Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The committee examined the state of the official languages in the Northwest Territories using statistical data, language indicators and trends.
The availability of language data is important for the assessment of the health of a language. Measuring the number of speakers over time indicates if a language is losing or gaining vitality.
The following data on language speakers is typically collected to provide information on language trends:
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“>Mother tongue” refers to the first language learned at home in childhood and still understood by the individual.
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“Home language” refers to the language spoken most often at home.
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“Ability to speak“ means that a person is able to carry out a conversation in that language.
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“Language shift” is an important tool for
assessing the vitality of a language. Language shift measures the number of speakers a language gains or loses over time. It measures the ratio of home language to mother tongue speakers.
If language shift shows a declining trend over time, it is fair to say that language loss is occurring and the languages may become endangered. In a situation of declining language shift, more and more children will no longer learn the language of their parents as their first language. This means that the intergenerational transmission of the language is interrupted and a generational gap between the speakers of a language takes place. On the other hand, if language shift moves upward, that means
that more people use the language at home that did not learn the language as their mother tongue.
The information presented demonstrates that all aboriginal languages are suffering from languages loss to various degrees. Some of the aboriginal languages (Gwich’in and Cree for example) can be described as severely endangered because they only have a small number of older, fluent speakers left. Even languages like Tlicho and North Slavey, that were considered strong and healthy, are showing severe language shift mostly because English is increasingly becoming the home language, particularly in households with young parents.
The 2006 Census shows that 1,030 NWT residents indicated that French was their mother tongue. Of those, only 440 persons indicated that they use French as their home language. However, there is a unique upward trend for those identifying that they are able to converse in French. In 2006, 9.1 percent of the NWT population, or 3,720 persons, indicated that they are able to converse in French.
The increased use of English as a home language and the fact that 99 percent of the NWT population that indicated in the 2006 Census that they are able to carry on a conversation in English is another indicator that aboriginal languages are losing ground.
The assessment of the vitality and endangerment of languages is an important step towards planning language revitalization. A comprehensive long-term revitalization plan would need to include indicators to evaluate its implementation and success over time.
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Krutko will continue the executive summary. Thank you.