The linguistic study conducted by Emeritus Professor Michael Clyne, Dr Louisa Willoughby and Dr Julie Bradshaw of Monash University also revealed the south-eastern suburbs were steadily becoming home to more immigrants than inner Melbourne or the western suburbs, which used to attract most multilingual migrants.

The study, based on 2006 census figures, found suburbs in the City of Casey were home to more than 20 languages that are spoken by at least 1000 people, making it the most multilingual area in Melbourne.

The municipality added five new languages in the past five years, and 12 since 1996.

Suburbs in Greater Dandenong, where 16 languages were spoken, came second in the state, followed by Brimbank and Monash with 12 each.

Professor Clyne said the high diversity of languages and cultures in the south-eastern suburbs was significant.

"Of the 40 most widely spoken languages in Victoria, seven have more speakers living in Casey than any other municipality in Victoria.

"It means more people are using the lingua franca in the region - they aren't speaking English to English-speaking people but using English as a communicative function to non-English speakers."

Albanian-speaking people, mainly from Kosovo, were mostly found in Dandenong South. "But the language most concentrated in Greater Dandenong is the Khmer language from the Cambodian people which is also on the schools curriculum in year 12."

The study also revealed that only 21.6per cent of the population in the region spoke only English. In Casey, the most common non-English languages are Sinhalese, Hindi, French, Dari, Romanian, Samoan and Hungarian.