Language diversity in Canada
Release date: January 22, 2025
Description: Language diversity in Canada
In 2021, 10.7 million people in Canada, or 30% of the population, could speak a non-official language. Of these people, 10 million (94%) also knew English or French.
Spanish was the non-official language spoken by the most people, followed by Mandarin and Punjabi.
While the median age of all non-official language speakers was 39, it varied from one language to another. It was 33 for Punjabi and 57 for Italian.
| Language | Number of speakers | Proportion of women+ speakers | Median age |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|||
| Spanish | 1,171,000 | 53.2% | 39 |
| Mandarin | 987,000 | 54.1% | 39 |
| Punjabi | 942,000 | 48.2% | 33 |
| Arabic | 838,000 | 47.9% | 35 |
| Hindi | 761,000 | 48.1% | 34 |
| Tagalog | 738,000 | 57.9% | 42 |
| Cantonese | 725,000 | 53.8% | 50 |
| Italian | 548,000 | 51.8% | 57 |
| German | 419,000 | 51.1% | 55 |
| Urdu | 415,000 | 48.9% | 34 |
| Portuguese | 337,000 | 51.0% | 45 |
| Russian | 309,000 | 53.0% | 41 |
| Tamil | 238,000 | 49.7% | 36 |
| Vietnamese | 233,000 | 53.8% | 44 |
| Persian | 222,000 | 49.7% | 39 |
| Gujarati | 209,000 | 47.5% | 35 |
| Korean | 204,000 | 54.7% | 38 |
| Polish | 204,000 | 54.0% | 53 |
| Greek | 145,000 | 50.6% | 52 |
| Ukrainian | 132,000 | 55.0% | 53 |
| Bengali | 121,000 | 48.3% | 35 |
| Romanian | 117,000 | 52.3% | 44 |
| Hebrew | 83,000 | 48.9% | 43 |
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