Language demographics of Quebec

Overview

• Population: 7.2 million (2001)
• Official language: French (de jure)
• Majority group: Francophone (81.2%)
• Minority groups: Anglophone (8.0%), Allophone (9%), Aboriginal (1%)
• Political status: province of the Canadian federation since 1867

Note: Language by mother tongue.

Legislations

• 1982 - Articles 14, 16-23, 55 and 57 of the Constitution of Canada (Ottawa)
• 1977 - Charter of the French Language (Quebec)

Demolinguistic descriptors

The complex nature of Quebec's linguistic situation, with its often bilingual and trilingual population, has required the use of multiple methods of determining who speaks what language.

Mother tongue: The language spoken by the mother or the person responsible for taking care of the child is the most basic measure of a population's language. However, with the high number of mixed francophone-anglophone marriages and the reality of multilingualism in Montreal, this description does not allow to determine the real linguistic portrait of Quebec. It is however still essential, for example in order to calculate the assimilation rate.

Home language: This would be the language most often spoken at home. This descriptor has the advantage of pointing out the current usage of languages. It however fails to describe the language that is most spoken at work, which may be a different language.

Knowledge of Official Languages: This measure describes which of the two official languages of Canada a person can speak informally. This relies on the person's own evaluation of his/her linguistic competence and can prove misleading.

First Official Language Spoken: This is a composite measure of mother tongue, home language and knowledge of official language.

Demolinguistic situation

Among the ten provinces of Canada and the 50 States of the United States, Quebec is the only state whose majority is Francophone. Quebec Francophones account for 19.5% of the Canadian population and 90% of all of Canada's French-speaking population. Quebec is the only province whose Francophone population is currently not declining.

The 8% of the Quebec population whose mother tongue is English live mostly in the Greater Montreal Area where they have a well established network of educational, social, economic, and cultural institutions.

The remaining 10%, named allophone in Quebec, comprises some 30 different nationalities. With the exception of the Amerindians and the Inuits, the majority are of recent immigration. There are 6.3% of Italians, 2.9% of Hispanophones, 2.5% Arabs, 1.7% Chinese, 1.5% Greeks, 1.4% French Creoles, 1.1% Portugese, 0.9% Vietnamese, 0.8% Polish etc.

Montreal

With over 80 per cent of the population speaking French, it might not be obvious to understand why language is such a big issue in Quebec. A closer look at the situation of Montreal, the metropolis of Quebec and second largest in Canada (3.5 million) allows us to see why.

There are today two distinct territories in the GMA: the metropolitain region itself and Montreal island, which is also Montreal city since the municipal merger of 2002.

The 9% of Quebec Allophones are at 88% concentrated in the Greater Montreal Area. (Anglophones are also concentrated in a similar proportion.)

Francophones account for 67% of the total population of the Greater Montreal Area, Anglophones 12.9% and Allophones 17.6%. On the island of Montreal, the Francophone majority drops to 52.8%, a net decline since the 1970s. The Anglophones account for 18.2% of the population and the Allophones 29.0%.

Multilingualism

• Bilingual population (French-English):
• Trilingual population (Italian-English-French):
• Trilingual population (Spanish-French-English):
• Trilingual population (Arabic-French-English):

Aboriginal

Quebec's aboriginals are comprised of an heterogenous group of about 71,000 individuals, which account for 9% of the total aboriginal population of Canada. Approximately 60% of those are officially recognized as "Indians" under the Indian Act of the federal government. The following table shows the demolinguistic situations of Quebec's aboriginals:

People	Number	Linguistic family	Region of Quebec	Language of use	Second language
Abenakis	1,900	Algonquian	Mauricie	French	Abenaki
Algonquins	8,600	Algonquian	North East	Algonquin	French or English
Atikameks	4,900	Algonquian	North	Atikamek	French
Crees	13,000	Algonquian	North	Cree	English
Malecites	570	Algonquian	St. Lawrence South shore	French	English
Micmacs	4,300	Algonquian	Gaspésie	Micmac	French or English
Innus	13,800	Algonquian	North Coast	Innu	French
Naskapis	570	Algonquian	North East	Naskapis	English
Hurons	2,800	Iroquoian	nearby Quebec City	French	English
Mohawks	13,000	Iroquoian	nearby Montreal	English	Mohawk
Inuits	8,000	Eskimo-Aleut	Arctic	Inuktitut	English

See also:

• Demographics of Quebec
• Charter of the French Language
• Constitution of Canada

External links:

• Aménagement linguistique dans le monde - Québec (in French).