Languages

Description: This publication brings together and analyzes a wide range of data sources in order to provide information on various aspects of Canadian society, including labour, income, education, social, and demographic issues, that affect the lives of Canadians.

Description: This thematic series groups different statistical products related to ethnicity, languages, and immigration. It features analytical documents of varying scopes, such as population profiles, reference materials, data products (including tables and factsheets), among other document types.

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: This study provides an overview of how minority official languages are integrated into child care services across Canada, using data from three sources. Data from the 2022 Survey on the Official Language Minority Population (SOLMP) provides information on the participation in minority official language child care among children eligible for instruction in the minority official language and their educational pathways from early childhood to primary school. Data from the 2022 Canadian Survey on the Provision of Child Care Services (CSPCCS) is used to highlight the use of minority official languages within child care facilities, while data from the 2021 Census of Population offers insights into language use among child care workers.

Description: Official language of daycare and reasons for attending, by elementary school language and type of program, age group and gender, for Canada, Quebec, Canada outside Quebec, by provinces and select regions, among sub-populations of children in a minority official language situation, 2022.

Description: Preference for daycare in the minority official language, by elementary school language and type of program, age group and gender, for Canada, Quebec, Canada outside Quebec, by provinces and select regions, among sub-populations of children in a minority official language situation, 2022.

Description: Frequency of using the minority official language in public, by language in which the person is most at ease to speak, ease of using the minority language in the community, official languages spoken at home, gender, age group and immigrant status, among adults in the official language minority population, 2022.

Description: Language spoken in public in various situations, by official language in which the person is most at ease to speak, official languages spoken at home, gender, age and immigrant status, among adults in the official language minority population, 2022.

Description: This interactive dashboard allows users to visualize the breakdown of speakers of some of the most frequent languages spoken in Canada in 2021 by age group, generation status, place of residence and languages spoken at home.

Description: Infographic displaying poverty rates for French/English bilingual populations by mother tongue and region of residence.

Description: Official language of daycare and reasons for attending, by elementary school language and type of program, age group and gender, for Canada, Quebec, Canada outside Quebec, by provinces and select regions, among sub-populations of children in a minority official language situation, 2022.

Description: Preference for daycare in the minority official language, by elementary school language and type of program, age group and gender, for Canada, Quebec, Canada outside Quebec, by provinces and select regions, among sub-populations of children in a minority official language situation, 2022.

Description: Frequency of using the minority official language in public, by language in which the person is most at ease to speak, ease of using the minority language in the community, official languages spoken at home, gender, age group and immigrant status, among adults in the official language minority population, 2022.

Description: Language spoken in public in various situations, by official language in which the person is most at ease to speak, official languages spoken at home, gender, age and immigrant status, among adults in the official language minority population, 2022.

Description: This interactive dashboard allows users to visualize the breakdown of speakers of some of the most frequent languages spoken in Canada in 2021 by age group, generation status, place of residence and languages spoken at home.

Description: Languages used by the business or organization in providing services or performing activities over the last 12 months, by North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), business employment size, type of business, business activity and majority ownership, fourth quarter of 2025.

Description: Percentage of employees required to be bilingual in English and French, by North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), business employment size, type of business, business activity and majority ownership, fourth quarter of 2025.

Description: The number of students in regular Indigenous language programs and Indigenous language immersion programs in public elementary and secondary schools.

Description: Enrolments in regular second language programs (or core language programs), French immersion programs, and education programs in the minority official language offered in private or independent elementary and secondary schools, by type of program, grade and sex.

Description: A data visualization product (interactive dashboard) highlighting the Indigenous languages spoken in Canada. Indicators include: those who can speak an Indigenous language, those who have an Indigenous language as a mother tongue, the Indigenous languages spoken at home, as well as silent and active speakers of an Indigenous language. The indicators are broken down by different levels of geography.

Description: This article explores the implications of working in a language other than English or French for immigrants in Canada. It looks at the occupations and industries in which immigrants who use non-official languages on the job are found. Holding other factors constant, it also looks at the impact on employment earnings and the financial returns to education for immigrants who work in languages other than English or French.

Description: This article uses data from the Youth in Transition Survey (YITS) to link the self-rated ability of youth to converse in both English and French at age 21 to the type of language schooling they had received in elementary and high school. YITS collected information on mother tongue, language of school system (at age 15) as well as information (from parents) on whether and when students had been enrolled in some form of immersion, extended or intensive language program. Information was also collected on self-rated ability to converse in French and English. It is therefore possible to look at rates of bilingualism for youth with varying amounts of second-language schooling.

Description:

Aboriginal people are confronted with the fact that many of their languages are disappearing. Over the past 100 years or more, at least 10 once-flourishing languages have become extinct. However, declining trends in the intergenerational transmission of Aboriginal mother tongues are being offset (to a degree) by the fact that Aboriginal languages are increasingly being learned as second language

Description:

Immigrants to Canada must face numerous difficulties during their first years in the country, the two most important being to find an appropriate job and language barrier. But does a better knowledge of official languages increase the chances for an immigrant of occupying a high-skilled job, a job in the intended occupation, a job similar to the one they had before immigrating, a job related to their training or field of study, or to have a higher hourly rate?

In an attempt to answer this question, the data from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC) were used. In the LSIC, a cohort of immigrants was interviewed at three points in time being 6 months, 2 years and 4 years after arrival in the country. For this study, we used the information about the job occupied at the time of each interview, as well as the English and French self-assessed spoken ability levels at each of these moments.

Description:

This monograph focuses on the differences in performance on the IALSS tests between people whose mother tongue is French and those whose mother tongue is English in Canada, particularly those living in a minority situation. Various factors are examined with the goal of explaining these differences. Schooling, age, reading and writing habits of everyday life, as well as the living environment explains a large part of the differences between linguistic groups.

Description:

Using data from the 2002 Ethnic Diversity Survey (EDS), this article examines the preservation of ancestral languages by looking at the extent to which allophone immigrants (i.e. those whose mother tongue is neither English nor French) have transmitted their mother tongue to their Canadian-born children. The analysis focuses on the factors associated with the probability of the ancestral language being the respondent's mother tongue, the respondent's ability to speak the ancestral language, and his or her regular use of this language in the home.

Description:

This work is an updated version of a study published under the same title following the population censuses of 1991 and 1996. The text and tables have been adapted to reflect the more complete data from the 2001 Census, in which the usual questions on knowledge of languages, mother tongue, and language spoken 'most often' at home are supplemented by a question on languages spoken 'regularly' at home , and a two-part question on language use at work, that is, the language used 'most often,' and other languages used 'regularly,' in the workplace. This enrichment of the content has allowed us to expand our analysis while remaining true to the initial goal of presenting in a straightfoward manner basic statistics on the country's demolinguistic reality.

Description: This article compares the reading achievement of Canadian 15-year-olds enrolled in immersion and non-immersion programs in English-language school systems in the 10 provinces.

Description: French immersion programs were introduced into Canadian schools in the 1970s to encourage bilingualism across the country. Thirty years later, immersion programs are offered in every province. French-immersion students score significantly higher in reading achievement than non-immersion students. What accounts for this difference?

Description: This report examines the lower reading performance of students from French minority language schools in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario and Manitoba. It looks at a number of individual, family and community characteristics of students in French and English school systems.

Description:

This reference guide provides information that enables users to effectively use, apply and interpret data from the 2011 National Household Survey (NHS). This guide contains definitions and explanations of concepts, classifications, data quality and comparability to other sources. Additional information is included for specific variables to help general users better understand the concepts and questions used in the NHS.

Description:

Readers will find a complete analysis of factors affecting the comparability of Language results between the censuses in the Methodological Document on the 2011 Census Language Data.

Description:

This guide focuses on the following topic: Language. Provides information that enables users to effectively use, apply and interpret data from the 2011 Census. Each guide contains definitions and explanations on census concepts, talks about changes made to the 2011 Census, data quality and historical comparability, as well as comparison with other data sources. Additional information will be included for specific variables to help general users better understand the concepts and questions used in the census.

Description:

This guide focuses on the following demographic variables: First official language spoken, Home language, Knowledge of non-official languages, Knowledge of official languages, Language of work, and Mother tongue.

Provides information that enables users to effectively use, apply and interpret data from the 2006 Census. Each guide contains definitions and explanations on census concepts, data quality and historical comparability. Additional information will be included for specific variables to help general users better understand the concepts and questions used in the census.

Description: These guides provide information that enables users to effectively use, apply and interpret data from the 2006 Census. Each guide contains definitions and explanations on census concepts. Additional information will be included for specific variables to help general users better understand the concepts and questions used in the census.

Description:

This guide focuses on the following demographic variables: First official language spoken, Home language, Knowledge of non-official languages, Knowledge of official languages, Language of work, and Mother tongue.

Provides information that enables users to effectively use, apply and interpret data from the 2006 Census. Each guide contains definitions and explanations on census concepts. Additional information will be included for specific variables to help general users better understand the concepts and questions used in the census.

Description: These guides provide information that enables users to effectively use, apply and interpret data from the 2006 Census. Each guide contains definitions and explanations on census concepts. Additional information will be included for specific variables to help general users better understand the concepts and questions used in the census.

Description:

This report discusses various aspects of the quality of data on mother tongue, language spoken at home, knowledge of language and language at work. In the 2001 Census questionnaire, there are five questions on these four language categories. These questions, complemented by questions on ethnicity, religious affiliation and immigration, provide an opportunity to study linguistic and cultural characteristics of Canadians. These questions on languages are designed to collect the demolinguistic data. Demolinguistics, a subdiscipline of demography (not of linguistics), involves the demographic analysis of data on languages. Such analysis is useful for our understanding of, for instance, the linguistic diversity of Canadians, the evolution of language groups, or the transmission of mother tongue between generations. For each of the four categories of language questions mentioned above, the report describes briefly the procedures of data collection, some aspects of coverage, the processing stages of the data verification operation and the procedures used for editing and imputing the language variables. Finally, a description on how the data were evaluated will be presented.

Description:

This paper presents the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) coding structure for the variables on country of birth, mother tongue and ethnic background.

Description: This survey is designed to collect information on official language programmes offered in independent elementary and secondary schools. Data for language program funding, as well as a full address of all independent schools for funding purposes, are provided to the Department of Canadian Heritage.