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Ten years ago, Rose Lacsamana and her family opened a store targeted at the Filipino market in Saskatoon.

That proved to be a good business decision, given the city’s growing Filipino population. The Confederation Park neighbourhood, where the store is located, includes the city’s largest concentration of Filipinos.

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“It feels like home,” Lacsamana said in an interview Wednesday. “We see lots of Filipinos.”

Lacsamana hears lots of Filipinos, too, specifically speaking Tagalog.

Census information from 2016 included in the City of Saskatoon’s 2017 neighbourhood profiles shows Tagalog now ranks behind English as the second most common mother tongue in Bridge City.

Photo by Liam Richards / Saskatoon StarPhoenix

In the 2011 census, Tagalog ranked behind German as the third most common mother tongue.

The change in first languages shows a transforming Saskatoon, with European languages replaced by Asian ones.

The most recent census numbers show most people’s first language is English with 188,120 claiming it. That’s followed by Tagalog (6,745), Mandarin Chinese (4,075), Urdu (3,340) and French (3,245).