Commonly Spoken Languages In Toronto.

July 2, 2025 by 15 Comments

Brilliant Maps has a page with two terrific images, one “a colourful map of Toronto’s most widespread languages” shown together, and another, “54 Languages in Toronto,” with separate (tiny) maps for each language showing where in the city each is spoken; they “are both the work of Alex McPhee, aka Pronghorn maps,” and there’s a link to his site, where you can buy copies if you so desire. I do love this sort of thing, and there’s a lot more information at the Brilliant Maps link.

Comments

  1. Y says
    July 2, 2025 at 2:58 pm

    The census data linked there show, surprisingly, only 100 speakers of First Nation languages, including only 5 Inuktitut speakers, and also only 5 speakers of Quebec Sign Language. In Montréal there are 80 speakers of Inuktitut (vel sim) and 765 of QSL.

    I’m surprised that the Yiddish-speaking section of Montréal is so small, by area.

    Pronghorn also has a nice, suitable-for-framing map of the transit system of Moose Jaw, SK. Get it while they last.

  2. languagehat says
    July 2, 2025 at 3:23 pm

    The census data linked there show, surprisingly, only 100 speakers of First Nation languages

    Yes, I was surprised by that too.

  3. J.W. Brewer says
    July 3, 2025 at 12:33 pm

    It is interesting to see that there are neighborhoods in Toronto where the most common non-English language is Spanish. One very notable demographic difference between the U.S. and Canada is the paucity of Hispanophones in the latter. Hispanophone-Canadians made up (as of 2016) 1.32% of the population up there, whereas the comparable percentage in the U.S. is 13.4% as of 2023 – so a full order of magnitude difference.

    Looking at a list of countries of origin of Canadian immigrants ranked by number sent, the most prominent one is Mexico at #21, then after that Colombia at #29 and El Salvador at #39. For the U.S., maybe 5 out of the top 10 countries of origin are Hispanophone (Mexico, El Salvador, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, in roughly descending order of magnitude, and of course folks from e.g. Puerto Rico aren’t foreign-born).

  4. Etienne says
    July 3, 2025 at 12:59 pm

    Y, Hat: It is not at all surprising that there should be so few L1 speakers of First Nations languages in Toronto. Toronto could fairly be described as ground zero of the anglicization of all non-English-speaking groups within Canada (Huron and its close relatives are probably the first Indigenous languages in Canada which were wholly replaced by English).

    As a result those members of First Nations who move to Toronto in search of work will be English monoglots if they come from any reservation in Southern Ontario and from most reservations elsewhere in Ontario, and indeed from a strong majority of reservations anywhere else in Canada. People moving from such reservations to Toronto will on average be quite young and will thus be far more likely not to actively command a First Nations language, even when they come from the minority of reservations where anyone of their generation actually has ANY active command of the local First Nations language.

    Interest in linguistic diversity should not blind us to the fact that this diversity is being -to put it very bluntly-actively annihilated. The existence of non-English groups in Canada (minus Quebec) and the U.S. is, as a rule, due to ongoing immigration, not to active language maintenance (AKA intergenerational transmission) among members of settled non-anglophone groups (certain Anabaptist and Yiddish-speaking groups are the only significant exceptions).

    If immigration ceased for a couple of generations and the social dynamics remained otherwise unchanged, the United States and Anglophone Canada would (in a mere couple of generations) become one of the most linguistically homogeneous regions of the planet. One need only look at a country such as Brazil to picture this. Once a major immigration hotspot, it ceased to attract new immigrants, and as a result it is astonishingly uniform from a linguistic point of view (well over 95% of Brazilians are L1 speakers of Portuguese, and something like 99% of Brazilians of the younger generation), despite the country’s huge size and extraordinary ethno-racial diversity.

  5. David Eddyshaw says
    July 3, 2025 at 1:16 pm

    Sad but true. Language loss is driven by economic forces far more powerful than the meagre resources available to language preservation work, even in places where governments are not actively hostile to linguistic diversity, and even where governments are supportive in principle (as is the case here in Wales.)

    However, the impending collapse of the world economic order may help. (Actually, I can think of two recent-ish Welsh-language novels set After the End. Wishful thinking?)

  6. Etienne says
    July 3, 2025 at 2:15 pm

    David Eddyshaw: What are these two Welsh-language novels?

    On a related topic: Emyr Humphreys’ seven novel cycle “Land of the living” was recently recommended to me by someone whose judgment in literary matters I fully trust. I would like to know (if you have read them) in what order you think I should read the novels: in the order they were written, or following the story-internal chronology?

    I agree that the end of globalization will lead to a a resurgence of local economies and identities, so that the trend towards linguistic uniformization will slow down or even cease altogether. Nothing new under the sun: it was André Martinet who, in describing the impact of Latin/Romance on Basque phonology, wrote that the collapse of the Roman Empire must have taken place in the nick of time to prevent Basque from being wholly replaced by Latin/Romance. As for whether this will lead to the long-term survival of any of Canada’s First Nations languages…well, it could.

  7. rozele says
    July 3, 2025 at 2:30 pm

    i wonder what the wider numbers are for “heritage” non-cradle-tongue speakers of indigenous languages in toronto, as opposed to the primary-household-language numbers that the census measured. with the range of language revitalization projects underway, that seems like a pretty significant piece of the picture, especially in a place like toronto (or nyc, for that matter).

    i also wonder how much Not Talking To The State is involved in these numbers – for indigenous language speakers in particular, but also otherwise. based on community documentation (the methodology’s pretty interesting), marcin wodziński’s Historical Atlas of Hasidism reports almost 800 hasidic households in toronto – not all of those will be yiddish-primary (especially with ChaBaD as the main court active there), but i think it’s safe to say that the 235 recorded in the census reflects some careful self-reporting away from on-the-record Foreignness.

  8. Y says
    July 3, 2025 at 2:41 pm

    Vancouver lists 110. Calgary 110. Funny how all these numbers are similar and round, despite different distributions of languages.

    Saskatoon has 325, Edmonton 505, Winnipeg 860. Cree/Ojibwe are the majority of those.

    In Winnipeg, the percentage of speakers is about the same across all age decades. A little less for the 15–44 y.o., Surprisingly a little more for the under-14 y.o.

    I notice that all the numbers in these charts, for all languageds, are rounded to a multiple of 5.

  9. J.W. Brewer says
    July 3, 2025 at 2:55 pm

    To rozele’s point, recent Canadian governments have generally been all officially groovy and multicultural in ways not overtly calculated to encourage under-reporting of Foreignness, but it’s obviously quite possible that some groups do not take that purportedly welcoming and open-minded stance at face value and thus answer more cautiously.

  10. David Eddyshaw says
    July 3, 2025 at 2:59 pm

    What are these two Welsh-language novels?

    Llyfr Glas Nebo and Ebargofiant (I didn’t get beyond the Kindle free sample with the latter.)

    I haven’t read any of Emyr Humphreys, sorry.
    (I came across an interesting take on the Blodeuwedd story by Seanan McGuire, in which she tells it from the said artificial human’s angle – not able to love who she was told to, she tried to go her own way, with tragic results … in fact, once you put it like that, yes, that’s exactly what happens … one is just used to seeing it from Lleu Llaw Gyffes’ POV.)

  11. David Eddyshaw says
    July 3, 2025 at 3:37 pm

    (I suppose it might help if I also supplied the information that Llyfr Glas Nebo is by Manon Steffan Ros, and Ebargofiant is by Jerry Hunter. There’s an English translation of the first one, I see.)

  12. Etienne says
    July 3, 2025 at 3:52 pm

    David Eddyshaw: Thanks. The last time I attempted to read a book in Welsh was back in grad school (Henry Lewis’ YR ELFEN LADIN YN YR IAITH GYMRAEG). Perhaps I should try to read something less linguistics-y in order to re-ignite those brain cells of mine which contain what knowledge of written Welsh I once had and which have been dormant for an uncomfortably long time. Either or both of these novels might be just the thing. Thanks again.

    Rosele,Y, J.W. Brewer: one should also consider the reverse phenomenon: that of members of First Nations who out of ethnic pride claim to speak their heritage language when in fact they are English monoglots who, at best, can pepper their English with a handful of words and/or frozen phrases drawn from their heritage language.

    This phenomenon, I suspect, is behind the alleged rise -mentioned in the census- of younger “L2” speakers of First Nations languages (I say this because there does not seem to be any realistic way for a young L1 anglophone to acquire even a rudimentary command of any First Nations language. Not just for sociolinguistic reasons and because of the massive typological gap separating English from any First Nations language, but also because of the absence anywhere of any systematic, institutionalized teaching of any First Nations language as an L2).

  13. David Eddyshaw says
    July 3, 2025 at 7:23 pm

    YR ELFEN LADIN YN YR IAITH GYMRAEG

    His Llawlyfr Cernyweg Canol seems to be the only full-length monograph on real (as opposed to revived) Cornish even now. Quite good, though very short, and very skimpy on syntax, as was usual then. But I expect you know of it already.

  14. Etienne says
    July 3, 2025 at 8:32 pm

    David Eddyshaw: Actually, I did not. Thank you for pointing out that reference (*GRUMBLE* So many interesting books, so little time…I suspect that is a complaint many fellow hatters could echo!)

  15. languagehat says
    July 3, 2025 at 10:09 pm

    *echo*

Speak Your Mind

*