Читать книгу The Mysteries of Bilingualism - Francois Grosjean - Страница 23

As we saw in the preceding part, Canada obtains data both on language knowledge and language use in its censuses. Concerning language knowledge, it is a person’s ability to speak the language(s) well enough to conduct a conversation. For a child who has not yet learned to speak, this includes languages that the child is learning to speak at home.⁹ Two questions in the 2016 census get at language knowledge, and the combined results show that 39% of the population report being able to conduct a conversation in more than one language, of which 17.9% report that the languages involved are English and French. It is important to note that these percentages concern actual bilinguals but also potential bilinguals as some do not actually use two languages in their everyday life, even though they know a second language well enough to do so.

To get at actual bilingualism, that is, the regular use of two or more languages in everyday life, one has to look at the results of the languages spoken at home, on the one hand, and at work, on the other. Concerning the home,¹⁰ 19.4% of the population report speaking more than one language at home (this is a rise from 17.5% in 2011). The languages involved can concern the two official languages, English and French, or one of these languages along with a non-official language (aboriginal language or immigrant language). People with a non-official mother tongue who use a language other than their mother tongue at home usually adopt English or French as their main language or as a secondary language. Only 28.0% of people with a mother tongue other than English or French speak only their mother tongue at home. By comparison, 94.3% of people with English as their mother tongue and 83.1% of people with French as their mother tongue speak only their mother tongue at home.

Researchers Schott, Kremin, and Byers-Heinlein (2019) examined child bilingualism in the home based on the 2016 census. They found that 15.7% of children aged 0 to 4 grow up with two or more languages at home. The percentage varies, of course, according to the region or province in question, with the highest percentage in Northern Canada (29%), and the lowest in Newfoundland and Labrador (4%). Quebec and Ontario are close to the mean with 17%.

The 2016 census also examined the state of bilingualism at work.¹¹ The proportion of workers who use more than one language at work was 15.4% in 2016, up from 13.9% in 2011. Were we to add the percentage of bilingualism at home and at work, we would obtain close to 35% of people who use two or more languages in their daily lives, without counting other activities though. But this percentage includes some people who are counted twice, once in the home and once at work, and so one needs to estimate a reduced combined percentage. For the 2016 census, collaborators at Statistics Canada could not help me with this, but for the 2011 census, Ms. Camille Bouchard-Colombe from the same bureau gave me an estimate of 26%. Since the level of bilingualism is higher both at home and in the work place in 2016, a fair estimate could be 28%. Thus, slightly more than a quarter of inhabitants in Canada are actual bilinguals.

It is interesting that there is a 11% difference between potential bilinguals (39%) and actual bilinguals (some 28%). This percentage, which can vary in size as we will see below, reflects the fact that some people can master two or more languages sufficiently to conduct a conversation in them but do not actually use them all on a regular basis. This is true in Canada but also in all other nations in the world.