Unofficial languages on the decline in Hamilton, census data says

Language diversity is growing in some parts of Canada but slightly declining in Hamilton, according to new census data released Wednesday.

English was identified as the native language for 76.7 per cent of people in the metropolitan area of Hamilton from the 2011 census, followed by French at 1.6 percent.

Data shows a total of 21.7 per cent of the population of metropolitan Hamilton has a mother tongue other than one of Canada's two official languages — a decrease from 22.4 per cent in the 2006 census.

"I think all immigrants speak English more at home now," said Maroussia Ahmed, a French professor at McMaster University. "I think Hamilton tends to attract people from English speaking locations, too."

Ahmed was born in France, and moved to Hamilton in 1970 with her husband, who is South Asian. He speaks English, Hindi and Urdu, and taught her English.

They have two children who speak English and French. However, they all speak mostly English at home, something Ahmed says is fairly typical.

"These kinds of numbers in Hamilton seem to show a pattern," said Adele Mercier, a specialist in the philosophy of language, linguistic theory and multiculturalism from Queens University in Ottawa.

"When immigrants come, most of the elderly never learn the local language," she said. "Their children will start to assimilate and learn both languages, and then their grandchildren will become completely anglo-ized. "

Mercier says non-official languages are on the rise in places like Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal because they are "immigration centres," that see more of an older population moving in.

"There'd be more grandparents immigrating there than anywhere else," she said.

According to the 2011 census, the top five non-official languages spoken in the metropolitan area of Hamilton are Italian (2.8 per cent), Polish (1.5 per cent), Spanish (1.4 per cent), one of the Chinese languages (1.3 per cent) and Portuguese (1.3 per cent).

Five years ago, the census reported the top five other languages spoken were Italian, Polish, Portuguese, one of the Chinese languages and Arabic.

Statistics Canada defines "mother tongue" as the first language learned at home in childhood and still understood at the time the census was taken in May 2011.

The census also documented languages spoken at home and knowledge of Canada's official languages.

Statistics Canada noted a change in the response patterns for some of the mother tongue data for the 2011 census. Previously, language questions were asked only on what was known as the long form census, which went to just 20 per cent of the population.

Last year, the government did away with the long form questionnaire and put the language question on the census that went to all Canadians.    

As a result of the change in methodology, Statistics Canada reported that Canadians appear to have been less inclined than in previous years to report languages other than French or English as  their only mother tongue — and also more inclined to list multiple languages as their mother tongue and the language used most often at home.

Across Canada, a total of 57.8 per cent of the population spoke English, 21.7 per cent spoke French and 20.6 per cent spoke other languages. The proportion of Canadians speaking one of the country's official languages has decreased over the years as the immigrant population has increased.

The top "non-official" languages spoken in Canada are one of the Chinese languages (3.3 per cent), Punjabi (1.3 per cent), Spanish (1.3 per cent), Italian (1.3 per cent) and German (1.3 per cent).

In the census metropolitan area of Hamilton, a total of 144 languages were identified.

-With files from the Canadian Press