Yiddish, which 99.6 percent of the Jews in metropolitan Montreal considered as their mother tongue in 1931, was spoken by only 30.2 percent in 1961. The sharp drop in usage of the language by East European Jewry was reported in an interim analysis by Louis Rosenberg, research director of the Canadian Jewish Congress.
Metropolitan Montreal includes the city itself and its extensive surrounding areas. The report indicated that, in 1961, the percentage of those able to speak both official languages, English and French, was higher among the Jews than among any other ethnic group, except the French.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
