Statistics Canada report states language diversity due to immigration in Canada

Despite the fact that English and French are the two most common languages in Canada, the nation's linguistic variety is constantly expanding.The linguistic diversity of Canada has continued to be enriched by immigration.

According to the Statistics Canada data, 4.6 million Canadians live in homes where they speak a language other than English and French.

In particular, 9 million Canadians, or 1 in 4, were native speakers of a language other than English or French in 2021. Since 1901, when Statistics Canada started to compile information on mother languages, this is a record-high number.

Of course, English and French continue to be the two most widely used languages in Canada. At home, more than 90% of Canadians regularly use one of the two official languages.Language variety as a result of immigration.

The proportion of Canadians who speak a language other than English and French at home has been rising as a result of immigration. Between 2016 and 2021, a considerable increase in the proportion of Canadians whose primary language at home was a South Asian language.

Between 2016 and 2021, the population of Canada increased by 5.2%, but the proportion of citizens who spoke a South Asian language at home increased significantly more quickly, particularly those who spoke Malayalam (+129%), Hindi (+66%), Punjabi (+49%), and Gujarati (+43%).

In contrast to the growth rate of the whole Canadian population, the number of speakers of South Asian languages increased at a rate that was at least eight times higher.

This growth is mostly attributable to immigration; between 2016 and 2020, 1 in 5 of the permanent residents who entered Canada were born in India and 1 in 4 were South Asians of color.

Mandarin and Punjabi were Canada's most widely spoken languages, followed by English and French. In 2021, more than 500,000 Canadians spoke Punjabi at home, and more than 500,000 spoke Mandarin at home.

The proportion of Canadians who spoke mostly European languages at home decreased at the same time. The main cause of this decline is the ageing of these languages' speakers, many of whom moved to Canada before 1980. Furthermore, there aren't many immigrants from Poland, Greece, or Italy who have just lately arrived in Canada.

Compared to other Canadians, those who spoke a language besides English and French were more likely to reside in a major urban area. Large urban areas receive a sizable share of the immigrants that immigrate to Canada each year, which broadens their language variety.

In Canada, there are more than 70 different official languages. In 2021, 189,000 persons claimed to speak at least one Indigenous language as their mother tongue, while 183,000 claimed to regularly use an Indigenous language at home.The two primary indigenous languages in Canada are Cree and Inuktitut.

French and English

The majority of Canadians are able to communicate in at least one of the country's two official languages. In 2021, 92.9% of Canadians regularly spoke English or French at home, and 98.1% of the population could converse in both languages.

Just over 3 out of 4 Canadians speak English as their first language, an increase from 2016. More than half of the inhabitants of the country spoke English as their first language.An increasing number of Canadians speak French as their primary language. More than 1 in 5 Canadians spoke French regularly at home in 2021.

The percentage of Canadians who spoke primarily French at home increased in Quebec, British Columbia, and the Yukon between 2016 and 2021, but it fell in other provinces and territories.

The paper claims that a number of elements, including a generally older population, imperfect French transmission from one generation to the next, and linguistic transfers, are responsible for this decline (when a person speaks a language at home that is different from their mother tongue).

For the first time, there are more than a million individuals in Quebec who speak English as their first language, yet the percentage of bilingual Canadians who speak both English and French has stayed essentially steady since 2016. Additionally, although there are more French speakers in Quebec, they make up a smaller percentage of the population.

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