OTTAWA – Bilingualism is surging in Canada, but not necessarily in the country’s two official languages.
Statistics Canada released the last batch of data from the 2011 census on Wednesday, this time focusing on about 200 languages that make up the linguistic portrait of the country.
Global News takes a by the numbers look at languages in Canada:
200: The number of languages reported as a home language or mother tongue
20 per cent: The proportion of people who speak a language other than English or French at home
25,000: The number of people who use sign language at home
213,000: The number of people who speak an aboriginal language at home
6.5 per cent: The proportion of people who spoke only a non-official language at home, a percentage that has remained unchanged since 2006
64 per cent: The increase in the number of Tagalog speakers. The Philippine-based language was the fastest growing among people in Canada since 2006
4: The number of languages that showed a decline in the number of people who reported speaking them most often at home. Italian, Polish and Greek were in decline as older immigrant languages. Chinese languages also showed a decline due to the way Statistics Canada counted the various dialects in the census. Statistics Canada asked respondents to specify which Chinese language they spoke this time around.
10: The top 10 immigrant languages spoken at home were Punjabi, Chinese (not-specified), Cantonese, Spanish, Tagalog, Arabic, Mandarin, Italian, Urdu and German.
80 per cent: The proportion of immigrant language speakers who lived in Toronto, Montreal Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa-Gatineau.
32.2 per cent: The proportion of people who speak an immigrant language most often at home in Toronto, the highest percentage among all census metropolitan areas.
5 per cent: The proportion of Quebecers who speak French and another language other than English – an increase since 2006. The number of people reporting that they speak English and another language also increased to 2.8 per cent.
17.5 per cent: The proportion of the population who reported being able to have a conversation in both official languages. The rate of bilingualism has held steady since the last census.
10 million: The number of Canadians who said they could hold a conversation in French. While the number of people who could do so increased, the proportion of them decreased.
60: The number of Aboriginal languages recorded in the census.
20.9 per cent: The proportion of people who spoke an Aboriginal language as a mother tongue in Quebec – the highest share of Canadian provinces. Other provinces reporting high proportions include Manitoba at 17.1 per cent and Saskatchewan at 16.0 per cent.
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– With a file from The Canadian Press
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