For the first time in 60 years, the Italo-Canadian community shows signs of linguistic assimilation to the English majority. In the 1990s, though their rank order fell to second among immigrant groups after the Chinese, it was not the result of attrition of people whose mother tongue is Italian: in 1991 they numbered 449,660, and in 1996 they numbered 484,500, an increase of almost 35,000.