One in five Canadians or nearly 6,630,000 people speak a language other than English or French, Canada’s two official languages, at home, according to 2011 census data released Wednesday.
In contrast, 58.0 percent of the population or 19,225,000 spoke only English at home, while 18.2 percent or 6,043,000 spoke only French. Both proportions were down slightly from 2006 while the use of multiple languages has increased.
As well, just over 5,795,000 people in Canada reported being able to hold a conversation in both of Canada’s official languages, an increase of almost 350,000. These bilingual individuals represented 17.5 percent of the total population, which is virtually unchanged from 17.4 percent in 2006.
Statistics Canada reported that the fastest growing segment was the number of people who said they spoke the Philippine-based language Tagalog, increasing by 64 percent to 279,000 from 170,000 in 2006.
Seven other language groups also saw their numbers increase by more than 30 percent: Mandarin (+50 percent), Arabic (+47 percent), Hindi (+44 percent), Creole languages (+42 percent), Bengali (+40 percent), Persian (+33 percent), and Spanish (+32 percent).
Meanwhile four languages showed a slight decline in the number of people who reported speaking them. Three of them, Italian, Polish and Greek, are spoken for the most part by early immigrant groups and their descendants.
The fourth language that declined was Chinese, which mostly reflects a change in the way the census reports Chinese languages, now allowing respondents to specify Mandarin, Cantonese or “other Chinese language.”
The top 10 immigrant languages spoken most often at home in 2011 were: Punjabi, Chinese (other than Mandarin or Cantonese), Cantonese, Spanish, Tagalog, Arabic, Mandarin, Italian, Urdu and German.
More than 213,000 people also spoke one of more than 60 aboriginal languages, and nearly 25,000 reported using a sign language.
20% of Canadians speak language other than French, English
