Indian languages in Canada: did you know these six are the most commonly spoken?

There are predominantly six Indian languages in Canada’s workplaces, spoken alongside many of the others used by the country’s increasingly multicultural population.

That’s according to Statistics Canada, which recently released a snapshot of the most commonly used unofficial languages (besides English and French) in workplaces across the country, based on the country’s 2021 census.

Punjabi was the most commonly spoken Indian language in Canada, being used by 102,000 people surveyed, the majority of whom are employed in the transportation and warehousing sector.

Hindi (29,000) and Urdu (15,000) are also high up on the list, being used primarily in the retail trade, as is Gujarati, spoken by about 2,000 people.

Tamil – spoken by around 8,000 people, mainly employed in health care and social assistance – and Bengali (used by about 2,000 people working in professional, scientific, and technical services), also featured prominently.

“I speak both English and French, but I also speak Hindi and my mother tongue, Tamil, which is very handy in my workplace,” says Siddhartha, who works in clinical research.

Debesh, who also speaks Bengali and Hindi, says “being multilingual is a gift in today’s workplace – it’s easier to cut across the barriers and establish trust.”

A diverse set of languages spoken in Canada

The list of languages spoken in Canada features 28 languages spoken by Canada’s increasingly multicultural inhabitants, including Cantonese, Tagalog, Arabic, Iranian Persian, Polish, and Greek, as well as Indigenous languages such as Inuktitut and Cree languages.

The survey features languages spoken across nine sectors of employment: accommodation and food services; construction; health care and social assistance; education; retail; professional, scientific, and technical services; transportation and warehousing; public administration, and agriculture, forestry, and fishing.

The industry sectors with the largest numbers of workers who use a non-official language at work include health care and social assistance (74,000), retail (71,000), and accommodation and food services (63,000).

Mandarin (spoken by 130,000 people) is the most commonly used unofficial language, followed by Punjabi (102,000), and Cantonese (83,000).

The Indian diaspora in Canada

The prevalence of a large number of Indian languages in Canada is down to the presence of a significant Indian diaspora in the country: nearly two million people in Canada identify as having Indian origin, accounting for 5.1 percent of the population, while Indian-born residents make up for nearly 900,000 people, making up about 10 percent of all immigrants in Canada, and 2.5 percent of Canada’s total population.

Ontario hosts roughly 1.5 million South Asians, accounting for 10.8 percent of its population, while other provinces with significant Indian population include British Columbia (nearly 500,000), Alberta (nearly 300,000), and Quebec (nearly 130,000).

In Ontario, the Peel region (consisting of the cities of Brampton, Mississauga, and Caledon), accounts for the highest proportion of the Indian population in the province: persons of Indian origin account for 300,000 people, or 19.5 percent of the population.

Across the Greater Toronto Area, there are nearly half a million people identifying as Indian-born immigrants.