page_title: Ukrainian Canadians
section_title: Language
hierarchical_section_title: Ukrainian Canadians / Culture / Language
caption_attribution_description: English: Bilingual (English-Ukrainian) street sign in Hafford, Saskatchewan, Canada. Intersection of Main Street and Railway Avenue.
context_page_description: Ukrainian Canadians are Canadian citizens of Ukrainian descent or Ukrainian-born people who immigrated to Canada. In 2016, there were an estimated 1,359,655 persons of full or partial Ukrainian origin residing in Canada, making them Canada's eleventh largest ethnic group and giving Canada the world's third-largest Ukrainian population behind Ukraine itself and Russia. Self-identified Ukrainians are the plurality in several rural areas of Western Canada. According to the 2011 census, of the 1,251,170 who identified as Ukrainian, only 144,260 could speak either the modern Ukrainian language or the historic Canadian Ukrainian dialect.
context_section_description: In addition to the official English and French languages, many prairie public schools offer Ukrainian language education for children, including immersion programs. Generally second language students are taught the local Canadian Ukrainian dialect, rather than Standard Ukrainian.
  The Canadian Ukrainian dialect is based on the Ukrainian spoken by the first wave of immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire from 1891 to 1914. Because the Ukrainian language of this era had no words for such things as agricultural machinery other than a plow, words for wildlife or vegetation common to North America and uncommon in Ukraine, words related to the automobile or other self-propelled vehicles on roads, or words for internal combustion engine-powered or electrically-powered tools or home appliances of any kind, extensive borrowings and adaptations from Canadian English were independently made by Ukrainian settlers in the block settlements of the Prairies during their first decades in Canada. The decline of regular communication with relatives in Ukraine, especially the severe restrictions between 1939 and 1989, further isolated the Western Canadian Ukrainian dialect from an evolving Ukrainian language in Soviet Ukraine. Now, immigrants from Ukraine to Western Canada since 1991 speaking Ukrainian find the Canadian Ukrainian dialect old-fashioned and sometimes strange, for modern Ukrainian no longer uses some of the expressions and vocabulary common to the Canadian dialect – or, in the case of the Canadian loan words and adaptations, never did use, because Standard Ukrainian either invented other terms or borrowed and adapted from other languages, such as French, German or Russian.
  There are a few Ukrainian Catholic elementary schools in the Greater Toronto Area including St. Josaphat Catholic Elementary school (Toronto), Josef Cardinal Slipyj Elementary school (Etobicoke) and St. Sofia Catholic Elementary school (Mississauga); as well as Holy Spirit Eastern Rite Elementary School in Hamilton.
caption: Ukrainian language street signs alongside English ones in Hafford, Saskatchewan
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