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Heritage Language in Toronto

The term "Heritage Language" is used to describe languages other than the official language are used as mother tongue. There are 23 languages that are considered as major in Canada, according to the 2011 Census. Toronto where various ethnic people have lived for a long time has 45% of people whose mother tongue is other than English and French. From those, 28% of people often use non-official language of Canada at home. The top 15 languages that are mostly used at home are Cantonese, other Chinse dialects, Mandarin, Tamil, Spanish, Tagalog, Italian, Portuguese Persian, Russian, Urdu, Korean, Gujarati, Bengali, and Vietnamese.

Korean in Toronto

Immigrant

The first contact made between Korea and Canada happened in 1890 through Canadian missionaries. Although the immigration history of Canada is relatively short compared to that of United States, in late 1980's, lots of Korean immigrants came to Canada with an investment immigration. People came to Canada with a hope to find opportunities and a bright future that could make their families happy. The number of immigrants from Korea kept growing from 1990's, and in 2011, it reached 161,130. Among that, 61,300 people lives in area of Toronto.

Efforts to keep the language

In order to not forget the language, Korean community in Toronto has been put a lot of effort to it. In the GTA, more than 8 Korean schools exist. A Korean school teaches basic korean alphabet to complicated sentence structure to children from age of 3 to 11.