Lesson 7 — Activity 1: The Diversity of Languages in Canada
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Lesson 7 — Activity 1: The Diversity of Languages in Canada
Warm Up
The language you speak every day at home — your first language — affects how you interact with other people. It also affects how you see the world around you. It is your linguistic identity.
In this first activity, you will learn about the many languages spoken by Canadians.
Let's look at the languages of Canada.
Official Languages of Canada
Canada has two official languages: English and French. In the 2011 census, about 58 percent of the population reported that their mother tongue was English. English was also the language most often spoken at home by 66 percent of the population.
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About 22 percent of the population reported that their mother tongue was French, and French was the language most often spoken at home by 21 percent.
About 20.6 percent reported that a language other than English or French was their mother tongue. They also reported that they spoke English or French at home.
Indigenous Languages in Canada
Indigenous languages are diverse in Canada, according to the 2011 census, with 213,500 people reporting having one of 60 Indigenous languages as a mother tongue and 213,400 reporting that they speak an Indigenous language most often or regularly at home.
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Three Indigenous languages — the Cree languages, Inuktitut, and Ojibway — made up almost two-thirds of the responses from those reporting having an Indigenous language as their mother tongue on the 2011 census of Canada.
Diversity of Languages in Canada
The 2011 census also reported that about 6.5 million Canadians regularly speak a language other than English or French at home.
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