After more than a year of waiting, the data finally came out last week. Statistics Canada released the language-related statistics of the 2006 census.
Here are the top 20 languages “spoken most often at home” in Toronto, my home town, and their corresponding head-counts and percentages:

English – 2746480 (55.31%)
Italian – 185760 (3.74%)
Chinese, n.o.s. – 172040 (3.46%)
Cantonese [...]

The Australians voted for a new prime minister this past Saturday. Kevin Rudd will become the 26th Prime Minister of Australia in about 2-weeks time. I don’t know much about the Australian politics, but one thing Mr. Rudd has caught my attention (and probably of many others too) is his fluency in Mandarin.
Of course, the [...]

Last Friday, I went out for lunch with a few Mandarin-speaking colleagues. We went to an authentic Northern-Chinese Cuisine. We knew it was authentic because it was certified by someone among us who actually came from Harbin, China.
At some point during the lunch, someone brought up a well-known Mandarin tongue-twister. Being the only non-native speaker [...]

I was walking down the Las Vegas Boulevard last week with 2 colleagues, both were native Mandarin speakers. We have known each other for years, well before the time I picked up Mandarin. So we usually communicate in English. Imagine how inconvenient they were not being able to speak their native languages because of my [...]

Some people call it ‘chorusing’ or ‘echoing’. I don’t know if there is a technical name for it. I prefer to call it ‘parroting’.
I am referring to the type of exercises many people use to improve their speaking skills. You would listen to a piece of conversation or monologue, usually at normal pace, and at [...]