Canadian Ukrainian

[1] Today the number of native speakers of Canadian Ukrainian is significantly lower than its peak in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

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".

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.

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.

The interval census years 1961–1971 witnessed the first absolute decline in the number of individuals claiming Ukrainian as their mother tongue (361,496 to 309,860).

Consequently, in 1996, a total of 162,695 individuals claimed Ukrainian as their mother tongue, while in 2001 the number dropped, albeit at a lesser rate, to 148,085.