Interesting details about Hamilton’s language trends have emerged from the 2016 census.
For the first time, Arabic has overtaken Italian as the most-spoken language in Hamilton homes, after English.
The census shows the number of people who speak Italian at home has dropped by about 34 per cent since 2006 in Hamilton, largely due to an aging population.
The proportion of people who speak Polish, Portuguese and Serbian are also on the decline in Hamilton.
The city was a destination spot for European immigrants between the ’50s and ’70s due to its industrial employment opportunities and removal of the Enemy Alien Act in 1947. However, with Hamilton’s most recent influx of immigrants arriving from mostly Arabic-speaking countries, the percentage of people who speak Arabic at home has risen by about 60 per cent, to just over 5,200 homes in 2016.
The census data suggests, though, that more households in Hamilton are speaking English. The number has risen to 88 per cent in 2016, compared to 85 per cent in 2006 when the previous long-form census was collected, suggesting Hamilton’s immigration numbers are continuing to decline.
Between 2006 and 2011, the city’s immigrant population grew by only 2.9 per cent while the province’s went up by four per cent.
Hamilton resettled more than 1,000 refugees in the past year, but the latest immigration stats won’t be available until later this year.
All data available for Hamilton based on the 2016 census can be found in detail here.