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More information on Knowledge of non-official languages

Censuses:

2006 (1/5 sample), 2001 (1/5 sample), 1996 (1/5 sample), 1991 (1/5 sample)

Reported for:

Total population, excluding institutional residents

Question number:

Direct variable: Question 14

Responses:

See Figures 9, 9A, 9B, 9C, 9D, 9E and 9F.

Remarks:

This is the same question as in 1991, 1996, and 2001. The non-official language data are based on the respondent's assessment of his or her ability to speak non-official languages. There are two spaces for reporting non-official languages in 2006; there were three spaces in 2001.

In 2006, the following instructions were provided to respondents in the 2006 Census Guide:

Report only those languages in which the person can carry on a conversation of some length on various topics.

For a child who has not yet learned to speak:

• report a language other than English or French that the child is learning to speak at home.

On the French version of all census forms, for all questions in the language module where there is a choice of response available, the order in which the choices appear was modified since 1996 in order to give precedence to the category 'French'. The questions on knowledge of official languages and non-official languages also reflect this change in the actual wording of the questions.

This question was asked for the first time in the 1991 Census. Appendix H provides a list of the non-official languages released in 2006, 2001, and 1996.