Croatian Language Maintenance in Canada

Although the topic of language maintenance has received considerable attention from linguists around the world, there are still many aspects of this language-contact phenomenon that could be examined further. This paper aims to contribute to the existing body of knowledge by exploring the state of Croatian as a heritage language in Canada. The aim of the paper is two-fold. The first is to describe the demographic characteristics of the Croatian community by investigating the number of people of Croatian descent and the number of Croatian speakers in Canada. The second, and more specific, aim of the paper is to provide an account of the state of Croatian as a minority language and examine the extent of language maintenance in the community. To accomplish the first objective, Canadian census data (1996, 2001, 2006, and 2011) was analyzed, with special focus on linguistic census data (number and age of Croatian speakers in Canada, mother tongue of people of Croatian descent, language most used at home, etc.). To accomplish the second objective, census data was supplemented with data from a questionnaire-based survey completed by members of the Croatian community in Toronto. The survey was completed by 220 participants; 110 first-generation Croatian Canadians and 110 second-generation Croatian Canadians. Two versions of the questionnaire were designed, one for first-generation participants and the other for second-generation participants. The great majority of items in the two versions were identical; each version contained questions about demographic characteristics, language use in everyday life, and self-perceived language proficiency in English and Croatian. The majority of questions were of a closed type (multiple-choice questions and rating scales), but there were also some open-ended questions, so as to give participants the opportunity to express their viewpoint or comment on certain issues. Questions were written in both Croatian and English, and participants were instructed that they could use whichever ...