Mother Tongue (English), 1996

This map shows the percentage of the Canadian population whose mother tongue is English. The 1996 Census defines mother tongue as the first language a person learned at home in childhood and still understood at the time of the census. The 1996 Census showed that 24.0 million Canadians could speak English (84%), 19.3 million spoke English most often at home (68%) and 17.1 million had English mother tongue (60%).