Канадський діалект української мови: історія та сучасний стан.

Dialect of Ukrainian
the dialect

Canadian Ukrainian (канадський діалект української мови, , ) is a dialect of the Ukrainian language specific to the Ukrainian Canadian community descended from the first three waves of historical Ukrainian emigration to Western Canada. Canadian Ukrainian was widely spoken from the beginning of Ukrainian settlement in Canada in 1892 until the mid 20th century, when the number of its speakers started gradually declining. Today the number of native speakers of Canadian Ukrainian is significantly lower than its peak in the late 1800s and early 1900s. According to the last Canadian census of 2016, out of the entire Canadian population of 35 million people, only 69,500 Canadian residents said that they speak Canadian Ukrainian at home. However, the latest, fourth wave of historical Ukrainian emigration to Western Canada, which started after Ukraine regained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, has resulted in a slight increase in the number of Canadian Ukrainian speakers; the 1991 Canadian census showed that the number of Canadian Ukrainian speakers at home was even lower at 39,500.

The vocabulary of the dialect, circa the 1920s, consisted of mostly of common Ukrainian words, dialecticisms from Western Ukraine, and Ukrainianizations of English words. For example, concepts that were well known from the pre emigration period continued to be called by their Ukrainian names, as in kukhnia (kitchen), and oliia (oil). Some of these were already regionally distinct to Western Ukraine, for example the word for coal vuhlia instead of what became the standard in Ukrainian, vuhillia. However, for new concepts that had not existed in rural Austria Hungary in the late 19th and early twentieth century, English words were simply adapted into Ukrainian speech, as in трак trak "truck", пампс pamps "pumps", кеш реґистер kesh regyster "cash register", or рісіт risit "receipt".

Prior to the First World War, Canadian authorities in many areas did allow some Ukrainian language instruction in public schools, as minority language rights had been given a degree of protection early in the history of the West, during the Manitoba Schools Question. However, during the war era nativist attitudes came to the fore and all minority language rights were revoked. Speaking Ukrainian in school was expressly forbidden for most of the mid 20th Century. Ukrainian would not again be spoken in Western Canadian public schools until policy of multiculturalism became official in the very late 1960s. Economically, Ukrainian speakers in Canada tended to lag behind others because of the need for English in most fields of labour. Ukrainians also faced ridicule and intimidation from some in the majority community for not speaking English only, particularly if they moved outside the majority ethnic Ukrainian rural Bloc Settlements. Those migrating to other rural areas or from the countryside to nearby cities such as Edmonton and Winnipeg were often quicker to lose their language. Ukrainian language use became associated with rural backwardness and went into relative decline, and would only increase with the introduction of a new wave of post World War II immigrant speakers who spoke, by and large, a Modern or Standard Ukrainian, and not Canadian Ukrainian.