Multilingual Canada

Immigration has also changed the way Canadians speak. It has been estimated that when French- and English-speaking Europeans began to arrive and settle in what is now Canada, the First Nations peoples spoke languages of some 12 major Aboriginal language families. In 2001, in addition to Canada's indigenous languages and English and French, we spoke more than 100 others as our mother tongues.

The concept of mother tongue—the first language learned in childhood and still understood—is a useful indicator of cultural heritage. Though a few Canadians learned more than one language at their mother's knee, the majority learned only a single language, English being the most common. In 2001, a total of 59% of Canadians reported English as their first language, 23% reported French and 18% reported a non-official tongue. Of the non-official languages, Chinese was the most often reported, followed by Italian and German.

Quebec was home to 86% of all Canadians who reported French as their mother tongue in 2001. It was also the only province where non-official languages were more frequently reported than English. Conversely, in Newfoundland and Labrador, and all the provinces and territories to the west of Quebec, the proportion of people reporting a non-official mother tongue exceeded those speaking French. Chinese was the most common non-official language in three provinces: Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. German was the non-official language predominant in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

In the Yukon Territory, 86% used English as their mother tongue. In the Northwest Territories, English was the first language learned by 77% of the population. In addition to English and French, Inuktitut became an official language in Nunavut when the new territory was created from a portion of the Northwest Territories in 1999. In this new territory, 44% of the population spoke Inuktitut as their mother tongue in 2001.

While mother tongue reflects an individual's linguistic heritage, the concept of home language identifies the language most often spoken in the home. As might be expected, the proportion of Canadians reporting non-official mother tongues is higher than the proportion of Canadians reporting non-official languages used at home. This means that although some Canadians still understand their mother tongue, they no longer speak it at home, and have switched to English or French.

Many households are multilingual. In 2001, there were 3.8 million Canadians who regularly spoke at least two languages at home. Of Canadians using only one language at home, 71% spoke English, 23% spoke French and 7% spoke a non-official language, most often Chinese, Italian or Punjabi.

Many Canadians can speak and understand both official languages, and some of them are even sufficiently fluent that they have bilingual dreams! Former Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent once said: "... I dream in either French or English, depending on the topic." In the Canada of 1951—during Prime Minister St. Laurent's term in office—about 12% of Canadians were bilingual. By 2001, some 5.2 million Canadians, or 18% of the population, could converse in both official languages. In contrast, some 446,000 Canadians (2%) spoke neither English nor French.