PUNJABI IS NUMBER 4 MOST SPOKEN LANGUAGE IN CANADA

PUNJABI HAS SHARPER GROWTH AS COMPARED TO MANDARIN

Punjabi is the fourth-most widely spoken language at home in Canada while the number of those using other Indian tongues has risen steeply. The data was revealed in a new data based on the 2021 Census by the Canadian government.

India’s one of the largest circulated English daily Hindustan Times reported this.

Canada’s two official languages, English and French, remain the two spoken most predominantly at home, followed by Mandarin and Punjabi, according to details issued by the Statistics Canada or StatCan, the country’s data agency.

However, the growth of Punjabi speakers has been sharper than that for Mandarin. Between 2016 and 2021, the number of Punjabi speakers increased by 49 per cent to 520,000, while those for Mandarin rose by a more moderate 15 per cent to 531,000.

Punjabi Canadian number is nearly 9.5 lakh who are 2.5 percent of country’s total population as per the census of 2021. Their place of origin is the Punjab state of India and Pakistan as well.

They first arrived in Canada during the late 1800to work in forest industry and sawmills, particularly in the western province of British Columbia. Now-a-days large Punjabi population lives in the cities of Vancouver and Toronto.

Other Indian languages are also flourishing in Canada. The number of those speaking Hindi escalated by 66 per cent to 92,000, while those using Gujarati were at the same figure but increased by a comparatively lower 43 per cent. Also on the list is Malayalam, which saw its usage rising by 129 per cent to 35,000 speakers.

“The rapid growth in the number of speakers of certain languages is mostly due to immigration,” a release from StatCan said. It added that 20 percent of permanent residents who arrived in Canada from May 2016 to December 2020 were born in India.

Overall, the number of Canadians who speak predominantly a non-official language at home rose 16.0 per cent since 2016, from 4.0 million to 4.6 million.

“Despite the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on arrivals to the country, immigration has continued to enrich Canada’s linguistic diversity,” the release said.

English is the main language spoken in Canada, with its users going up to 75.5 percent in 2021 from 74.8 percent five years earlier. The other official language, French, though is losing users, down from 22.2 percent to 21.4 percent.

The number of those adept at both official languages remained fixed at 18 per cent. This, of course, refers to the people conversant in an official language.