More than 200 languages spoken in Canada

Canada's two official languages, English and French, are being crowded by more than 200 others, Statistics Canada noted from data in the 2011 census. Of the 34.2 million Canadian residents in 2011, 20 percent spoke a language other than English or French at home, the report said. "In total, 58 percent of the population or 19,225,000 spoke only English at home, while 18.2 percent or 6,043,000 spoke only French," StatsCan said. Eight language groups showed gains of more than 30 percent since the last language survey in 2006. The top gainer was Tagalog, spoken in the Philippines, which rose 64 percent in the 5-year span. The use of Mandarin Chinese rose 50 percent, Arabic increased by 47 percent and Hindi usage was up 44 percent. Creole languages also rose 42 percent, Bengali usage increased by 40 percent, Persian 33 percent and Spanish was up by 32 percent. A slight decline in the home use of Italian, Polish and Greek was seen in the latest figures, the report said. Nearly 90 percent of people speaking languages other than, or along with English or French were in six cities: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa.