Languages of Canada
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
There are a multitude of languages spoken in Canada, but only English, French and certain aboriginal languages have official status. The Constitution of Canada itself recognizes two official languages, English and French, and all constitutional acts since 1982 have themselves been enacted in these two official languages. The English version of earlier Constutional Acts is the only official version. Inuktitut notably has official status in the Northwest Territories, in Nunavut and in Nunavik, Quebec.
The first major step towards official recognition of languages other than English took place on July 7, 1969, when the federal Canadian Parliament adopted the Official Languages Act, making French commensurate to English throughout federal institutions. Since then, Inuktitut, Dene Suline, Cree, Dogrib, Gwich’in and Slavey have also gained limited official status, although only English and French are used for administrative matters by the federal, provincial and territorial administrations.
According to the 2001 census, Anglophones and Francophone represent roughly 59.3% and 22.9% of the population respectively. The rest of the population represent persons whose mother tongues are Chinese, Italian, German, Aboriginal languages, or other.
The following article refers to language by mother tongue unless otherwise specified.
Contents |
[edit] Bilingualism
[edit] Official bilingualism
| 1996 [1] | 2001 [2] | |
|---|---|---|
| English | 68.6% | 68.3% |
| French | 22.9% | 22.3% |
| Other language | 10.6% | 11.2% |
| Note that percentages add up to more than 100% because some people speak two or more languages at home. | ||
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 an official policy of the federal government, to obtain Canadian citizenship, a candidate must normally be able to speak either English or French.
The principles of bilingualism in Canada are protected in sections 16 to 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms of 1982 which establishes that:
- French and English are equal to each other as federal official languages;
- Debate in Parliament may take place in either official language;
- Federal 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.
New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province, a status specifically guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms of 1982. Some provincial governments which are not officially bilingual, notably Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec, offer services to their official language minority populations.
Until 1977, however, Quebec was the only officially bilingual province in Canada and most public institutions functioned in both languages. With the adoption of the Charter of the French Language by Quebec's National Assembly in August 1977, however, French became the sole official language of the government of Quebec. However, the French Language Charter also provides certain rights for speakers of English and aboriginal languages and most government services are available in both French and English. Regional institutions in Northern Quebec notably offer services in Inuktitut and Cree.
All three federal territories recognize both English and French as official languages, although English is the only language used for administrative purposes. Dene Suline, Cree, Dogrib, Gwich’in and Slavey also have some official status in the Northwest Territories. Inuktitut, which is the majority language in both Nunavut and Nunavik, also has official status in both territories.
[edit] Individual Bilingualism
More than 98% of Canadian residents speak either English or French. While the federal government remains officially bilingual, almost 99% of Canadian residents outside Quebec speak English and about 95% of Quebec residents speak French (2001 Census). Most Canadians outside Quebec are fluent only in English and many Quebeckers are fluent only in French.
About 41% of Quebec residents and about 10% of the population residing outside Quebec claim to be bilingual (2001 Census). All together, 18% of Canadian residents speak both English and French, according to the answers they provided to Statistics Canada. Thus, a majority of bilingual Canadians are themselves Quebeckers.
French is mostly spoken in Quebec, in New Brunswick, in Eastern and Northern Ontario, in southern Manitoba as well as in several communities in the other provinces. A distinct community also exists on Newfoundland's Port-au-Port peninsula; a remnant of French occupation of the island. Canada's francophones numbered some 6.9 million individuals in 2001. Of these, 85% resided in Quebec. In addition to francophones of French-Canadian and Acadian origin, many francophones of Haiti, France, Belgium, Morocco, Lebanon and Switzerland have emigrated to Quebec since the early 1960s. As a result of this wave of immigration and the assimilation of many earlier generations of non-francophone immigrants (Irish, English, French, Italian, Portuguese, etc.), Canadian-born francophones of Quebec are of diverse ethnic origin. Five francophone Premiers of Quebec have been of British ethnic origin, as defined by Statistics Canada: John Jones Ross, Edmund James Flynn, Daniel Johnson, Sr, Pierre Marc Johnson and Daniel Johnson, Jr.
The assimilation of francophones outside Quebec into the English-Canadian society signifies that most francophones outside Quebec are generally of French-Canadian or Acadian origin, with the exception of recent immigrants from the francophone world. Over one million Canadians of French ethnic origin living outside of Quebec have English as their mother tongue (1991 Census, ethnic origin and mother tongue, by province).
[edit] 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 languages (753,745 first-language speakers), Vietnamese (631,485), Italian (469,485), German (438,080), and Punjabi (271,220). The increase of Chinese and Spanish is remarkable.
[edit] Gaelic
See also: Canadian Gaelic and Newfoundland Irish
Irish and Scottish Gaelic were spoken by many immigrants that settled in the Maritimes and Newfoundland. Newfoundland is 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. Scottish Gaelic was spoken predominantly in areas of northern New Brunswick's Restigouche River valley, central and southeastern Prince Edward Island, as well as across the whole of northern Nova Scotia and particularly Cape Breton Island. While the language has mostly disappeared, there are regional pockets mostly centred on families deeply committed to their Celtic traditions; Nova Scotia, currently has 500-1000 fluent speakers, mostly in northwestern Cape Breton Island. There are also attempts in Nova Scotia to institute Gaelic immersion and there are formal post-secondary studies in the language and culture available through St. Francis Xavier University and the Gaelic College. In western Canada, Scottish Gaelic was mixed with Cree to form the Bungee language. At one point a motion was tabled in Parliament that Gaelic be made the third official language of the Dominion, but did not pass.
[edit] Ukrainian
Canada is also home to a distinct dialect of the Ukrainian language, 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.
[edit] Indigenous languages
Some members of the 900,000 Indigenous 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 Indigenous people reported to be native English speakers. Nearly half (47%) of Indigenous people in Quebec reported an Indigenous language as mother tongue, the highest proportion of any province.
[edit] Hybrid languages
[edit] Michif and Bungay
Linguistic and cultural diversity on Canada's frontier in the West and in its early past in the Atlantic promoted the development of hybrid languages, most notably Michif, a Cree-Ojibwa-Assiniboine-French patois evolved within the Prairie Metis community, and also the less documented Bungie (also Bungy, Bungee, Bungay, a.k.a. the Red River Dialect), which is similar to Michif but confined to the Red River area of Manitoba and which is a mix of Cree and Scots Gaelic.
[edit] Basque pidgin
In the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Cartier's day the existence of a Basque pidgin has been established, apparently a mix of local Algonkian languages and Basque.
[edit] Chinook Jargon
In British Columbia, Yukon and throughout the Pacific Northwest a pidgin language known as the Chinook Jargon emerged in the early 19th Century which was a combination of Chinookan, Nootka, Chehalis, French and English, with a smattering of words from other languages including Hawaiian and Spanish.
[edit] 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.
[edit] Language composition
Of the 29.6 million citizens of Canada in 2001 (increasing to roughly 33 million in June 2006), 17.3 million are native English speakers, 6.7 million are native French-speakers and 5.2 million are native speakers of neither of Canada's two official languages. Another 380 thousand reported having more than one mother tongue.
Statistics Canada, 2001
- English 17,352,315
- French 6,703,325
- Chinese 753,745
- Vietnamese 631,055
- Italian 469,485
- German 438,080
- Punjabi 271,220
- Spanish 245,500
- English and a language other than French 219,860
- Portuguese 213,815
- Polish 208,375
- Arabic 199,940
- Tagalog 154,060
- Ukrainian 148,090
- Dutch 128,670
- Greek 120,365
- English and French 112,575
- 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
- French and a language other than English 38,630
- 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
- Slovenian 12,800
- Hebrew 12,435
- Twi 11,070
- Estonian 10,848
- English, French and another language 10,085
[edit] 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%) |
| Quebec | 7,506,581 | 450 394 (6.0%) | 5,577,877 (81.0%) | 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%) |
[edit] 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.
[edit] See also
- Demographics of Canada
- Immigration to Canada
- Constitution of Canada
- Bilingualism in Canada
- French in Canada
- 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
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