Quote:
Originally Posted by New Brisavoine
At the 2021 census, people in the Montréal metro area reported that the language they spoke at home either exclusively (i.e. no other language spoken), or the most, or equally with another language was:
- French: 69.2%
- English: 20.8%
- another language: 17.5%
(percentages add up to more than 100% because some people speak more than one language at home)
Also, at the 2021 census in the Montréal metro area, 33.8% of people reported that they could have a conversation in French only (i.e. they either know no English, or their English is so bad they cannot really have a conversation in it). Only 8.2% of the people reported that they could have a conversation in English only (which is already pretty high for a city that functions essentially in French). 1.6% reported that they could have a conversation in neither French nor English. So if you do the math, that means 90.2% of people in the Montréal metro area can have a conversation in French, and 9.8% cannot. 64.6% of people can have a conversation in English, and 35.4% cannot. So if you're a French tourist in Montréal, only 1 person in 10 will not be able to converse in French with you, whereas if you're an Anglo tourist in Montréal, a bit more than 1/3 of people will not be able to have a conversation with you in English.
PS: For the Québec City metro area, 99.4% will be able to have a conversation with you in French, whereas only 41.8% will be able to have a conversation with you in English.
|
To supplement this, here is the stat for 1st official language spoken. 1st official language spoken is a complex stat that does not result from 1 question in the census, but from 3 questions that are combined to infer the 1st official language spoken by the person.
In a nutshell, the difference between language spoken at home and 1st official language spoken is the fact that the allophones (immigrants who speak neither French nor English at home) are assigned to one of the two official languages depending on other variables than just language spoken at home. 1st official language spoken basically shows in which linguistic community the immigrant integrate, so it's useful for the defenders of the French language to see whether the language has a future (because the immigrants are integrating in the Francophone community), or whether the language has no future (because the immigrants are integrating in the Anglophone community).
For the Montréal metro area, at the 2021 census, the 1st official language spoken was:
- French: 78.0%
- English: 27.1%
- neither French nor English: 1.6%
Percentages add up to more than 100% because 6.7% of people have both French and English as their 1st official language spoken. In order to have both French and English as your 1st official language spoken, you need to be either:
- able to hold a conversation in both French and English
- have neither French nor English as your mother tongue
- and speak both French and English EQUALLY at home
or:
- able to hold a conversation in both French and English
- have neither French nor English as your mother tongue
- and speak neither French nor English at home
You can notice that the percentage of people with French as their 1st official language spoken (78.0%) is higher than the percentage of people who speak French at home (69.2%). That's because many allophone immigrants integrate in the Francophone community (for instance an Algerian immigrant speaks solely Algerian Arabic at home, but can have a conversation in French, and probably works in a Francophone business).
The percentage of people with English as their 1st official language spoken (27.1%) is also higher than the percentage of people who speak English at home (20.8%), which shows that some immigrants have historically integrated in the Anglophone community. But then it could also be a simple statistical artefact, because if we go back to our Algerian immigrant who speaks solely Algerian Arabic at home, if this guy can have a conversation in both French and English, then this guy will be counted in the 6.7% whose 1st official language spoken is French and English, and then in the 27.1% of English here, despite the fact that this immigrant and his family are most likely to integrate in the Francophone community and not in the Anglophone community, but the guy simply knows also English as many young professionals do.
If they had wanted to push the thing to its extreme conclusion, they would have asked the immigrants in the census: in which official language of Canada are you or do you plan to integrate, but for some reason this question was never asked.
So, the bottom line is: the people who are either native Francophones or immigrants who are integrating in the Francophone community are probably around 75-76% in the Montréal metro area, and those who are either native Anglophones or integrating in the Anglophone community are probably around 22-23%, with the last 2% being recently arrived people or their old relatives who speak neither English nor French. Here this sums up to 100%.
For the Québec City metro area, the 1st official languages spoken are:
- French: 98.0%
- English: 2.8%
- neither French nor English: 0.3%
For the Ottawa-Gatineau metro area, the 1st official languages spoken are:
- French: 32.5%
- English: 69.0%
- neither French nor English: 1.2%
Prev
Linear Mode
