South Okanagan: One of the Most Linguistically Diverse

[Glacier]

... regions in BC.

The graph below shows the newly released data from Statistics Canada. Notice that the Okanagan-Similkameen Regional District is in the top 5.

[grammafreddy]

Interesting. How about one that shows what all these different languages are and their percentages?

[fluffy]

The was an article n the Herald this morning that dealt with just that question, but for Penticton only. Behind English (85.9%) the language most commonly spoken in the home was German (2.9%), which came as a bit of a surprise to me, followed by Punjabi (2.2%) and then French (1.8%). Rounding out the list in descending order were Portugese, Dutch and Ukrainian at less than 1% each.

[Glacier]

Fluffy, the numbers are you describing is the mother tongue, whereas I was describing the actual language spoken at home. Mother tongue describes the language spoken a generation ago whereas my chart describes the language spoken today. When it comes to the languages spoken at home, Punjabi is the most predominant language after English in Penticton (and the regional district as a whole).

In Penticton proper there are 870 people whose mother tongue is German, and 640 people whose mother tongue is Punjabi. Today in Penticton there are 135 people who predominantly converse in German and 525 people communicating predominantly in Punjabi.

Here is how all the BC regional districts stack up when it comes to speaking Punjabi at home today. Notice that the Okanagan-Similkameen (AKA South Okanagan) is near the top.

The South Okanagan has the 3rd highest Punjabi speaking population in BC

And for all of those who think Kelowna is not ethnically diverse, I have news for you. The Central Okanagan is near the top when it comes to German speaking folks. It doesn't get more ethnic than German! Well maybe with the exception of Swedes, but don't worry, Kelowna has quite a few Swedish speaking too. Some darker skins folks are there too such as Italian and Spanish speaking people. See, not everyone in Kelowna is stark white.

Kelowna and the Central Okanagan is top 5 when it comes to German speaking people.

[fluffy]

Got it. The article I was reading didn't make that distinction, it merely referred to residents who "speak a different language". One point I found interesting was the lack of any mention of oriental languages, as if the numbers are so far behind the South Asian and European elements as to be negligible.

[Glacier]

Ya, they are way down the list. There are even more Portuguese speaking people than Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese, Chinese). There are very few Asian speaking people in the Okanagan as a rule. Less than 0.2% of the South Okanagan speaks Chinese compared to 6% of BC.

The pie chart below shows the non-English languages spoken in BC. Notice that Chinese is broken up into three groups. The "Chinese" category could be either Cantonese or Mandarin. Combine all three and you get 38% of the pie chart.

[grammafreddy]

What would the pie chart look like if English was included?

[Glacier]

Like this...

[grammafreddy]

Wow! Thanks!