Talk:Languages of Canada

message: This article is written in parts in an extraordinarily biased and some could say racist way. Some corrections have been made. Does anyone mind if I rename this article "Language in Canada"? The current title is a little too academic for an encyclopedia aimed at a wide audience. Kevintoronto 21:25, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: While it is interesting to read about these hybrid dialects and whatnot, it's a shame in this article that the big "minority" languages in Canada (Mandarin/Cantonese, Arabic, Spanish, Italian, German,etc) get only a passing mention while those more obscure ones get their own headers--even this Basque Pidgin?  thanks, Dan Carkner 01:53, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The article about the German language says that, according to the most recent census of 2006, in Canada there are 622,650 speakers of German. Therefore it would be useful to change your figures accordingly. Many thanks!  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.131.191.55 (talk) 12:22, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: "Language in Canada"?

message: What about the content of these articles?
* Scottish Gaelic in Canada
* Newfoundland Irish
194.114.62.34 13:32, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gaelic languages in CND 

message: It'd be interesting to see some data on what proportion of Canadians are competent in both French and English. Twinxor t 16:05, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There is map of Canada showing it very well here: http://atlas.gc.ca/site/english/maps/peopleandsociety/lang/officiallanguages/englishfrenchbilingualism -- Mathieugp 17:27, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Done. Data on English/French bilingualism in Quebec and in English Canada has been added to article. Makes the text more readable (and much better than Bilingualism in Canada, which goes every which way. Exact references to Statistics Canada catalogues is nevertheless missing.  --Joseph B 01:46, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Improved.  A table has been added with statistics on the subject. --Deragon (talk) 15:54, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Data on bilingualism? 

message: In the last couple of days I've created and augmented the Hybrid Languages section, but because of my specialist interest in the Jargon I'm aware I've rambled in that section.  My purpose was to try and cover the different aspects of the Jargon's relevance and multi-ethnic scope/identity and its role in the history of BC (the McBride nomination, for example, and Kamloops Wawa and the residential schools situation) but I'm naturally profuse with the wordings; edit-downs pls; anything lengthy being cut out can possibly be moved/merged to Chinook Jargon or at least please transfer and note to Talk:Chinook Jargon.Skookum1 21:03, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *Cut and pasted the Chinook material in the article Chinook Jargon (hidden text) since it is off-topic here. And the Chinook article needs an edit! --Joseph B 00:25, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

text: The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 
The result of the debate was move. —Mets501 (talk) 03:39, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chinook pare-down welcome 

message: Add "* Support" or "* Oppose" followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~
*Sure, why not, better title, there's more than one language. I personally would prefer "Languages in Canada", but it's not a big deal. Luigizanasi 02:21, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Survey

message: A question on the Reference Desk made me realize that the article Languages of Canada contains no information on the sign languages used in Canada (primarily Quebec Sign Language and American Sign Language but also Maritime Sign Language). Therefore the article should be renamed "Spoken Languages of Canada". --Mathew5000 20:09, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Uh, I see your point, but the implication of your proposed title would preclude extinct languages such as Stuwix and Pentlatch; and also would imply that Chinese, German, Punjabi, et al. would be eligible.  The solution is to include Quebec Sign Language and American Sign Language andMaritime Sign Language) in this article, wouldn't it?Skookum1 00:56, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, that solution would be good, but I don't think renaming the article to Spoken languages of Canada would preclude extinct langauges. The term "spoken language" is not the same as "currently spoken language". Stuwix and Pentlatch are "spoken languages" despite being extinct. (Just like the dodo can still be described as a bird, even though it is not an extant bird.) --Mathew5000 03:01, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It has been seven months since I raised the issue and nobody added info on sign languages to this article, so I went ahead and renamed it for the sake of accuracy and NPOV. --Mathew5000 02:10, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rename to "Spoken Languages of Canada"? 

message: I'm a bit frustrated to not find "Mother Tongue" as well as "Home Language" (and also "Language used at Work") in this section.  I've been hunting the linked sources but actually finding tables in StatsCan is not as easy as you'd expect it to be.  As with ethnic tables, I think you'll find that German ranks a lot higher as mother tongue than as "home language".....Skookum1 (talk) 19:01, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Selective POV

message: How is it that 85% of Canadians not living in Quebec are Francophones?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.225.114.225 (talk) 00:46, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Francophones of the rest of Canada (Canada not including Quebec) 

message: Home Language 1971-2006 (Official languages only)
        	1971” Population by (A) Official Language, (B) Language Most Often Spoken at Home, And Sex for Canada and Provinces, 1971” Statistics Canada, 1971 Census of Population.	1971” Population by (A) Official Language, (B) Language Most Often Spoken at Home, And Sex for Canada and Provinces, 1971” Statistics Canada, 1971 Census of Population.	1981” Population by Home Language and Sex for Canada and Provinces, 1981” Statistics Canada, 1981 Census of Population.	1981” Population by Home Language and Sex for Canada and Provinces, 1981” Statistics Canada, 1981 Census of Population.	1986” Population by Home Language and Sex, for Canada  and Provinces 1986 Census – 20% sample Data,” Statistics Canada, 1986 Census of Population.	1986” Population by Home Language and Sex, for Canada  and Provinces 1986 Census – 20% sample Data,” Statistics Canada, 1986 Census of Population.	1991  	1991  	1996  	1996  	2001  	2001  	2006  	2006
Language	Quebec                                                                                                                                                                  	ROC                                                                                                                                                                     	Quebec                                                                                                                 	ROC                                                                                                                    	Quebec                                                                                                                                            	ROC                                                                                                                                               	Quebec	ROC   	Quebec	ROC   	Quebec	ROC   	Quebec	ROC
French  	17.01%                                                                                                                                                                  	0.98%                                                                                                                                                                   	23.43%                                                                                                                 	1.33%                                                                                                                  	21.03%                                                                                                                                            	2.31%                                                                                                                                             	20.87%	2.26% 	20.39%	2.06% 	19.59%	1.96% 	19.47%	1.87%
English 	2.93%                                                                                                                                                                   	64.15%                                                                                                                                                                  	2.99%                                                                                                                  	65.69%                                                                                                                 	2.88%                                                                                                                                             	66.29%                                                                                                                                            	2.75% 	65.91%	2.60% 	65.52%	2.41% 	64.37%	2.47% 	63.14%
Both    	n/a                                                                                                                                                                     	n/a                                                                                                                                                                     	n/a                                                                                                                    	n/a                                                                                                                    	0.78%                                                                                                                                             	0.81%                                                                                                                                             	0.25% 	0.21% 	0.27% 	0.20% 	0.24% 	0.17% 	0.21% 	0.15%
Neither 	0.29%                                                                                                                                                                   	1.19%                                                                                                                                                                   	1.52%                                                                                                                  	5.03%                                                                                                                  	1.10%                                                                                                                                             	4.79%                                                                                                                                             	1.38% 	6.37% 	1.44% 	7.52% 	1.40% 	9.87% 	1.66% 	9.63%
        	                                                                                                                                                                        	                                                                                                                                                                        	                                                                                                                       	                                                                                                                       	                                                                                                                                                  	                                                                                                                                                  	      	      	      	      	      	      	      	
The table seems very wrong. The home language of only about 20% of Quebecers would be French? Shouldn't all columns add to 100%? I will delete it for now because data doesn't match with the rest of the article. --zorxd (talk) 15:09, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Home Language 1971-2006 (Official languages only) 

message: I was a bit stunned to see Tlingit on there and not Coast Tsimshian, Gitxsan language or Nisga'a language; there's about 200, 1000 and 700 speakers respectively though the Tsimshianic languages article says 2100 in total; apparently Statistics Canada doesn't keep the same statistics as the linguistics community; I'm also surprsed to not see Kwak'wala on the list....among others....Skookum1 (talk) 13:45, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, I've been aware of that with census figures re populations in BC; I see the logic of the mis-representation of language numbers resulting from the same lack of counting.  Unfortunately I don't have a cite saying "many bands and their members refuse to be counted in the census, and in many cases census takers are refused access to reserves" because of all the population figures on various pages, including the proportion of FN people at the provincial and federal levels in some articles.  As it is, IR populations are counted separately from regional districts, which are census areas; "data apartheid" I call it, such that the true population goes unrepresnted in Wikipedia, or anywhere else; the number of towns and regions in BC where aboriginal populations are in the majority, especially if non-status are counted, is really staggering; but politically inconvenient to both central governments (Victoria, Ottawa) and the resource sector; many band councils could get better funding if their true numbers were known/published, but they don't.  Conversely there are TV networks for northern languages like Inuktitut and Cree where the head-count is known; but none for the perhaps-more-populous potential viewership for speakers of Carrier, Thompson, Shuswap, Tsimshian, even Halkomelem....Skookum1 (talk) 14:13, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: aboriginal language tables

message: Sorry! I don't speak english.
0.9% or 1.0%. But, if 500.000 speakers (fourth more spoken) is 1.6%
--Rocalpi (talk) 12:57, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  How many speak Punjabi language in Canada? 

message: Although I updated the section concerning Stephen Harper's quote in order to maintain objectivity, it would be logical to exclude the quote entirely as it is an incorrect statement and adds prejudice to the article. Stephen Harper is incorrect in stating Canada is not a bilingual country. It is a bilingual country, it's citizens are not necessarily so.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Habitant (talk • contribs) 21:29, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Geographic distribution of French-English bilingualism 

message: I removed that passage, as having no real relevance to either language policy or the overall meaning of this article; unless other PMs views are included, those of the current minority-government PM are entirely unnecessary and highly irrelevant, as well as "pushing" that particular PM's views; "soft spam".  Harper mentions are all over Wikipedia in articles in which his presence is WP:Undue weight and "political spam".  he's only a minority prime minister, not the messiah....Skookum1 (talk) 22:44, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Harper bloat removed entirely

message: There is a big problem with using the census as the sole source of statistics for Aboriginal languages. In the census, there are regularly what Statistics Canada calls "incompletely enumerated" Indian reserves and settlements. As a result, some languages are much less represented than they should be in the census. This needs to be taken into account, both by warning the reader of this problem and where possible by appealing to other sources. 82.124.227.214 (talk) 10:09, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Aboriginal languages

message: The data and detailed information on sources for all of the charts is included on each chart's description page in the Commons.
Spicy Mayan Chocolate (talk) 16:01, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Data for charts 

message: I missed this in the list, although there are many of these people in Canada. For example, there is a forum especially for them under canadahun dot com, which is very busy daily. So it can't be just a marginal thing. Yet they didn't even seem to bother mentioning the percentual share of Canadian Hungarians in the Canada article. [edit] Ah found it, it was well hidden. (whoever invented this highly-complicated and puzzling structure!!) It's under Ethnic origins of people in Canada -andy 217.50.50.187 (talk) 15:17, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Canadian Hungarian (Kanadai Magyarok) 

message: First paragraph needs a minor cleanup - typos and grammar, etc. --62.255.194.126 (talk) 14:28, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: First Paragraph

message: The Dene Suline and Chipewyan language(s) in the table of Aboriginal languages section; Is it the same ??? I think, the Dene Suline is Dene languages and the Chipewyan is Dene Suline language --Kmoksy (talk) 19:18, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dene Suline and Chipewyan 

message: There's US and Canadian French, what happened to Canadian Multilingual? Most of my keyboards have been that. -- 70.24.250.103 (talk) 05:58, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Keyboards 

message: I'm trying to wrap my mind around what this table (posted in the "The two official languages" section) means and just can't do it.  
 Rates of French-English bilingualism among linguistic groups.Bilingualism Rate in Canada, Site for Language Management in Canada (SLMC).
              	Anglophones	Francophones	Allophones
Rest of Canada	66.1%      	36.6%       	50.4%
Quebec        	7.1%       	85.1%       	5.7%
Can someone explain exactly what these figures represent?  It looks like it's saying that 66% of anglophones in the rest of Canada are bilingual and only 7% in Quebec are?  That can't possibly be right but it sure looks that way.  It doesn't help that the link to the reference doesn't work. 108.254.160.23 (talk) 01:50, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Really confusing. I think that the chart refers to people who are bilingual in French/English. 66.1% of bilingual people in English Canada are Anglophones (with English as mother tongue) while 36.6% are Francophones (with French as mother tongue) and 50.4% are Allophones (mother tongue is neither English or French).-- Kayoty (talk) 07:34, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusing table 

message: Currently there is a section called "Non-official languages that are unique to Canada". It begins, "Canada is home to a rich variety of indigenous languages that are spoken nowhere else. There are 11 Aboriginal language groups in Canada, made up of more than 65 distinct languages and dialects.[44] Of these, only Cree, Inuktitut and Ojibway have a large enough population of fluent speakers to be considered viable to survive in the long term.[45] "
The problem is that several of the languages listed in this section to are not unique to Canada: they are shared with the United States. This includes Cree, Ojibway, Mi'kmaq, Sioux, Blackfoot and Mohawk.
It would be better to rename this to "Native languages of Canada" or "Non-official languages that are unique to North America", and change some of the other wording. I'll leave this here for a month for discussion: if there's no objection I'll make the changes myself.
Ordinary Person (talk) 03:14, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Non-official languages that are unique to Canada?

message: Does anybody know whether the language called "Fukien" refers only to Hokkien and specifically excludes Fuzhounese and Eastern Min?--Prisencolin (talk) 19:51, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems there was a change in the way Chinese languages are classified between the 2011 Census and the 2016 Census. Have a look at Languages Reference Guide, Census of Population, 2016. In particular see Figure 3.3D (2016) and Figure 23F (2011). (Those diagrams set out the classification of Sino-Tibetan languages.) Also see footnotes 16 and 17 on this chart. In 2016 the language "Fukien" was not tallied separately; instead it was grouped with Chaochow, Teochow, and Taiwanese under the language name "Min Nan". "Fuzhounese" is distinct from "Fukien". Fuzhounese and Eastern Min are both grouped under "Min Dong" in the 2016 census but I'm not sure where they were classified in 2011 and prior censuses. Mathew5000 (talk) 02:23, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fukien? 

message: I removed the sentence that said "More Canadians know how to speak English than speak it at home" and replaced it with the statistic that it was based on. After all, a person can't speak English at home if they don't know how to speak English, so it would be impossible for fewer Canadians to know how to speak English than speak it at home. And the only other possibility would be for exactly the same number of Canadians to know how to speak English as to speak it at home, which is obviously implausible. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 05:32, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tautology removed 

message: Please explain: Are these languages for the deaf/hearing impaired, or are they used by other people, such as First Nations/Native Canadians?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.162.253.101 (talk) 20:55, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sign Languages 

message: I find the graph "Rate of bilingualism (French and English) in Quebec and the rest of Canada, 1941–2006." confusing. It shows "Quebec", "All Provinces", and "Rest of Canada". Wouldn't it be easier to say "Territories" rather than "Rest of Canada"? And does "All Provinces" include Quebec or not? Ds77 (talk) 03:21, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusing Graph