What languages do Canadians consider their mother tongue? Using Statistics Canada 2021 census data, The duty produced a map showing where the most common native languages in the country are concentrated. Here is our methodology.
The data used comes entirely from Statistics Canada. Those on mother tongues come from the following dataset: Mother tongue by knowledge of official languages: Canada, provinces and territories, census divisions, census subdivisions and dissemination areas. The cartographic data on the dissemination areas from Statistics Canada comes from the boundary files of the dissemination areas of the 2021 census.
Dataset analysis
Before combining the data on native languages and the map data, we processed the former to make them more intelligible.
We used linguistic data listed by dissemination areas, since this is the most precise census unit for which Statistics Canada publishes all the data in the country. It should be noted, however, that certain dissemination areas include confidential data that are not accessible, under the provisions of the Statistics Act.
Furthermore, these values are rounded unevenly by Statistics Canada to a multiple of 5. Certain percentages therefore have a slight margin of error which does not affect the general proportions.
The data was then grouped by language. The ten most spoken languages in Canada were selected to be represented directly on the interactive map. Indigenous languages also constitute a category in their own right on the map, as is the case in the Statistics Canada dataset. The other languages have been grouped into the Others category.
The English category includes people who responded that they had English as their sole mother tongue or among their multiple mother tongues in the census. Similarly, the French category brings together people who responded that they had French as their sole mother tongue or among their multiple mother tongues. The Chinese category brings together people whose mother tongue is Yue (Cantonese) or Mandarin.
Unfortunately, in the multiple responses that include a non-official language, Statistics Canada does not indicate which language it is, which prevents it from being counted correctly in another category. Since multiple responses including one or more non-official languages represent only 3% of census responses, we concluded that this did not significantly affect the results presented in the interactive map; these responses were also distributed across all existing categories. “Multiple non-official languages” responses were calculated in the Other category, since this data would not have been counted in any category otherwise.
This strategy, although imperfect, is the one that seemed the most sensible given the limitations of the dataset. It can, however, lead to certain specific situations, such as a diffusion area whose total proportions of mother tongues equal more than 100%, since certain respondents can be counted in both the French category and the English category.
Cartographic analysis
Once this processing of the dataset was carried out, it was combined with the boundaries of the dissemination areas in order to represent it on the interactive map. Data is represented as a percentage. This is the proportion of respondents who indicated a given mother tongue compared to the total number of respondents for this dissemination area. Percentages are rounded, and rate > 0% means that a rate smaller than 1%, but not zero, has been rounded to 0%.
When the map is in global view, the color of the diffusion area represents the color associated with the dominant mother tongue in this diffusion area. When the map is filtered for a particular language, the intensity of the color represents the proportion of its speakers among the population of the diffusion area.
A dissemination area is defined by Statistics Canada as “a small, relatively stable geographic unit made up of one or more neighboring dissemination islands whose average population is 400 to 700 inhabitants according to data from the previous Population Census “. In fact, we have noticed that the total population of a distribution area can vary between 5 and nearly 30,000 people, with an average population of 650 people. However, 95% of dissemination areas have a total population of 220 to 1815 people.
The dissemination area identifier is displayed on the map for the entire Canadian territory, as a reference to the Statistics Canada dataset, where complete data for a given dissemination area is available.