Mother tongue dear to Canadian Punjabis, says study

Edmonton: Punjabis living in Canada may be far away from their homeland but they have preserved their roots and identity - their mother tongue.

A study conducted by Statistics Canada, the national statistical agency of that country, has revealed that the Punjabi community living there is one of the very few groups which have managed to preserve the Punjabi language.

The study titled 'Evolution of immigrant-language transmission in Canada' says that Punjabis under the age of 18 and born in Canada were the highest who used their mother tongue in 2006.

The study, which has been prepared on the basis of research done on language transmission in immigrant communities between 1981 and 2006, reveals that 80% of the Punjabis under the age of 18 spoke Punjabi at home and 89% had some knowledge of the mother tongue.

The youths of other immigrant communities, which speak Armenian, Urdu and Bengali, have also managed to retain their language as over 70% of them under the age of 18 are using their mother tongue at home. As per the study, groups, including Italian, Czech, German, Dutch and Portuguese, have witnessed a decline in language transmission from one generation to another. The study further indicates that the language transmission of second-generation women to their children is the strongest (53%) for those whose mother tongue is Punjabi followed by Greek (41%) and Spanish (30%).

When it comes to language transmission from 1981 to 2006, Punjabis again top the list of immigrant communities in Canada. There were 64% Punjabi children speaking their mother tongue in 1981 in Canada and by 2006 the percentage had grown to 81%. Punjabis are also the only ones whose third generation living in Canada has the most number of children who speak Punjabi among all the immigrant communities there.