The Italian language in Canada has been widespread since the 19th century, particularly due to Italian emigration. According to the 2021 Census of Canada, 1,546,390 Canadians (4.3% of the total population) claimed full or partial Italian ancestry, and Italian is the ninth most widely spoken language in Canada with 547,655 speakers, including 319,505 mother tongue speakers. Italian is also being learned as a foreign language in Canada by 37,375 students as of 2019.Ministero degli Affari esteri, Rapporto diffusione italiano – 2019, p.19.

History of Italian immigration to Canada

Immediately after the unification of Italy, it experienced the phenomenon of emigration on a massive scale. While until that time the migratory destinations had been mostly European, starting in the second half of the 19th century transatlantic emigration to the Americas emerged, in the direction of lands that became typical destinations for Italians. The first immigrants, most of whom came from Basilicata, Sicily, Apulia, Piedmont, Lazio, Abruzzo and Molise, settled in Canadian lands in isolation; they were mostly single men who had left their country of origin due to population growth, lack of work and high taxation, intending to return soon.

By the 1880s Canada was a booming country in need of major infrastructure works that could improve transportation and communication between the vast areas of its territory. Dating back to these years was the construction of major railroad and canal sections that generated a growing demand for labour. The number of Italians moved to Canada for the construction of the Canadian railway, the Canadian Pacific Railway, in the 1881 census amounted to 1,849 citizens. Around the turn of the century, there was a further growth in the number of Italians in Canada, with a change in the migratory flows, consisting not only of adult men between the ages of twenty and forty-five, but also of women and children. From 1900 to 1913, although in smaller numbers than in the United States, Brazil and Argentina, Canada welcomed about 60,000 Italians, mostly from the south (Calabria, Abruzzo, Molise and Campania) and the northeast (Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia) who went to settle not only in the industrial hubs in Ontario, Toronto and Ottawa, but also in small towns. Among them, the following cities have a significant presence of the Italian community even today: Hamilton, Guelph, Windsor and Thunder Bay.

These years also saw the birth of the so-called Little Italies, neighbourhoods with a strong Italian presence. Within these cities there was a move away from the typical occupations required of Italians, namely those of labourer and factory worker: Italians had the opportunity to open small businesses and practice the trades that had been learned in their countries of origin. Many of them became barbers, shoe repairers, grocers, fruit vendors and bakers. These stores thus began to characterize the appearance of Italian neighbourhoods. There soon developed what is called a "migratory chain,"(MacDonald and MacDonald, 1964)A concept initially defined to describe Italian emigration to Australia and subsequently used for all migratory phenomena. that is, emigrants who arrived in the great oceanic country generally went to form homogeneous aggregates according to the geographical area of origin, creating a network of solidarity and economic, linguistic and social support. Thus migrants from the same region, and often even the same municipality, went to live in the same cities, the same neighbourhoods, even the same streets. Migrants learned about opportunities, methods of travel, obtained employment and housing through social relations with those in the land of destination.

The migration "boom" from Italy to Canada occurred from the end of World War II and involved to a greater extent those from Lazio, Abruzzo, Friuli, Veneto, Campania, Calabria and Sicily. There were also numerous Italians from Istria and Dalmatia who emigrated to Canada as a result of the Julian-Dalmatian exodus (also known as the Istrian exodus). Between the early 1950s and the mid-1960s, approximately 20,000 to 30,000 Italians immigrated to Canada each year, surpassing those who went to the United States during the same period. In the late 1960s, the Italian economy experienced a period of growth and recovery, removing one of the primary incentives for emigration. 90 percent of the Italians who immigrated to Canada after World War II remained in Canada, and decades after that period, the community still had fluency in the Italian language.Stanger-Ross, p. 30.

In 2019, Canada received the 11th highest number of Italian emigrants, and among non-European countries was the fourth highest after Brazil, the United States and Australia.Rapporto Italiani nel Mondo-2019, Fondazione Migrantes della Conferenza Episcopale Italiana. Available at Compared to the past, the skills of migrants have changed as today there are many researchers, skilled workers and entrepreneurs. In 2018, more than half of the Italian citizens who moved abroad (53 percent) had medium-high educational qualifications: 33,000 high school graduates and 29,000 college graduates.Italia, in 10 anni espatriati oltre 180 mila laureati, in L'economia, 16 dicembre 2019.Report Istat, Aumentano gli italiani che si trasferiscono all'estero, diminuiscono le immigrazioni . Highly qualified people are in demand in Canada in areas that are lacking in the territory, particularly in information and communication technologies.

+ Italian immigrant population in CanadaYearPopulation% of immigrantsin Canada% of Canadianpopulation 1986366,8209.4%1.5% 1991351,6158.1%1.3% 1996Immigrant Population by Selected Places of Birth (84) and Sex (3), for Canada, Provinces, Territories and Census Metropolitan Areas, 1986–1996 Censuses (20% Sample Data) , 1996 Census of Canada332,1106.7%1.2% 2001Place of birth for the immigrant population by period of immigration, 2006 counts and percentage distribution, for Canada , provinces and territories – 20% sample data, 2001 Census of Canada315,4555.8%1.1% 2006Topic-based tabulations|Place of birth for the immigrant population by period of immigration, 2006 counts and percentage distribution, for Canada, provinces and territories – 20% sample data , 2006 Census of Canada 296,8504.8%0.9% 2011260,2503.6%0.8% 2016236,6353.1%0.7% 2021204,0702.4%0.6%

+ Italian citizens residing abroad in Canada (AIRE)YearPopulation% of total immigrantsabroad in Canada 2012137,0453.1% 2016Censimento AIRE 2016 .141,2032.8% 2017Censimento AIRE 2017 .140,6332.7% 2022142,9962.4%

Use of the language In 1991, Italian was the unofficial language with the most mother tongue speakers at 449,660, ahead of German and Chinese. As of the 2021 Canadian census, of the 1,546,390 Italian Canadians, 319,505 claim Italian as their mother tongue. Italian is the ninth most widely spoken language in Canada with 547,655 speakers. There has been an overall decline in the use of the Italian language since 2001.

As of the 2021 census, the majority of Italian mother tongue speakers live in the Greater Toronto Area (125,895; 39.4%) or the Greater Montreal Area (87,565; 27.4%).

Data from 2011 on the use of Italian by young Italian-Montrealese in the family context report that "38% of them speak Italian, solely or in combination with other languages, in interactions with their mothers and 34 percent in interactions with their fathers, while if only Italian is considered, these percentages drop to three percent with their mothers and seven percent with their fathers." The percentages of Italian-only use go up in interaction with grandparents: 60 percent of young people speak only Italian with their grandmother and 58 percent speak only Italian with their grandfather.Regional languages in Italy and Italian abroad – two different languages with the same problems. According to the author, these percentages could be due to the fact that, in order for their children to be proficient in two languages, parents have adopted the language strategy: 'one person, one language'.

According to Bruno Villata, Italian: is used mostly in the family sphere or in communication with friends; is spoken mostly by older people; is no longer employed to transmit knowledge; enjoys little prestige among young people because they perceive it as belonging to the past.

+ Italian mother tongue speakers in CanadaYearPopulation% of non-official language mothertongue speakers in Canada% of all language mother tonguespeakers in Canada% of Italian CanadiansTotal % change 1991Population by Mother Tongue (27), Showing Age Groups (13) , 1991 Census of Canada449,66012.7%1.7%39.2%N/A 1996Population by Mother Tongue (27), Showing Age Groups (13) , 1996 Census of Canada484,50010.5%1.7%40.1% 2001Population by Mother Tongue (27), Showing Age Groups (13) , 2001 Census of Canada469,4859.0%1.6%37.0% 2006Population by Mother Tongue (27), Showing Age Groups (13) , 2006 Census of Canada455,0407.4%1.5%31.5% 2011407,4856.2%1.2%27.4% 2016375,6455.1%1.1%23.7% 2021319,5054.1%0.9%20.7%

+ Knowledge of the Italian language in CanadaYearPopulation 1991701,910 1996694,125 2001Population by Mother Tongue (27), Showing Age Groups (13) 2001 Census of Canada680,970 2006Population by Mother Tongue (27), Showing Age Groups (13) Various Languages Spoken (147), Age Groups (17A) and Sex (3) for the Population of Canada, Provinces, Territories, Census Metropolitan Areas and Census Agglomerations, 2006 Census – 20% Sample Data, 2006 Census of Canada660,945 2011595,600 2016N/A 2021547,655

Italiese and Italianese A distinction is made in the literature of the Italian-Canadian language into italiese and italianese. The combination of English, Italian dialects and standard Italian gives rise to Italiese, a term coined by Gianrenzo Clivio in 1975, referring to the language spoken by the descendants of Italian immigrants in Canada. Italiese has the morphosyntax of standard Italian, a largely English vocabulary and the typical pronunciation of the dialect of the area of origin.

The term was later employed to refer to English used in the United States, England, Australia and New Zealand, and recently it is also used in Italy to refer to borrowings from English.

Italiese differs from the language spoken in French-speaking areas, Italianese, in that the language borrowings come not only from Canadian English but also from Canadian French, another official language of Canada spoken particularly in Quebec, Ontario and New Brunswick.

Thus, Italiese and Italianese consist of a mixture of Italian dialect, standard Italian (although not spoken fluently by the majority of speakers), borrowings from Canadian English or Canadian French, and represent a common Italian code for communication between speakers of different dialects. Pronunciation varies depending on the dialect of origin of the speaker.

Language erosion

Lexicon According to Clivio and Danesi (2000) and Villata (2010), lexical borrowings constitute a psycholinguistic response to the new country and refer to objects and ideas from the immigrant's working and social world: home, work tools, everyday objects, feelings and clothing. In other words, they describe all those terms that are essential for everyday communication and for moving within the new environment.

Below is a list of some borrowings of common English words that have been transformed into the Italian-Canadian form: storo (store); sinco (sink); checca (cake); morgheggio (mortgage); fenza (fence); ticchetta (ticket); pusciare (to push); pintare (to paint); frisare (to freeze); smarto (smart); cippe (cheap).

Below is a list of some common French word borrowings that have been transformed into the Italian-Canadian form:

asciuranza (assurance); cava (cave); majorità (majorité); fermare (fermer); sciomaggio (chomage).