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Ukrainian as a Heritage Language

History

Bloor West Village, the historical Ukrainian epicentre.

The Ukrainian ethnic population of Toronto was first created at the start of the 20th century when immigrants moved in the area of what is now known as University Avenue, College Street, Queen Street and Yonge Street. A second Ukrainian region within Toronto was later established in The Annex after the Second World War. In the 1970's and 1980's, Bloor West Village on Bloor Street in between Jane Street and Runnymede Street saw a very strong presence of the Ukrainian ethnic group, either as first-generation, second-generation or third-generation immigrants and today remains as the stronghold of Ukrainian ethnic presence. Today, there is a shift westward of Ukrainian-Canadians towards Etobicoke and Mississauga. The Islington-City Centre West neighbourhood has the largest number of speakers who listed Ukrainian as their mother-tongue, totalling at 1,560 people as of the 2011 census.

Demographics

Toronto is home to one of the largest ethnic Ukrainian populations in Canada alongside Winnipeg and Edmonton, that has a population of over 130,000 Ukrainian-Canadians as of 2011. As of the 2011 census, there are 15,640 people in Toronto that speak Ukrainian as their mother tongue, an approximate -10% decrease from the 2006 census. Meanwhile, as of the 2011 census, there are 7,630 people in Toronto that speak mainly speak Ukrainian at home, an approximate -10% decrease from the 2006 census. In Toronto, along with the traditional Ukrainian language, the Canadian-Ukrainian dialect which has been in Canada for decades is commonly used and taught as a result of generational changes.

St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Orthodox Church at 400 Bathurst Street.

Institutional Support

In 1915, when Ukrainians first arrived in Toronto, the first Ukrainian-Orthodox church was built and with the increase in Ukrainian population over the decades, several other places of interest opened. Religion is a very important aspect of the Ukrainian culture that compliments language, as a result there are many Ukrainian-Orthodox Churches and Ukrainian-Catholic Churches. Churches such as the St. Volodymyr's Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral by Kensington Market, offers a place of worship and a Sunday school, Ukrainian language school, and Music school for children. St. Vladimir Institute at 620 Spadina Avenue across from the University of Toronto is a prominent example of a cultural centre in the city. The library contains a wide collection of Ukrainian literature, art, history, film, and music, and the institute contains a residence for students as well as classes on cooking, adult language and art. The institute is designed to be a centre catered towards both Ukrainians and other Canadians alike. Similarly, the Toronto Ukrainian Festival on Bloor West Village is the largest Ukrainian street festival in North America. It occurs every year in September for 3 days and showcases the wide variety of Ukrainian culture, language, music and art to over 300,000 visitors.

Within the Toronto Catholic District School Board, the St. Josaphat Catholic Elementary school at Long Branch, the St. Demetrius Catholic School, and the Josyf Cardinal Slipyj Elementary school in Etobicoke both have strong Ukrainian language, culture and Catholic religion programs for young students who have inherited Ukrainian as their heritage language.

The Slavic Languages and Literatures Department at the University of Toronto is found at Alumni Hall, at St. Michael's College.

Universities across the Greater Toronto Area have Ukrainian student associations or clubs to some extent as well as language courses. The Ukrainian Student's Club at the University of Toronto aims to represent ethnic Ukrainian students at the university and help connect these students with the rest of the Ukrainain community within Toronto; this is done through educational sessions and community gatherings where the Ukrainian culture and language is promoted and incorporated. At the University of Toronto St. George campus, Elementary and Intermediate Ukrainian are offered as first and second year courses respectively, and the school is the only post-secondary institute within the city to provide some sort of course on the Ukrainian language. The Ukrainian Student's Club at Ryerson University aims to educate students at the university and get them involved and learn about the Ukrainian heritage. This is done by building a sense of community and including a diverse group of students within the club. At York University, the Ukrainian Student's Club is an is "an association of students motivated by their cultural background to promoted tolerance and understanding among various other ethnic groups through the prism of their own culture". Each Ukrainian student association aims to promote the Ukrainian heritage and language by educating students from all different cultures by planning events and activities that will suit the interests of everybody.

Status

The Heritage Language Variation and Change Project in Toronto examines the inter-generational change of heritage language speakers of 7 languages in, one of which includes Ukrainian. This project is currently in the works and has created a vast multi-language corpus and aims to ultimately evaluate cross-linguistic variables that are different from English. To fully understand linguistic variation, this project studies the different speech, vocabulary, and vocal ways of speaking in specific heritage languages from first, second, and third generation speakers, and see the influence that the English language and other languages that one comes into contact with affects these languages.

As indicate in a study from 1980, among the first-generation Ukrainian-Canadians, this group has retained their knowledge of the Ukrainian language very well. However, with the following generations, the percentage of fluency and general knowledge of Ukrainian has decreased. In 1980, out of the second-generation speakers in Toronto, as well as Edmonton, Winnipeg, Vancouver and Montreal, one fifth of them were fluent in Ukrainian and less than one tenth were completely clueless of the language. This showed, however, that second-generation Ukrainians had retained fluency of the language better than their other foreign counterparts. In the third-generation, it was found that two thirds had retained some knowledge of the Ukrainian language which was double the percentage than that of third-generation speakers of ten other dominant heritage languages in Toronto and other Canadian cities.

It has also been found in a 2011 University of Toronto study, the influence of the English language in Toronto affects how Ukrainian is spoken through Voice Onset Time, the period between the stop burst and the onset of vocal fold vibration. In the English language, the voice onset time is shown be very long, while in Ukrainian it is much shorter. This study demonstrates how as the generations go by, it was found that that voice onset time gradually got slower to the point where by the fifth generation, the voice onset time was at a length that comparable to the English language. This was shown to have the same trend with the similar slavic language of Russian.

In addition, a 1987 study interviewing and observing a Ukrainian speaking mother and their child provides an outlook on the maintaining of Ukrainian in the future. Some mothers' viewed Ukrainian to be the "emotive" language that would be used mostly at home and sometimes in the community when needed, while the "instructive" language would be English and would be used by the child at school full-time. These mother's have expressed English to be the more important language as it does give the child future prospects, is the naturally spoken language in Toronto, and the language of education that the child must become accustomed to. This transition is especially noticed through the child's move from preschool, to kindergarten where the "Ukrainian-only" home becomes less of a norm. The existence of English products and television also affects the child and their language development as they then become aware that English is a different language from Ukrainian.