Macau Post Daily today Macau’s population stood at 552,503 at the end of last year, when 59.1 percent was born outside Macau, mostly in the mainland and Hong Kong. A total of 46.2 percent of the population was born locally.
Among last year’s population, 14,544 were born in the Philippines and 6,269 in Indonesia.
The number of Portuguese and Macanese (people of mixed Portuguese and Asian extraction) stood at 8,106 last year, or 1.5 percent of the population.
Ethnic Chinese account for 92.4 percent of the population.(macaunews)
