While you don’t need a reason to enjoy a glass of Halo Halo, the fact that Tagalog comes out on top among all the non-official mother tongues spoken in New Westminster is a valid one to raise a glass or two.
The latest 2021 census released by Statistics Canada showed that as many as 3,270 people in New Westminster have Tagalog as their mother tongue (based on single responses) — this is marginally greater than those whose mother tongues are Mandarin (2,955) and Panjabi (2,815).
Tagalog is also the most regularly and most often spoken non-official language at home in New West. Mandarin, Panjabi, Yue (Cantonese) and Spanish are the other most widely spoken languages. But if you take the entire province, Panjabi ranks the highest, followed by Mandarin, Yue (Cantonese) and only then, Tagalog.
Today, a lot more people have a non-official language as their mother tongue in New West — about 4,500 more compared to 2016. The number of people who speak multiple mother tongues has almost doubled in the last five years — from 2,145 in 2016 to 4,025 in 2021.
As far as the official languages are concerned, the number of English-only speakers saw an uptick of 12 per cent, and the count of French-only speakers slumped by a whopping 25 per cent.
Overall, British Columbia saw a growth of 8.1 per cent of English-only speakers, and a drop of French-only speakers by a small 1.1 per cent.
