Quelques caractéristiques démolinguistiques des Québécois de langue maternelle grecque

The author remarks that although the Greek community in Quebec can trace its roots to the first decade of the twentieth century, the community grew during two periods, the first before the economic crisis of the 1930s and the second during the twenty-five years following the Second World War. He points out that the age pyramid of Quebecers with a Greek mother tongue shows the typical characteristics of a population strongly marked by migrations. The 1971 census, he shows, indicated that most Greek immigrants had retained their ethnic mother tongue, while a small proportion had made a linguistic transfer mainly in favor of English. Even among young people, he notes, French had only a slight influence, so that the attractiveness of the two main languages ​​was inversely proportional to the demographic weight of French and English. Knowledge of English only was very strong among Quebecers of Greek mother tongue and increased as one goes down in the age pyramid. The author's examination of the census data showed that the knowledge of French did not reach twenty percent even counting the bilinguals. The author offers an overview of the linguistic situation of Greek households, circa 1971, by making use of a sample of families who adhered to the orthodox Greek religion.

Cahiers québécois de démographie

Vol. 10

no. 2

307-338

Août 1981

fr