Stats reveal rising language diversity

7 million say it’s neither English nor French

Reis Pagtakhan emphasizes the plural when he talks about the Filipino grocery stores, restaurants, newspapers and radio programs that now populate Winnipeg, decades after his family first came to the city.

This week, Pagtakhan’s observations about the rise of Tagalog in Winnipeg are expected to get some statistical backing when the latest tranche of census data details Canada’s linguistic diversity. It is anticipated that the language heard in those Filipino stores and restaurants and on radio shows — Tagalog — will be among the fastest-growing since 2011.

For Pagtakhan, the change around Winnipeg is a far cry from when his parents arrived in Canada in the 1960s and there were only a few hundred Filipino families in the region.

Now, “you have tens of thousands of people from the Philippines who are here, many of whom speak Tagalog. It’s just spoken widespread,” said Pagtakhan, an immigration lawyer.

Wednesday’s release about the languages that Canadians report as their mother tongue or being spoken at home will provide a peek at Canada’s ethnocultural diversity, which the national statistics office will fully reveal this fall with data from the recently returned long-form census.

In February, census data showed that the national population would have been potentially far below 35.15 million if not for an influx of immigrants that Statistics Canada said accounted for about two-thirds of the population increase between 2011 and 2016. Immigration will be the dominant source of growth by 2056, Statistics Canada predicts.

The figures coming this week are expected to show some 200 languages are spoken in Canada, with seven million people — or more — saying their mother tongue is neither English nor French.

“Once you start to see all the different languages that are spoken, it really speaks to the profound diversity of our Canadian population,” said Michael Haan, an associate professor in the school of sociology at Western University in London, Ont.

Statistics Canada estimated earlier this year that the Filipino community could be among the fastest growing group in Canada by 2036, although not as fast as the Arab community, which is projected to see its numbers jump by 200 per cent or more.

Language ties the Arab community together because all don’t share the same ethnicity, said May Telmissany, an associate professor of Arabic studies at the University of Ottawa.

“You will find that most immigrants coming from the Arab world, the only thing that they will hold on to as far as culture is concerned, is the language and this is why they tend to speak it at home, but also encourage their kids to learn it and speak it,” Telmissany said.