Linguistic diversity in Canada: Shedding light on 2021 Census data on non-official languages
Released: 2025-01-22
In 2021, 98% of Canadians knew English or French, the country's two official languages, while around 10.7 million people, or nearly 3 in 10 Canadians, could converse in a non-official language. The number of people whose mother tongue was a language other than English or French reached 8.5 million, or 23.2% of the population, compared with 1.7 million people (11.8% of the population) in 1951.
Today, Statistics Canada is publishing two infographics as part of a series on the diversity of speakers of non-official languages, highlighting that they are far from being a homogenous group. Using data from the 2021 Census of Population, this series illustrates key facts on the speakers of a wide range of non-official languages widely spoken in Canada.
One infographic compares the age profiles of speakers of some of the non-official languages widely spoken in Canada in 2021. The other categorizes non-official language speakers by whether they were born in Canada, are long-term immigrants or are recent immigrants.
In the coming weeks, within this series, an infographic will be published on the likelihood of a language being spoken in households in which all members know it, and another on the use of non-official languages at work and the main industrial sectors in which they are used.
The median age of Italian speakers is 57 years, while the median age of Punjabi speakers is 33 years
In 2021, the languages other than English and French with the most speakers in Canada were Spanish (1.2 million speakers), Mandarin (987,000), Punjabi (942,000) and Arabic (838,000). However, these populations varied in many ways, including their median age, period of immigration and gender.
Demographic indicators, such as age and gender, vary across languages, reflecting current and previous migration flows, language transmission from one generation to the next, and the acquisition of a second or third language.
In 2021, speakers of Italian (57 years of age), German (55 years), Polish (53 years), Greek (52 years) and Cantonese (50 years) had a median age of about 10 years or more above Canada's median age of 41 years. At least 76% of speakers of these languages were non-immigrants or had immigrated to Canada before 2001, indicating a relatively high level of historical migration compared with more recent migration.
Conversely, in 2021, speakers of Punjabi (33 years), Urdu (34 years), Hindi (34 years), Bengali (35 years), Arabic (35 years) and Gujarati (35 years) had a median age of 35 years or younger. The proportion of men among speakers of these languages was higher than that of the overall population.
While 50.6% of the Canadian population was women in 2021, 57.9% of Tagalog speakers were women. Similarly, high proportions of women were observed among speakers of Ukrainian (55.0%), Korean (54.7%) and Mandarin (54.1%).
The number of immigrants living in Canada who spoke a non-official language rose from 2001 to 2021
In 2001, 6.4 million people (21.8% of the population) could converse in a non-official language. This number rose to more than 10.7 million (29.5% of the population) in 2021, coinciding with the rise of the number of immigrants living in Canada who spoke a non-official language, which rose from 4.9 million in 2001 to 6.7 million in 2021. More than 400,000 speakers of Mandarin, Tagalog, Arabic and Hindi immigrated to Canada from 2001 to 2021, contributing to the rise.
The main period of immigration varied by language, with recent immigration being more common among speakers of certain languages. In 2021, more than one in five immigrants who knew Hindi (30%), Arabic (28%), Gujarati (23%), Bengali (22%), Tagalog (22%) or Punjabi (20%) were admitted to the country from 2016 to 2021. In contrast, over 70% of immigrants who knew Italian (87%), Greek (87%), Polish (85%), Cantonese (76%) or Vietnamese (73%) had landed in Canada before 2001.
In 2021, large proportions of speakers of some non-official languages, such as Greek (55%), Italian (53%) and German (47%), were born in Canada. Factors contributing to this situation vary by language and may include significant migration in the 20th century, relatively high intergenerational language transmission and language retention, and Canadians learning these languages outside the family context, such as in school.
The proportions of Spanish- (22%), German- (17%) and Ukrainian- (16%) speakers who were born in Canada to Canadian-born parents were higher in 2021 than those of speakers of other widely spoken non-official languages.
Almost all households in which all members know Korean, Cantonese, Vietnamese or Tamil use the language regularly at home
A language is more likely to be spoken at home if all members of the household know the language, as opposed to when only some do. Speaking a language at home also facilitates its transmission and acquisition.
Even in multi-person households in which everyone knows the same language, the frequency of the language being spoken in the household varied greatly by language.
In 2021, English was spoken in 90% of households when all household members could converse in English. In these households, English may have been the only language spoken in the household or spoken in combination with another language, and it may have been spoken by all household members or some. French was also spoken in a similar proportion of households in which all household members knew French (91%).
Korean (98%), Cantonese (96%), Vietnamese (95%) and Tamil (95%) were spoken in almost all households when these languages were known by all household members.
However, Ukrainian (77%), Italian (72%), Hindi (69%), German (66%) and Hebrew (64%) were spoken in a smaller proportion of households when these languages were known by all household members.
When several but not all household members knew a language, the likelihood of this language being used in the household diminished significantly. However, this decrease varied greatly by language. In 2021, Tagalog was spoken in 84% of households in which several but not all members knew Tagalog. This proportion was 9 percentage points lower than that of households in which all members knew Tagalog (93%). The difference was also relatively small for Korean (11 percentage points), Bengali (14 percentage points) and Cantonese (16 percentage points), while it was much larger for Spanish (32 percentage points), Italian (31 percentage points) and Urdu (30 percentage points).
Nearly 670,000 workers used a non-official language at work in 2021
Canada's linguistic diversity goes beyond the languages spoken at home and the knowledge of languages. In 2021, nearly 670,000 people used a language other than English or French at work, representing around 1 in 25 workers in Canada. Among these workers, 546,000 used English or French at work in addition to a non-official language, while over 123,000 used only a non-official language.
The most widely spoken non-official languages are also the most commonly used non-official languages at work. In 2021, around 130,000 workers used Mandarin at work, while 102,000 used Punjabi, 83,000 used Cantonese and 81,000 used Spanish.
The number of workers using a non-official language at work varied by sector. In 2021, health care and social assistance was the sector with the largest number of workers using a non-official language at work (74,000), followed by retail trade (71,000) and accommodation and food services (63,000).
Retail trade was the sector with the largest number of people using Mandarin, Hindi, Arabic, Urdu and Gujarati in 2021. Health care and social assistance was the sector with the largest number of workers using Tagalog, Italian, Greek, Tamil, Ukrainian and Romanian. Cantonese, Vietnamese and Korean were mainly used in the accommodation and food services sector, while Spanish, Russian, Persian and Bengali were mainly used in the professional, scientific and technical services sector.
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Note to readers
The median age is the age "x" that divides the population into two equal groups, one containing only individuals older than "x" and the other containing those younger than "x."
The gender category men includes men (and boys), as well as some non-binary people. The gender category women includes women (and girls), as well as some non-binary people.
An immigrant is a person who is, or who has ever been, a landed immigrant or permanent resident. Such a person has been granted the right to live in Canada permanently by immigration authorities. Immigrants who have obtained Canadian citizenship by naturalization are included in this group.
A household is a person or group of people who occupy the same dwelling and do not have a usual place of residence elsewhere in Canada or abroad. The household may consist of a family group such as a census family, two or more families sharing a dwelling, a group of unrelated people or a person living alone. Multi-person households include households with more than one member.
For more information, refer to the Dictionary, Census of Population, 2021.
Products
The infographics "Language diversity in Canada" and ''Non-official language speakers: Immigration status and period of immigration,'' which are part of the series Statistics Canada – Infographics (11-627-M), are now available.
Contact information
For more information, or to enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact us (toll-free 1-800-263-1136; 514-283-8300; infostats@statcan.gc.ca) or Media Relations (statcan.mediahotline-ligneinfomedias.statcan@statcan.gc.ca).
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