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A man speaking Syrian Arabic. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is the language of education and most writing, but it is not usually spoken. Instead, various dialects of Levantine Arabic, which are not mutually intelligible with MSA, [3] [4] are spoken by most Syrians, with Damascus Arabic being the prestigious dialect in the media.
Individuals from the Middle East first arrived in Canada in 1882, when a group of Syrian and Lebanese immigrants settled in Montreal. [3] Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Palestine were ruled by the Ottoman Empire at that time. As a result, early Arabic immigrants from these countries were referred to as either Turks or Syrians by Canadian authorities.
"In Canada, 4.7 million people (14.2% of the population) reported speaking a language other than English or French most often at home and 1.9 million people (5.8%) reported speaking such a language on a regular basis as a second language (in addition to their main home language, English or French).
Syrians in Canada reflect on a decade in the country
The overwhelming majority of Syrians who settled in Canada from the 1880s to 1960s were of the Christian faith. The so-called Shepard of the lost flock, Saint Raphael Hawaweeny of Brooklyn, New York , came to Montreal in 1896 to help establish a Christian association called the Syrian Benevolent Society and then later on an Orthodox church in ...
In the end, Syria did become a separate state but under the Hashemite king Faisal. He entered Damascus in 1918 in the aftermath of the Ottomans' evacuation of the Levant at the end of World War I. His entry ignited the Syrian national consciousness after he declared an Arab government in the Levant centred in Damascus with him as prince. [118]
Assyrians speak various dialects of Neo-Aramaic, specifically those known as Suret and Turoyo, which are among the oldest continuously spoken and written languages in the world. Aramaic was the lingua franca of West Asia for centuries and was the language spoken by Jesus .
Nevertheless, a majority of new immigrants in every census since 1971 have chosen French more often than English as their adopted language. Statistics Canada's 2011 National Household Survey of Canada reported that for the first time in modern history, the first official language of more than half of Quebec immigrants was French. [24]