Figures released from the 2001 census indicate that in some parts of BC's Lower Mainland, English is no longer the mother tongue of the majority of residents. Over the region as a whole, 61% of the population speaks English as their mother tongue; that is, the language they learned at home from childhood. But in Burnaby and Richmond that number has fallen below 50% for the first time. And in the City of Vancouver, the population is divided almost evenly between native English speakers and people whose first language was not English.

The latest census figures on language have important implications for schools and other social institutions, but they do not mean that the use of English is declining. While there may be 80 or more languages spoken in Lower Mainland households, experts agree that English remains the dominant language of communication between people of diverse linguistic backgrounds. In other words, you might speak Punjabi at home and I might speak Chinese, but outside our homes we will speak to each other in English.

In Canada as a whole, Chinese is now the third most common language after French and English. This is certainly true of the Lower Mainland, where 15.2% of the population reported Chinese--either Cantonese or Mandarin--as their mother tongue, an increase from 9.3% just five years ago. Still, the prevalence of different languages varies, sometimes quite dramatically, from community to community. There are several communities, for instance, where Punjabi, not Chinese, is the dominant second language. These include Abbotsford, Surrey and Delta. And in the City of North Vancouver, where the level of Iranian immigration has been high, Farsi is the most common language after English.

The following tables summarize the top five mother tongue languages in selected Lower Mainland communities as of the 2001 census, by percentage of total population.