Language in Canada
From Free net encyclopedia
There are a multitude of languages spoken in Canada. Canada's two official languages are English and French. On July 7, 1969, under the Official Languages Act, French was made commensurate to English throughout the federal government. This started a process that led to Canada redefining itself as a bilingual and multicultural nation. Of Canada's 32.2 million population, Anglophones and Francophone represent 56.3% and 28.7% of the population respectively. The rest of the population represent persons whose mother tongues are Chinese, Italian, German, and Aboriginal languages. The following article refers to language by mother tongue unless otherwise specified.
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Bilingualism
English and French have equal status in federal courts, Parliament, and in all federal institutions. The public has the right, where there is sufficient demand, to receive federal government services in either English or French. While multiculturalism is official policy, to become a citizen one must be able to speak either English or French and more than 98% of Canadians speak English or French or both. While the nation remains officially bilingual, the majority of Canadians are fluent only in English.
French is mostly spoken in Quebec with pockets in New Brunswick, eastern and northern Ontario, Saskatchewan, and southern Manitoba. In the 2001 census, 6,864,615 people listed French as a first language, of whom 85% lived in Quebec. 17,694,835 people listed English as a first language.
The official language of Quebec is French, as defined by the province's Charter of the French Language, which was introduced by the Parti Quebecois in 1976. However, the Charter also provides certain rights for speakers of English and aboriginal languages. Quebec provides most government services in both French and English.
Image:Montreal-Place Vauquelin, Note.jpg
New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province, a status specifically guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Some provincial governments which are not officially bilingual, notably Manitoba and Ontario, offer services to their French minority populations.
Several aboriginal languages have official status in Northwest Territories. Inuktitut is the majority language in Nunavut and has official status there.
Francophones
Canada's francophones numbered some 6.7 million individuals in 2001. Of these, 85% resided in Quebec. There are also francophones communities, generally made up of ethnic French Canadians, in north and eastern Ontario and southern Manitoba, as well as influential communities of Acadians in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. In addition to francophones of French-Canadian origin, numerous francophones people from Haiti, Congo, Lebanon, Morocco, Rwanda, Syria, Algeria, France and Belgium have immigrated, particularly to Quebec and to francophone Ontario, and particularly since the 1960s. As a result of this wave of immigration, Canadian-born francophones are increasingly of diverse ethnic origins, although the French language's limited assimilative influence outside Quebec and some parts of Ontario and New Brunswick means that these subsequent generations tend to remain francophone only rarely in anglophone regions.
Constitutional basis of bilingualism
The principles of Bilingualism in Canada are protected in sections 16 to 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which establishes that:
- French and English are equal to each other as official languages;
- Debate in Parliament may take place in either official language;
- Laws shall be printed in both official languages, with equal authority;
- Anyone may deal with any court established by Parliament, in either official language;
- Everyone has the right to receive services from the federal government in his or her choice of official language;
- Members of a minority language group of one of the official languages if learned and still understood (i.e., French speakers in a majority English-speaking province, or vice versa) or received primary school education in that language has the right to have their children receive a public education in their language, where numbers warrant.
Other languages
Non-official languages are also important in Canada, with 5,470,820 people listing a non-official language as a first language. (The above three statistics include those who listed more than one first language.) Among the most important non-official first language groups are Chinese (853,745 first-language speakers), Italian (469,485), German (438,080), Punjabi (271,220) and Spanish 245,500.
Gaelic
Irish and Scottish Gaelic were spoken by many immigrants that settled in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Newfoundland was the only place outside Europe to have its own Irish dialect, Newfoundland Irish, and the only place outside Europe to have its own distinct name in Irish, Talamh an Éisc, meaning 'land of the fish'. The Irish language is rare in Newfoundland now. In Nova Scotia, Scottish Gaelic still has 500-1,000 fluent speakers. Scottish Gaelic also mixed with Cree to form the Bungee language. At one point a motion was tabled in Parliament that Gaelic (Scottish Gaelic and Irish not having been seen as distinct at the time) be made the third official language of the Dominion, but did not pass.
Ukrainian
Canada is also home to a distinct dialect of the Ukrainian language, Canadian Ukrainian. It is spoken mostly in Western Canada by the descendants of first two waves of Ukrainian settlement in Canada who developed in a degree of isolation from their cousins in what was then Poland and the Soviet Union.
Aboriginal languages
Some members of the 900,000 Aboriginal people in Canada (3%) speak one or more of fifty different languages. The most important languages still used are Cree, Inuktitut, Ojibway, Innu, and Micmac. A 1996 census revealed that about 67.8% of Aboriginal people reported to be native English speakers. Nearly half (47%) of Aboriginal people in Quebec reported an Aboriginal language as mother tongue, the highest proportion of any province.
Demolinguistic descriptors
Mother tongue: The language spoken by the mother or the person responsible for taking care of the child is the most basic measure of a population's language. However, with the high number of mixed francophone-anglophone marriages and the reality of bilingualism and trilingualism, this description does not allow to fully determine the real linguistic portrait of Canada. It is, however, still essential, for example in order to calculate the assimilation rate.
Home language: This is the language most often spoken at home. This descriptor has the advantage of pointing out the current usage of languages. It however fails to describe the language that is most spoken at work, which may be a different language.
Knowledge of Official Languages: This measure describes which of the two official languages of Canada a person can speak informally. This relies on the person's own evaluation of his/her linguistic competence and can prove misleading. It was developed by Statistics Canada.
First Official Language Spoken: This is a composite measure of mother tongue, home language and knowledge of official language. It was developed by Statistics Canada.
Language composition
Of the 32.2 million citizens of Canada, 17.5 million are native English speakers, 7.7 million are native French-speakers and 5.2 million are native speakers of neither of Canada's two official languages.
Statistics Canada, 2001
- English 17,352,315
- French 7,703,325
- Chinese 853,745
- Italian 469,485
- German 438,080
- Punjabi 271,220
- Spanish 245,500
- Portuguese 213,815
- Polish 208,375
- Arabic 199,940
- Tagalog 174,060
- Ukrainian 148,090
- Dutch 128,670
- Vietnamese 122,055
- Greek 120,365
- Russian 94,555
- Persian 94,095
- Tamil 90,010
- Korean 85,070
- Urdu 80,895
- Hungarian 75,555
- Cree 72,800
- Gujarati 57,555
- Hindi 56,325
- Croatian 54,880
- Romanian 50,895
- Serbian 41,180
- Japanese 34,815
- Bengali 29,505
- Inuktitut 29,005
- Armenian 27,350
- Serbo-Croatian 26,690
- Somali 26,110
- Czech 24,790
- Finnish 22,405
- Ojibway 21,000
- Yiddish 19,295
- Turkish 18,675
- Danish 18,230
- Slovak 17,545
- Macedonian 16,905
- Khmer 15,985
- Lao 12,945
- Slovenian 12,800
- Hebrew 12,435
- Twi 11,070
Geographic distribution
The population of Canada being unequally distributed throughout a vast territory, a look at the population of each of its ten provinces and three territories is helpful. The following table details the population of each province and territory by mother tongue.
| Province/Territory | Total population | English | French | Other languages |
| Ontario | 11,285,550 | 8,079,500 (71.6%) | 493,630 (4.4%) | 2,672,080 (23.7%) |
| Québec | 7,506,581 | 450 394 (6.0%) | 6,523,219 (86.9%) | 532,967 (7.1%) |
| British Columbia | 3,868,875 | 2,865,300 (74.1%) | 56,100 (1.5%) | 939,945 (24.3%) |
| Alberta | 2,941,150 | 2,405,935 (81.8%) | 59,735 (2.0%) | 469,225 (16.0%) |
| Manitoba | 1,103,700 | 863,980 (75.8%) | 44,775 (4.1%) | 219,160 (19.9%) |
| Saskatchewan | 963,150 | 825,865 (85.7%) | 18,035 (1.9%) | 117,765 (12.2%) |
| Nova Scotia | 897,570 | 834,315 (93.0%) | 34,155 (3.8%) | 26,510 (3.0%) |
| New Brunswick | 719,710 | 465,720 (64.7%) | 236,775 (32.9%) | 11,935 (1.7%) |
| Newfoundland | 508,075 | 500,065 (98.4%) | 2,180 (0.4%) | 5,495 (1.1%) |
| Prince Edward Island | 133,385 | 125,215 (93.9%) | 5,670 (4.3%) | 2,065 (1.5%) |
| Northwest Territories | 37,105 | 28,985 (78.1%) | 965 (2.6%) | 7,065 (19.0%) |
| Yukon | 28,525 | 24,840 (87.1%) | 890 (3.1%) | 2,700 (9.5%) |
| Nunavut | 26,665 | 7,370 (27.6%) | 400 (1.5%) | 18,875 (70.8%) |
Protection of Minority Language Speakers
In Ontario, the French Language Services Act ensures that the province provides French speaking people with services in the French language.
In Quebec, the Charter of the French Language provides protections for Anglophone and Aboriginal minorities.
In Alberta, the Alberta School Act protects the right of French speaking people to receive school instruction in the French language in the province.
In Manitoba, the French Language Services Policy guarantees access to provincial government services in French, and various kinds of French-language education is provided. See Franco-Manitoban.
See also
- Category:Languages of Canada
- Category:Indigenous languages of the North American Arctic
- Category:Indigenous languages of the North American Northwest Coast
- Category:Indigenous languages of the North American Plains
- Category:Indigenous languages of the North American Plateau
- Category:Indigenous languages of the North American Subarctic
- Category:Indigenous languages of the North American eastern woodlands