When Statistics Canada last week unveiled findings from its 2021 census about mother tongues and languages spoken at home, grave concern was expressed about the slow and steady demise of French.
Indeed, the proportion of people who say French is their first language has been decreasing for years, according to StatCan.Notice the word “proportion.” “French was the first official language spoken by more than 7.8 million Canadians in 2021, up from 7.7 million in 2016,” the federal agency wrote on its website.
And most notably: “Most indicators of the evolution of French in Canada follow this same trend, where the absolute numbers increase whereas the percentage of the population decreases. This is because the number of speakers of languages other than French increases faster in proportion.”Article content
In contrast, the status of French as a first language outside of Quebec is in decline, albeit gently. However, if you count the number of people who learned French and another language simultaneously, the number of French-speakers rose very slightly.Thinking about my own upbringing — and that of thousands of children of immigrants and naturalized Canadians who settled in Quebec — we would never have been counted as French-speakers even though that was the language we primarily used in public.