Guess what? Vaughan has 115 languages; we tell you where yours is

YorkRegion.com
July 6, 2017
Tim Kelly

He loves to tell everyone who will listen that Vaughan is home to more than 325,000 people who speak over 99 languages.

But, according to 2011 official census data, it seems Mayor Maurizio Bevilacqua may actually be understating that number — at least the number of languages, that is.

When you factor in every language — including American Sign Language — indicated on the census for Vaughan, the total in 2011 for the city was a whopping 115 languages.

And, coming up in August, we'll have an even clearer picture of just how many languages are spoken in Vaughan. That's when the latest Census Canada data comes out with a precise breakdown of how many languages are spoken in the city and who speaks them.

The total responses were 286,950 and English was the runaway leader at 131,765. Numbers two through 10 were Italian (40,405), Russian (18,705), Spanish (7,365), Punjabi (4,835), Tagalog (Filipino) (4,675), Hebrew (4,620), Persian (Farsi) (4,600), Chinese (4,465), and Portuguese (4,450).

Numbers 11-20 were Urdu, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Korean, Tamil, Arabic, Romanian, Mandarin, Gujarati, and Polish.

Numbers 21-30 were Semitic languages, French, Greek, Hindi, Turkish, Hungarian, Yiddish, Albanian, German, and Croatian.

Numbers 31-40 were Ukrainian, Serbian, Armenian, Macedonian, Khmer (Cambodian), Ilocano, Bengali, Bulgarian, and Kurdish.

Numbers 41-50 were Lao, Akan (Twi), Maltese, Slovenian, Dutch, Sinhala (Sinhalese), Japanese, Cushitic languages, Niger-Congo languages, and Malay.

Numbers 51-60 were Slovak, Lithuanian, Chaochow (Teochow), Somali, Amharic, Pashto, Hakka, Sindhi, Bisayan languages, and Czech.

Numbers 61-70 were Marathi, Telugu, Azerbaijani, Tigrigna, Georgian, Igbo, Creoles, Latvian, Indo-Iranian languages, and Taiwanese.

Numbers 71-80 were Bosnian, Serbo-Croatian, Finnish, Fukien, Thai, Estonian, Slavic languages, Turkic languages, Burmese, and Danish.

Numbers 81-90 were Afrikaans, Belarusian, Swahili, African languages, Sign languages, Swedish, Oromo, Nepali, Shanghainese, and Pampango.

Numbers 91-100 were Pangasinan, Bantu languages, Edo, Konkani, Kannada, Bikol, Fijian, Malayo-Polynesian languages, Shona, and Ga.

Numbers 101-110 were Dravidian languages, Ewe, other languages, Aboriginal languages, Algonquian languages, Iroquoian languages, Mohawk, Catalan, Romance languages, and Flemish.

Numbers 111-115 were Norwegian, Mongolian, Sino-Tibetan languages, Ganda, and American Sign Language.