Canada is officially bilingual (English and French), but in everyday life people speak hundreds of different languages across the country.

Quick Scoop

  • Canada has 2 official languages : English and French.
  • The 2021 census reports over 200 “other” languages as mother tongues (on top of English and French).
  • Some sources note more than 450 languages spoken if you count all mother tongues and home languages combined.
  • Canada is home to dozens of Indigenous languages , historically over 70 distinct Indigenous languages across about 12 language families.

So, how many languages do they speak in Canada?

It depends what you mean:

  • If you mean official languages → 2 (English and French).
  • If you mean languages people actually speak day to day → well over 200.
  • If you include every reported language, dialect, and mother tongue → estimates go to 400–450+ languages used in the country.

A simple way to phrase it:

Canada officially speaks 2 languages, but its people speak hundreds. 🌍

A few examples

  • Widely spoken non‑official languages include Mandarin, Punjabi, Spanish, Arabic, Tagalog, Cantonese, Urdu, and Korean.
  • Many Indigenous languages are still spoken, such as Inuktitut and Cree languages , although many are endangered.

TL;DR:
Officially: 2 languages.
In real life: several hundred different languages spoken across Canada.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.