Ups and Downs in Canada’s Languages: Census 2021

By: Nico Mjones, MA Applied Linguistics / Diploma in Curatorial Studies / CLM Intern

Statistics Canada recently released the data on language that it collected in the 2021 census. This data is full of new and interesting developments in language diversity in Canada. The release of the language data brings new information about official languages in Canada, Indigenous languages, and other non-official languages.

(Image Source: Statistics Canada, Census of Population, 2021)

Canada’s Official Languages & Bilingualism

There have been some changes in the statistics concerning our official languages, but they mostly follow the same trends as in previous years. Proportionally French has declined across Canada due to its significantly smaller speaker population growth. Bilingualism has increased and is particularly common among native French speakers. In the 2021 census, 6,581,680 Canadians spoke both English and French (Table 1). By comparing the data in Table 1 and Table 2, we can see that a much higher proportion of francophones are bilingual than anglophones. If there are almost 8 million people whose first official language is French (Table 2) but only about 4 million who speak French only (Table 1), this suggests that almost half of Canada’s francophones know English as well.  On the other hand, there are almost 28 million Canadians whose first official language is English, and about 25 million who know English only, then under 10% of anglophones report knowing French.

Additionally, in Quebec the number of people whose first official language was English was higher than one million for the first time. The number of people reporting French as their first official language declined in Ontario, home to the largest Francophone population outside of Quebec, and also declined in New Brunswick, the only officially bilingual province. Across many of the census’ statistics the French language has declined in proportion or in number of speakers. French has declined proportionally even where the numbers of speakers grew, as in the national mother tongue data (Table 3) and official language spoken at home (Table 4). This is likely due to immigration and to the increase in speakers of non-official languages.

Table 1. Knowledge of Official Languages

Language	Knowledge of Official Languages 2021	Knowledge of Official Languages 2016	Change 2016-2021
English only	25,261,655 (69%)	23,757,525 (68.3%)	+1,504,130
French only	4,087,895 (11.2%)	4,144,685 (11.9%)	-56,790
English & French	6,581,680 (18%)	6,216,065 (17.9%)	+365,615

Table 2. First Official Language Spoken

Language	First Official Language 2021	First Official Language 2016	Change 2016-2021
English	27,643,140 (75.5%)	26,007,500 (74.8%)	+1,635,640
French	7,828,545 (21.4%)	7,705,755 (22.2%)	+122,790
English & French	476,175 (1.3%)	417,485 (1.2%)	+58,690

Table 3. Mother Tongue Official Language

Language	Mother Tongue 2021	Mother Tongue 2016	Change 2016-2021
English only	20,107,200 (54.9%)	19,460,850 (56%)	+646,350
French only	7,189,245 (19.6%)	7,166,705 (20.6%)	+22,540
English & French	291,325 (0.8%)	165,320 (0.5%)	+126,005

Table 4. Official Language Spoken Most Often at Home

Language	Language spoken most often at home 2021	Language spoken at home 2016	Change
English	23,376,200 (63.8%)	22,162,865 (63.7%)	+1,213,335
French	7,044,855 (19.2%)	6,943,800 (20%)	+101,055
English & French	230,955 (0.6%)	160,185 (0.5%)	+70,770

Canada’s Indigenous Languages and Data Collection Challenges

Not all the information in the census is fully reliable. Sociolinguists will often caution that self-reported data isn’t always accurate, because people may have different names for languages or different ideas of what knowing a language is. However, this particular census has a different data collection issue, particularly with Indigenous languages. The census reports a slight decline in Indigenous language speakers and many news outlets have made note of this, but Statistics Canada has put out a warning about their data on Indigenous languages. The 2021 census was conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic, and during the pandemic many indigenous communities were hard to reach. Many reserves locked down much more significantly than non-reserve communities, and some did not allow entry to anyone who was not a resident of the reserve. Statistics Canada also stated that there was some unwillingness to participate among Indigenous communities due to the discovery of unmarked graves at former residential schools. For these, and other reasons, Statistics Canada cautions against making direct comparisons between 2021 and previous censuses for the speaker statistics of indigenous languages. However, this doesn’t mean the data collected doesn’t have some useful information.

One indigenous language less likely to be as impacted by these data collection problems is Michif. Michif is the language of the Metis, who live in southern Canada but do not live on reserves. Because they are not in the far north and do not live on reservations, it is less likely that the Covid-19 pandemic impacted their enumeration. The data seem to support this: while most Indigenous languages recorded fewer speakers in the 2021 census, Michif had an increase. In 2016, there were 465 mother tongue speakers of Michif and 1,210 speakers in total. In the 2021 census, there were 485 mother tongue speakers and 1,905 speakers in total, an increase of 20 mother tongue speakers and almost 700 speakers in total. Given the small number of people who speak Michif, the increase of 700 speakers is huge, and an extremely positive sign for the language.

Statistics Canada created a list of which reserves refused or were unable to fully take part in enumeration. These were located across Canada, in 6 of the country’s 10 provinces. Based on the information that was collected, Statistics Canada estimated that there may still have been a small decline in the number of speakers of indigenous languages. Statistics Canada also announced that they would release additional information and analysis of Indigenous languages in September.

Canada’s Largest Non-Official Languages

Data from the census not only shows that the number of mother tongue speakers of non-official languages has hit a new record of 7,848,820, but that there have been significant changes in the languages spoken in Canada. One of the most noteworthy of these is the large growth in Punjabi speakers, an increase of 164,905. This makes Punjabi the 2nd largest mother tongue with 666,585 speakers. In the 2016 census, Punjabi was the 3rd largest non-official language by mother tongue, but it has now surpassed Cantonese. Mandarin remained the largest with an increase of 87,215 speakers to a total of 679,255. Spanish and Arabic, the 4th and 5th largest non-official languages, had similar large increases in speakers, of around 80,000 and 89,000 respectively. Out of the top five, only Cantonese had a decrease in mother tongue speakers. These large changes are mostly due to immigration. Most immigrants from China today speak Mandarin rather than Cantonese, and thus the number of Mandarin speakers has been growing as immigration from China continues. In the 2016 census, Mandarin showed an increase of 343,335 mother tongue speakers. While Statistics Canada won’t release data on immigration, nationality, and ethnicity until October of this year, it is known that in addition to immigration from China, immigration from India, Latin America, and Arabic speaking countries has been on the rise, and the linguistic data reflect this.

Table 5. Languages in Canada by Mother Tongue

Language	2021	2016	Change
Mandarin	679,255	592,040 (1)	+87,215
Punjabi	666,585	501,680 (3)	+164,905
Cantonese	553,380	565,270 (2)	-11,890
Spanish	538,870	458,850 (4)	+80,020
Arabic	508,410	419,890 (5)	+88,520
Tagalog	461,150	431,380 (6)	+29,770
Italian	319,505	375,635 (8)	-56,130
German	272,865	384,035 (7)	-111,170*
Portugese	240,680	221,540 (9)	+19,140
Urdu	235,290	210,815 (10)	+24,475
Russian	197,905	188,255 (12)	+9,650
Iranian Persian/Farsi	179,425	214,200 (11)	-34,775*
Vietnamese	173,000	156,425 (14)	+16,575
Korean	170,400	153,425 (15)	+16,975
Polish	160,170	181,710 (13)	-21,540

* Data presented for German and Iranian/Persian is misleading due to new divisions of German and Iranian/Persian. See text for analysis.

While Cantonese remains one of the largest non-official languages in Canada, it is likely that it will continue to fall lower in the ranking of languages by size. This is similar to the situation of other languages in Canada that are transitioning from large mother tongues of recent immigrants into heritage languages of subsequent generations. Italian and Polish are historically large languages in Canada that both show large declines in mother tongue speakers in this census, declines of about 56,000 and 22,000 respectively.

German is a peculiar case of this decline: at first glance the data shows that German had the largest mother tongue decrease in Canada, with 111,170 fewer speakers. However, this is misleading because the way that German and several other languages are recorded was changed between 2016 and 2021. A number of languages, such as Plautdietsch, Pennsylvania German, Swiss German, and Low Saxon were added to the census in 2021, and these all would likely have been included under German in the 2016 census. If we combine the results for German with all of these varieties that are now listed separately, the decline is more likely to be 51,385 fewer speakers. While this is still a large number, and only second among the large languages in mother tongue decline after Italian, it is less than half the reported decline.

A similar problem with the data can be seen with the Iranian languages. Iranian Persian, or Farsi also shows a decline in speakers despite increases in previous censuses. The 2016 census recorded “Persian (Fasi)” as having 214,200 mother tongue speakers. The 2021 census shows “Iranian Persian” as having 179,425 mother tongue speakers and “Persian (Farsi), none other specified” 25,975. The census now also includes Dari, which is the official name for the Persian language as spoken in Afghanistan. Farsi and Dari are mutually intelligible (speakers of either can mostly or entirely understand the other) and have similar standards for writing, but some differences in pronunciation. Dari in 2021 is listed as having 57,220 mother tongue speakers. This suggests that Persian did not actually have a decline, but that changes to the census have divided the way the Persian language is recorded.

The census is an important tool for understanding language in Canada. There are ways in which the census can struggle to capture the necessary data for this, such as it has in 2021 with Indigenous languages. When the census does capture data, it sometimes requires additional analysis to understand what it means. This is especially true of changes to the census categories, as in the case of German and Persian. In spite of these difficulties, the 2021 census is still illuminating the state of language in Canada. The census has shown how varied the trajectory of different languages in Canada has been, how well efforts to support French and Indigenous languages have fared, and how much linguistic diversity has grown in Canada.

For language data from the 2021 census, visit: www.statcan.gc.ca/en/subjects-start/languages

Esperanto Speakers Meet in Canada

By: Christer Oscar Kiselman, Uppsala, Sweden

For a full week in August of 2022, eight hundred and thirty Esperanto speakers from all
continents except Antarctica were welcomed by the City of Montréal in Québec, Canada.

An Esperanto congress can perhaps best be described as a forceful eruption of
conferences on a lot of topics, in fact on all topics of interest to human beings. Many
are presented in parallel, so that it is often hard to choose which one to attend.

Esperanto is an artificial language, intended to facilitate understanding between all
humans. The first Esperanto manual was published in July of 1887 in Warsaw, which
was then in the Russian Empire.

The booklet, which appeared in that year in Russian, Polish, French, and German,
and the following year in Hebrew, Yiddish, and English, was authored by a Jewish
scholar, L. Zamenhof, who was born in 1859 in Bialystok, then in the Russian Empire,
now in eastern Poland. Actually, Esperanto was his fourth constructed language, a fact
of some importance since each version of his conlangs was an improvement over the
previous ones. We should note that ‘artificial’ means that the language is artfully made!

During the week there were four concerts, a play, and lectures on languages including
the Indigenous Canadian language Anishinaabeg, Yiddish, and, of course, Esperanto
itself. There were seven lectures presenting in the International Congress University,
on topics including space research, chemistry, glass, and the Silk Road in Asia. Other
lectures treated bird migration, geology, and the Pythagorean Theorem. And most
importantly, there were personal meetings between old friends and new friends alike,
severely missed during two years of Zoom meetings.

The congress was initially planned to take place in 2020 but had to be postponed for
well-known reasons. This was the one hundred and seventh congress in a series
starting in 1905 and meetings every year with interruptions only during the two World
Wars. It was the second to be organized in Canada, and the fifth of the congresses held
in North America. On a personal note, it was my thirty fourth, of which two had been
virtual via Zoom. My first was in 1980.

As to participants, the record was held by the US, with Canada second, France third,
Germany fourth and the UK fifth, followed by Japan and South Korea.

Duncan Charters, Professor of Languages and Cultures at Principia College, Elsah,
Illinois, is the President of the organizing society, the Universal Esperanto Association
(UEA). He welcomed us all and also gave a talk on education.

Next year the Esperanto Congress will be held in Torino, with Fabrizio Angelo
Pennacchietti as one of the main organizers. There were hopes expressed that later a
congress could be held in Africa—if so, that would be the first time ever that Esperanto
speakers will meet in that continent.

The theme of the 2022 Congress was:
“Language, Life and Earth: the Decade of Indigenous Languages“, in reference to the
Decade of Indigenous Languages declared
by UNESCO for 2022-2032.

Speaking of Pride: The LGBT community and Linguistics

By: Nico Mjones, Student in Applied Linguistics MA and Certificate in Curatorial Studies / CLM Intern

June is Pride Month in Canada. As both a student of Applied Linguistics and a member of the LGBT community, I find it important to talk about the ways in which language matters for LGBT people. In this blog I will discuss some of the ways in which language and LGBT topics intertwine. The way LGBT topics and identities are talked about, the terms used to refer to LGBT people, and even grammatical issues such as pronouns and grammatical gender are some of the ways LGBT people and language intersect. Due to Canada’s diverse linguistic make up, these matters can vary by language as well, including in official languages, non-official languages, and indigenous languages.

Terminology

Terminology is very important to LGBT people. The words used to refer to different LGBT identities and to the community collectively have evolved significantly over the last century. The term LGBT, “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender” is the most common collective term, but LGBTQ+, “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Plus” is often used in an attempt to be more inclusive. LGBT terminology in Canada is similar to that in the rest of the Anglosphere and Francophonie. A term that is more common in Canada than in other countries is the term “Two-Spirit”. Two-Spirit is a collective term for the many different pre-colonial gender and sexuality concepts in Indigenous cultures in Canada. Not all of the indigenous groups in Canada have traditional identities that fall within the Two-Spirit moniker, and not all Indigenous people identify with the term in preference to other LGBT terms. Many LGBT organizations across Canada have begun to include Two-Spirit so as to be more inclusive of Indigenous LGBT people. An example of this is the longer acronym LGBTQ2S+, adding “2S” to represent Two-Spirit in the acronym.

Fig. 1 A modified version of the Progress Flag. The Progress Flag adds black and brown stripes, representing people of color in the LGBT community, as well the colors of the Trans flag to a Chevron on the left of the Pride Flag. The purple added to the chevron in this flag created by Brock University specifically represents the Haudenosaunee and Anishinabe members of the LGBT community in the Niagara Region.

In English, there is debate over the term “queer”. Once universally considered a slur against LGBT people, today many consider the word “reclaimed” and many LGBT people use it self-referentially and to refer to the LGBT community. Some prefer the term ‘queer’ as more succinct, radical, or inclusive than LGBT. Others consider the term to be too offensive and harmful to be used.

Pronouns and Grammatical Gender

Gender in language is an especially important subject for transgender and non-binary people in the LGBT community. Grammatical gender is a system for dividing nouns into different classes and varies between languages, For example, French divides all nouns into two classes of masculine and feminine, while Algonquian languages divide all nouns into two classes of animate and inanimate. Generally, a noun’s class affects other words in the same sentence, through agreement on verbs, adjectives and pronouns. The LGBT community is particularly focused on neutrality in pronouns. Most trans people have preferences for their pronouns, and these can be different from what are assumed, Non-binary people may prefer neutral pronouns.

For English in Canada, gender neutrality is relatively easy. English does not have grammatical gender outside of gendered pronouns. Many gendered terms, such as actress or waitress, have declined in use and terms like actor and waiter have become gender neutral. There has been some debate over a neutral pronoun. Most commonly used is the singular case of “they”. Some view this as grammatically incorrect, but the usage of singular they has been documented in English since at least the writings of Shakespeare. Singular they has become very commonly used amongst non-binary people in the LGBT community, andsees some acceptance by style guides and other prescriptive sources. There have also been examples of inventive neutral pronouns, such as “xe”. These are attempts to create a new pronoun that is gender neutral, and these have seen some usage but relatively little acceptance in linguistic prescriptive guides. 

Gender neutrality in French in Canada is considerably more difficult because of its system of grammatical gender. This makes it difficult for non-binary people who may wish to have gender neutral language used for them. For pronouns, “iel” is the most commonly discussed gender neutral pronoun in French. There are many people who are actively working to develop a system of gender neutrality in French. In Canada, one significant academic is Florence Ashley, a doctoral student at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law. Florence Ashley, who themself uses gender neutral pronouns, specializes in research of transgender rights and welfare in Canada, and has also written in French about developing a system of gender neutrality in the French language.

Indigenous & Immigrant Languages

Pronouns and grammatical gender in Canada’s non-official languages vary considerably. Many indigenous languages in Canada have a single gender neutral pronoun, such as the Cree 3rd person pronoun “wiya” which is not differentiated by gender. Many indigenous languages have a system that is not defined by masculine and feminine, but instead by animacy and inanimacy. This system is found in the Algonquian, Iroquian, and Siouan language families, which include the Cree, Anishnaabe, Mohawk, and Nakoda languages, among others. Because the grammatical gender in these languages is based on animacy rather than on masculine and feminine, they have no impact on the gendering of language for LGBT usage. Other language families, such as Na-Dene or Inuit, do not have grammatical gender at all.

The many iImmigrant languages in Canada also vary greatly with respect to grammatical gender. The Chinese languages, the largest in Canada after English and French, do not have grammatical gender and have a single gender neutral pronoun in speaking. The third person pronoun in Chinese is written differently for “he” or “she” but both are pronounced the same. In Mandarin this is “Tā” and in Cantonese “Keoi”. Languages like Persian and Tagalog, both within the ten largest languages spoken in Canada, have no grammatical gender and no gendering in pronouns at all. 

Other immigrant languages share some of the difficulties that French presents. Spanish, a Romance language related to French, is the third largest non-official language in Canada. Spanish is a gendered language similar to French, but gender neutrality has been more easily developed for it. Gender neutral endings for nouns are a frequent subject of discussion amongst Spanish speakers in Canada, the US, and Latin America. Where traditionally words would end in “o” for masculine or “a” for feminine, the endings of “x” or “e” are used to create gender neutrality. An example is “Latino/Latina/Latinx/Latine”. There is considerable debate about the “x” and “e” endings, but many Spanish language organizations in Canada and abroad have come to accept or promote the usage of “x” and “e” endings for gender neutrality. 

Some languages have borrowed gender neutral pronouns from other languages. In German, the eighth largest language in Canada, the English gender neutral pronoun “they” is frequently used. The Scandinavian languages Norwegian and Swedish have attracted attention for borrowing the gender neutral third person pronoun “hen” from  Finnish.

Fig. 2  This graphic created for Wikipedia illustrates the native Swedish pronouns “han” (masculine) and “hon” (feminine) alongside the borrowed neutral Finnish pronoun “hen”.

	Grammatical Gender	Gendered Pronouns	Gender Neutral Pronoun (if known)
English	No	Yes	They, Xe, Others
French	Masculine/Feminine	Yes	lel
Chinese	No	No	Tā (Mandarin), Keoi (Cantonese), others
Punjabi	Masculine/Feminine	No	Uha
Spanish	Masculine/Feminine	Yes	Elle
Tagalog	No	No	Siya
Arabic	Masculine/Feminine	Yes	Huma (From Koranic, dual form)
German	Masculine/Feminine	Yes	They (Borrowed from English), Xier, Es (equivalent to “it”), use of name
Italian	Masculine/Feminine	Yes	Loro (equivalent to they)
Hindustani	Masculine/Feminine	No	Vah
Portuguese	Masculine/Feminine	Yes	Elu
Persian	No	No	U
Cree	Animate/Inanimate	No	Wiya
Ojibwemowin	Animate/Inanimate	No	Wiin
Inuktitut	No	No	Una

Fig. 3 Grammatical traits of the 10 largest languages and the 3 largest Indigenous languages in Canada

Gender, Sexuality, and Language

The LGBT community in Canada is not only diverse in gender and sexual identities, but also linguistically. Canada is a highly multilingual society, and so too are LGBT Canadians. There are many linguistic challenges for the LGBT community, but dedicated language activists and community members continue to help define inclusive language around for LGBT topics and people. Although the linguistic challenges for LGBT people vary from language to language, the fundamental beliefs in equality and community underlie the creative approaches to word choice in all languages.

Ukrainian Language in Canada

By: Nico Mjones, Student in Applied Linguistics MA and Certificate in Curatorial Studies / CLM Intern

Canada is home to the largest Ukrainian population outside of Ukraine and Russia. According to the 2016 census, 1.3 million Canadians claim Ukrainian ancestry. In addition to this, there are over 100,000 Canadians who speak Ukrainian as a mother tongue, making it the 20th largest mother tongue language in Canada. However, there was once a time when Ukrainian was the third largest language in Canada after English and French. The Ukrainian language in Canada also played a role in the development of multiculturalism in the country and provides a snapshot of Canada’s immigration history. Today many speakers and learners seek to maintain the linguistic and cultural legacy of Ukrainian in Canada.

Canadian and Ukrainian flags.

The History and Geographic Range of Ukrainian in Canada

Ukrainian immigrants to Canada were first recorded in 1892. There have been several waves of Ukrainian immigration. The first wave was from the 1890s until World War I (1914-1918), and these Ukrainians experienced internment in Canada as “enemy aliens” during the war. The second wave was during the interwar years (1919-1938), and the third was in the years just after World War II (1939-1945). The fourth and fifth waves have been smaller and include those who left Ukraine after the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991) and refugees from the Russian-Ukrainian conflict (2014-present day). The earliest waves of immigrants to Canada were often farmers with lower levels of literacy. With each wave of immigration, the average education and professional skills of the immigrants rose.

Ukrainian immigrants mainly settled in the Prairie provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. A significant number also came to Ontario and British Columbia. Smaller numbers have settled in Quebec, the Atlantic provinces, and the Territories. Today the largest number of Ukrainian speakers is in Ontario. However, a much larger proportion of the population speak Ukrainian in the Prairies.

Bilingual English and Ukrainian street signs in Hafford, Saskatchewan. Source.

The first Canadian census to collect mother tongue data was in 1931, and Ukrainian was the 4th most common mother tongue language, behind English, French, and German. Ukrainian remained in this position through the 1941 census. In the 1951 and 1961 censuses, Ukrainian was the largest mother tongue after English and French. In subsequent censuses, Ukrainian declined from the third largest and by the 2016 census had fallen to the 20th largest mother tongue. In the 2016 census, 102,485 people spoke Ukrainian as a mother tongue in Canada. In addition, there are almost 30,000 more people who speak Ukrainian than claim it as a mother tongue.

Location	Ukrainian Mother Language	Knowledge of Language
Canada	102,485	132,115
Ontario	40,375	54,615
Alberta	21,835	26,600
Manitoba	14,505	17,095
Saskatchewan	11,270	13,090
British Columbia	8,630	10,740
Quebec	5,210	9,015
Nova Scotia	320	425
New Brunswick	170	310
Yukon	50	40
Prince Edward Island	45	25
Newfoundland & Labrador	40	120
Northwest Territories	35	25
Nunavut	5	10

Ukrainian language across Canada in the 2016 census.

Ukrainian Canadian Contributions to Multiculturalism

Ukrainian Canadians have contributed significantly to multiculturalism in Canada. Food like pyrohy, known in English as perogies, the Ukrainian church architecture of Philip Ruh in the prairies, and attractions like “the world’s largest pysanka”, or painted egg, in Vegrevile, Alberta, are all examples of Ukrainian culture shared with all of Canada. Ukrainians also played a role in the development of official multiculturalism in Canada and are especially recognized for their contributions in the 1960s to the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. The Ukrainian submissions helped to shape the commission’s recommendations beyond English and French, and laid the way for Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau making multiculturalism an official policy of Canada.

Vegreville Pysanka, the world’s largest Ukrainian painted egg. Source.

The Uniqueness of Canadian Ukrainian and Ukish

The Ukrainian language spoken in Canada differs from that now spoken in Ukraine as the two dialects have developed differently over the past century. As well, some Ukrainian Canadians speak “Ukish”, a Ukrainian influenced dialect of English.

The Ukrainian language is written in the Cyrillic script. Cyrillic differs from the Roman alphabet in several ways. For instance, while the Ukrainian letter “И” may look like the Roman letter “N”, it is actually pronounced more similar to “y” as in the end of the English word “carry”. Some letters that are shared between Roman and Cyrillic scripts have completely different sounds, such as “Р”, which in Ukrainian is pronounced with a rolled “r” sound! Other letters like “Д”, which is pronounced like the “d” in “dog”, do not exist in the Roman alphabet. Some letters in Ukrainian Cyrillic have complex sounds, like “Щ”, which is close to “shch”. This is like the sounds “sh” in “sheets” and the “ch” in “cheat” put together. Another letter like this is “Я”, which is pronounced like “ia” or “ya”, and sounds like the end of the word “Austria”.
Canadian Ukrainian can vary from the standard Ukrainian spoken in Ukraine for several reasons.

Ukrainians in Canada mostly came from western Ukraine where particular dialects of Ukrainian are spoken. Another significant reason is due to the exposure to English. Some recorded examples of English borrowings into Canadian Ukrainian are listed below:

English	Canadian Ukrainian (transliterated)	Standard Ukrainian (transliterated)
box	baksynku	korobka
exhibition	artsybyshyn	vystavka
river	ryveru	richka
cookies	kukisy	pechyvo
July	dzhulaju	lypenʹ
Christmas	Krismusu	Rizdvo

English borrowings into Canadian Ukrainian.

Names and grammar were also affected by exposure to English. Names like Ivan and Olena were sometimes changed to John and Helen. While the influence of English on Ukrainian in Canada is great, language contact is a two-way street. Ukrainian words like “zabava” (reception) and “baba” (grandma) are used in English among Ukrainian Canadians and in the communities where they have a large presence.

Ukrainian Canadian Literature

There is a great deal of Ukrainian Canadian literature and poetry. Much modern Ukrainian Canadian literature is written in English, exploring the identity and history of Ukrainians and their place in Canada. For a significant period, generally before the 1970s, most Ukrainian Canadian literature was written in the Ukrainian language. There are hundreds of authors, both born in Ukraine and in Canada, who have written in Ukrainian in Canada. Some well-regarded Ukrainian writers in Canada include novelist Illia Kiriak (1888-1955), an immigrant who arrived in Canada in 1907, and Myroslav Irchan (1897-1937), a communist novelist who spent many years in Ukrainian communities in Canada.

A frequent feature of Ukrainian poetry and literature in Canada is the reference to agriculture, and especially, wheat. Ukraine is one of the largest wheat producing countries, and the Canadian prairies produce wheat as well. As many Ukrainians were farmers, this agricultural relation between the “old country” and their new home became poetic inspiration. The following excerpt from a Ukrainian Canadian poet from Saskatchewan opens with a reference to wheat fields as a “golden sea”:

The sound of the golden sea has entered into our hearts, bringing yearnings of supreme beauty and radiance. It incites us to sing, but it has not betrayed its secret… The Ukrainian prairies gave us our souls, but the Canadian prairies have stirred us up to sing.

Ivan Danilchuk, Day Dawns, Svitaye Den, Winnipeg, 1929. Translated from Ukrainian.

Ukrainian sky and wheat field, reflecting the colours of the Ukrainian flag. Source.

Qu’appelle Valley in Saskatchewan. Source.

Maintaining Ukrainian in Canada

While the Ukrainian language in Canada has declined from its peak as the third largest language in the country many continue to use and learn the language. More than 100,000 Canadians speak Ukrainian, particularly concentrated in the prairies and northern Ontario. Many universities, such as University of Saskatchewan and University of Manitoba, have extensive programs studying Ukrainian Canadian heritage, culture, and language. In Alberta, a Ukrainian bilingual education program enrolls more than 700 children. The numbers of speakers of Ukrainian in Canada also continue to grow from more recent immigrants fleeing the conflict with Russia.

Learning Mandarin at 0, English at 10, French at 22

By: Jingshu Helen Yao, Master of Museum Studies student / Summer Intern at the CLM

Language acquisition is my area of interest and I am fascinated by the theories about the connections between language learning and age, language distance, and level of exposure.

Sometimes I observe people and ask questions to draw connections between what I learned and real-life scenarios, but the best subject to study is always myself. Since I decided to challenge myself and pick up French, I started to reflect on my experience learning other languages.

Linguists believe that everyone with regular cognitive ability is able to acquire their first language effortlessly under normal development. The abilities to comprehend and to speak are considered innate, similar to the ability to walk or run. Like many, I have no memory of the acquisition process of my own first language. I am a native speaker of Mandarin Chinese and the knowledge I have regarding Mandarin is mainly unconscious knowledge, or competence. I could easily distinguish grammatical sentences but would have difficulty explaining the exact grammatical rules. On the contrary, when I learned English in school, I learned systematic information about English clause types and conjugation rules, or what is commonly referred to as grammar by non-linguists. Even after more than a decade of study, I still make mistakes speaking or writing English, but if I need to lay out the rules of the English language one by one, I might do better than many native speakers who didn’t study linguistics or English grammar. This type of knowledge is conscious, like solving a math problem or citing a verse. I need to actively think about what I need to say and whether sentences are grammatical before producing them, whereas the same process is more intuitive for a native speaker. Even though the task became less demanding as I became more fluent, it was almost impossible to ever process English as a native speaker does.

“Le nouveau taxi!”, beginner’s textbook for learning French as a second language, Chinese edition. (Photo: Jingshu Helen Yao)

Learning French this summer reminded me of the initial stage of learning English. I struggle to produce every sound, pause for long times to think about what I need to say and how to say it. However, learning a foreign language as a child and an adult is rather different. On one hand, I have a big advantage of having studied linguistics and understanding terms such as “tense”, “aspect”, and “grammatical gender”. If I had been exposed to French at a much younger age, the complex verb conjugation rules and the masculine and feminine genders of nouns would have completely throw me off, since none of them were in my first language Mandarin. I would have asked questions such as “Why are the chairs feminine and why are the walls masculine?”, to which the answer could only be “That’s how the language works.” That definitely wouldn’t have satisfied the mind of a child. As an adult learner, I am more comfortable with just remembering the genders rather than trying to figure out why. On the other hand, I didn’t feel as much pressure when I tried to pronounce English words as a child. I wasn’t aware of “having an accent” and wasn’t as embarrassed about making mistakes as I am now. Even though I understand that making mistakes is a natural process during learning, I find myself less expressive and less willing to speak out loud, which is a barrier in language learning.

Aside from age difference, language distance is another factor that I think about. Mandarin is very distant from English geographically, historically, and structurally. Learning English meant learning completely different phonological rules and morphological structures. For example, a syllable in Mandarin usually contains only a consonant and a vowel, whereas an English syllable can have several consonants together in a cluster, and a syllable can end with consonants. English also has a larger vocabulary than Mandarin. On the other hand,  French and English are much closer, since they are both Indo-European languages and French heavily influenced English in its development. The two languages share many words that were either of the same origin or borrowed from one another. Even before I started learning French, I could figure out part of the French information on a snack package using the knowledge I already had in English.

Closeness of French and English shown in the Indo-European family tree.
Source, emphasis by CLM.

I was often asked how many languages I speak when people learned that I study linguistics. The question frustrates me from time to time since linguists are not human-shaped Google Translate. Rather than learning languages themselves, they study everything about languages. However, learning a new language as a linguistics student is a fun experience and my journey learning French has just begun.

Les parents utilisent les babyphones, mais les bébés nous ecoutent aussi

Cette semaine je me suis entretenu avec la Docteure Ailis Cournane de l’Université de Toronto. Nous avons discuté de l’acquisition d’une langue primaire (ALP), en particulier de la manière dont les bébés et les enfants en bas âge acquièrent leur(s) langue(s) maternelle(s), et de leur façon de s’y prendre. Vous êtes-vous déjà demandé si votre enfant comprend votre « langage de bébé » ? Si vous pouviez élever un enfant parfaitement trilingue ? Ou s’il importe que votre enfant n’arrive pas à se souvenir qu’on ne dit pas « chevals » ou « journals » (‘gooses’ et ‘mices’ dans le texte original) ? Comprendre grâce à l’ALP comment nos enfants font pour acquérir une langue est la première étape vers l’obtention d’une réponse à certaines de ces questions. Même si vous n’avez pas d’enfant, vous en étiez un autrefois ; alors voyons ce que l’enfant qui se trouve en chacun d’entre nous pense de la façon que nous avons tous d’apprendre notre première langue. Tout comme pour de nombreux autres aspects de l’éducation des enfants, quand on a son propre enfant, on a tendance à avoir le sentiment d’être des experts en développement de l’enfant. Mais en ce qui concerne l’acquisition d’une langue première, on peut se tourner vers des spécialistes comme la Professeure Cournane pour nous aider à comprendre cette science qui se cache derrière ce processus et comprendre quels genres de vérités universelles il existe vraiment. Même si vous n’avez pas d’enfants, vous en étiez un autrefois. Allons voir tout de suite ce que l’enfant en chacun de nous pense de notre façon d’apprendre notre langue maternelle.

[Moi quand j’avais eu 2 ou 3 ans. Le spaghetti m’a rendu heureux…certaines choses ne changent jamais]

Michael Iannozzi : Qu’est-ce qui vous a d’abord intéressé dans l’étude de l’acquisition d’une langue primaire ?

Ailis Cournane : À l’origine je travaillais sur les changements linguistiques et je voyais là constamment des références au rôle que joue l’enfant-apprenant dans ce processus de changement linguistique [Le changement linguistique est la manière dont les langues évoluent au cours du temps, ce qui signifie en général, sur plusieurs générations]. On pense que les enfants ré-analysent la langue lorsqu’ils l’apprennent et qu’ils construisent leur propre grammaire mentale [interne et subconsciente]. Cependant, en dépit du fait qu’on observe cette théorie partout et du fait qu’elle soit largement acceptée, personne ne l’avait suffisamment explorée en rapport avec les changements linguistiques. Je me suis donc intéressée à la langue des enfants parce que je m’intéresse d’abord au changement. Le développement et le changement ont beaucoup en commun.

MI : Comment définit-on l’acquisition d’une langue primaire ?

AC : L’acquisition d’une langue primaire (ALP) décrit le processus et les propriétés de la langue des bébés, des tout-petits et des enfants en bas-âge au fur et à mesure qu’ils acquièrent leur(s) langue(s) maternelle(s). L’enfant commence sans aucun langage (mais avec une capacité pour le langage !) et, grâce à une contribution sociale de la part de locuteurs qui l’entourent, il construit graduellement sa ou ses langue(s). Je dis ‘langue(s)’ parce que beaucoup d’enfants sont exposés à plusieurs langues si bien qu’ils les acquièrent simultanément.

MI : Comment l’apprentissage d’une langue primaire est-il différent de l’apprentissage d’une langue seconde ?

AC : Il y a quelques différences importantes. Tout d’abord, avec l’ALP, il n’y a pas d’autre langue déjà en place. Si vous êtes un enfant apprenant l’anglais, vous construisez votre première langue en utilisant seulement votre capacité linguistique et votre exposition à des locuteurs plus âgés. En ce qui concerne l’acquisition langue seconde [ALS], vous avez déjà une langue en place ! Quand vous apprenez l’anglais en tant qu’adolescent, par exemple, vous l’apprenez donc en relation avec votre langue maternelle (disons le mandarin). L’anglais que vous apprenez en tant que L2 entre en compétition de plusieurs manières avec le mandarin que vous avez appris en premier [Une L2 est la deuxième langue d’une personne, celle qu’on a apprise en deuxième.] Deuxièmement, il apparait que l’ALS requière plus de motivation et un enseignement plus explicite que l’ALP : cours, exercices, se forcer à parler avec des locuteurs natifs, etc. L’ALS semble aussi montrer des étapes importantes moins bien définies que l’ALP.

MI : Qui sont ces sources principales de contribution pour l’acquisition de la première langue, L1, d’un enfant ?

AC : Les sources principales de contribution pendant la petite enfance sont les personnes principales qui s’occupent des enfants [parents, enseignants, personnel de crèche, de jardin d’enfants, nounous…]. Très tôt, lorsque la plupart des enfants dépendent largement de leur mère, la contribution maternelle est généralement la plus forte. Les frères et sœurs plus âgés jouent aussi un rôle tôt dans le développement. Une fois que l’enfant va à une crèche ou une école maternelle, les enfants du même âge commencent à jouer un rôle plus important.

MI : De qui un enfant prend-il son accent?

AC : Eh bien, un enfant, en particulier un enfant plus âgé ou un enfant unique, modèle d’abord sa langue sur celle de ces principales personnes qui s’occupent de lui ; c’est d’eux qu’ils reçoivent la plupart de la contribution linguistique. Cependant, les enfants s’adaptent très vite à leurs congénères dès qu’ils entrent à la crèche ou à l’école maternelle. C’est pourquoi les gens dont les parents sont des immigrés ne partagent pas l’accent de leurs parents mais plutôt celui de leurs pairs. Par exemple, mes parents viennent d’Irlande mais mes frères et moi avons grandi à Montréal. Nous avons un accent anglais canadien avec les traits attendus des anglophones de Montréal. Nous avons occasionnellement une certaine influence irlandaise mais notre façon de parler est bien, bien plus proche de celle de nos pairs que de celle de nos parents.

MI : Est-ce que les composantes de la langue des enfants (accent, grammaire, prononciation, etc.) sont apprises séparément, à partir de différentes sources ou sont-elles apprises simultanément ?

AC : Simultanément. Cependant l’intérêt ou le point principal de concentration des changements développementaux peuvent se produire dans différents domaines à différents moments. Par exemple, puisque les mots sont faits de différents sons, l’enfant a besoin de commencer à décrypter le système sonore d’une langue avant de pouvoir vraiment saisir des mots (sans parler des mots complexes ou des phrases). Ceci dit, les sons sont contenus dans des mots si bien que l’enfant apprend aussi nécessairement les mots lorsqu’il se concentre sur le développement des sons. Il y a là en jeu des interactions très complexes.

MI : Alors que les enfants apprennent leur première langue, ils font tous des erreurs: qu’est-ce que ces erreurs nous disent sur la manière d’apprendre à parler ?

AC : J’aime bien appeler les erreurs ou les fautes des analyses « divergentes » ou « créatives » parce que ces analyses sont productives et systématiques et elles émergent d’aspects qui indiquent comment l’enfant apprend [cela signifie que les erreurs qu’un enfant produit comme de dire « chevals » pour « chevaux » et « journals » pour « journaux » sont logiques même si elles ne sont pas correctes. En d’autres termes, les erreurs sont calquées sur un modèle et peuvent s’expliquer.]

Elles n’ont l’air d’erreurs que quand on les compare aux normes de grammaire adultes mais, elles ne sont en réalité pas vraiment des erreurs ; elles montrent, par exemple, le dévoilement par l’enfant des règles linguistiques et l’application de ces règles (parfois des exceptions). Par exemple, les enfants sur-appliquent souvent le passé des verbes réguliers aux verbes irréguliers : ‘prendu’ pour ‘pris’ ou ‘couri’ pour ‘couru’ (les exemples originaux en anglais sont ‘goed’ pour ‘went’ et ‘eated’ pour ‘ate’). Cela montre que l’enfant comprend comment former de manière productive le temps passé. C’est une grande prouesse et ça montre la prise de conscience de modèles et la capacité à généraliser une règle.

MI : Les erreurs qu’un enfant produit en parlant sont-elles malgré tout un genre d’erreur? Est-ce qu’on peut dire qu’une prononciation incorrecte est le même genre d’erreur que de dire ‘prendu’ ou ‘couri’ ?

AC : Pas nécessairement. Une prononciation incorrecte, par exemple, peut avoir une cause physiologique (contrôle musculaire, état de l’appareil vocal en développement, coordination, etc.), cognitive (compréhension du système des sons de la langue, organisation), ou même les deux.

L’omission de mots grammaticaux (par exemple dire ‘envie partir’ (‘wan go’ dans le texte original) laissant de côté le pronom et le verbe ‘j’ai’ et le marqueur infinitif ‘de’ (‘I’ et ‘to’ en anglais), et ce que ces erreurs signifient, sont des sujets de débat bien connus. La question est de savoir si l’enfant les omet parce qu’ils ne sont pas saillants dans le signal sonore de la langue [l’enfant n’entend-il pas les autres composantes ?] ou, parce qu’ils sont grammaticalement plus complexes et abstraits ? Ou est-ce même une combinaison des deux ? [La signification de « envie manger » (‘want eat’ dans le texte original) prononcé par un enfant à l’heure du diner est plutôt claire même si c’est grammaticalement incorrect.]

MI : Existe-t-il un ‘ordre’ dans la manière d’apprendre une langue ? Les enfants apprennent-ils certaines choses en premier et d’autres en dernier ?

AC : Oui ! Cet ordre est en parti déterminé par la logique : les phrases sont faites de mots et les mots sont faits de sons si bien qu’on ne peut pas sauter tout de suite vers l’apprentissage de phrases si on n’a pas d’abord compris deux ou trois choses du système sonore de la langue. En simplifiant quelque peu, la première tâche de l’enfant consiste ainsi à percer le système sonore des paroles qu’il entend autour de lui (ou le système gestuel de la langue des signes). Une partie de l’apprentissage des modèles sonores dans une langue consiste à apprendre où se trouvent les limites des mots dans le flux de paroles. Nos paroles sont des flux acoustiques continus, sans frontières, mais notre grammaire mentale sait où placer ces frontières [c’est pourquoi quand on entend une langue qui ne nous est pas familière, on pense souvent que les locuteurs parlent vite. Ce sentiment est dû au fait qu’on n’entend pas où les mots se terminent.]

Nous avons appris à faire cela quand on était enfants en résolvant ce qu’on appelle « le problème de segmentation ». Ce problème réfère à la façon dont un enfant apprend où un mot se termine dans le flux continu et où le mot suivant commence. La recherche actuelle affirme pour la plupart que les enfants comptent très fortement voire seulement sur le contrôle des possibilités transitionnelles entre les sons. Les combinaisons de sons qu’on retrouve fréquemment dans le flux de paroles sont considérées comme étant des mots. C’est seulement en ayant une compréhension de la phonologie de la langue, c’est-à-dire une compréhension de quels sons se combinent ensemble et comment, que les enfants peuvent progresser pour associer des sens à des mots et pour apprendre comment les mots peuvent se combiner en des mots plus complexes, et en phrases.

MI : Cet ordre est-il le même pour toutes les langues? Quelles sont les différences pour les enfants qui apprennent des langues maternelles différentes ?

AC : Oui, autant que nous sachions, l’ordre est remarquablement similaire à travers des langues diverses. L’enfant, contrairement à quelqu’un qui essaierait d’apprendre une seconde langue, n’a aucun savoir préalable d’aucune langue. Le développement est ainsi lourdement déterminé par des problèmes d’apprentissage qui peuvent le restreindre. L’enfant doit deviner le système sonore, les formes et les modèles des mots, leur signification, les règles grammaticales (syntaxiques), etc. La tâche est dans l’ensemble la même en dépit de la variation de la langue acquise. La langue des signes américaine, bien qu’elle s’exprime dans un mode différent (mode gestuel, visuel, plutôt que oral, auditif) est connue pour être très similaire en termes de développement aux langues parlées lorsque nous considérons les étapes importantes : les babillages, les premiers mots, les premières combinaisons de mots (les premières phrases), la surgénéralisation des règles, etc. Ceci dit, la plupart des langues n’ont pas été suffisamment étudiées dans leur développement et l’emphase a été principalement mise sur les langues européennes occidentales et sur d’autres langues proéminentes, largement répandues, comme le japonais ou le mandarin.

MI : Comment les adultes, les parents ou les personnes qui s’occupent des enfants changent leur façon de parler quand ils s’adressent aux enfants ?

AC : Les personnes qui s’occupent des enfants utilisent souvent ce qu’on appelle « la communication dirigée vers les enfants ». On l’appelle aussi « langage enfant » [langue spéciale d’interaction avec les enfants]  ou « mamanais » [« motherese » en anglais]. Cette forme de langue a des caractéristiques phonétiques distinctes : le ton est plus aigu que d’habitude, les modèles des accents toniques sont exagérés, et les voyelles sont plus longues. Ces traits phonétiques sont perçus comme ayant un « affect heureux ». Les enfants et les tout-petits répondent de préférence aux affects heureux.

Il y a aussi des preuves indiquant que les adultes utilisent un vocabulaire simplifié pour représenter des catégories basiques de mots, par exemple : une mère peut appeler un tigre « un gros chat » lorsqu’elle parle à son enfant. De plus, il existe aussi des preuves selon lesquelles les adultes simplifient leurs phrases qui contiennent des mots que l’enfant est prêt à apprendre [pour les mettre en évidence]. Par exemple, un père peut très bien dire « Tu veux de l’eau ? » à son bébé de 12 mois plutôt que « Est-ce que tu veux un verre d’eau ?». On pense que les adultes complexifient inconsciemment les discours adressés aux enfants au fur et à mesure que celui-ci grandit linguistiquement.

MI : Est-ce que ce changement est utile pour les enfants?

AC : Ça semble être utile mais pas nécessaire. Il existe des différences interculturelles dans la manière qu’ont les adultes et en particulier les personnes qui s’occupent d’enfants, d’interagir avec les enfants. Nous savons que les enfants et les enfants en bas âge réagissent au langage enfantin ; ça peut peut-être les aider que d’exagérer les limites entre les mots et les autres caractéristiques qui caractérisent le flux discursif ; ça peut ainsi les aider à apprendre des mots, mais aider ne signifie pas être nécessaire. La plupart de notre recherche a été menée sur des enfants apprenant une langue dans des sociétés occidentales à l’époque récente si bien qu’il est juste de dire que jusqu’à présent, nous en savons plus sur cette situation d’apprentissage que sur toutes les autres situations d’apprentissage encore existantes.

MI : Est-ce que les enfants apprennent leur langue maternelle différemment?

AC : Oui. Il y a des variations parmi les enfants mais on doit voir cela comme secondaire par rapport à des tendances et des similarités très fortes. Ainsi, il y a plus de similarités dans la façon d’apprendre une première langue qu’il n’y a de différences. En gardant cela en tête, on peut parler de ce qui varie.

Tout d’abord, les enfants peuvent souffrir d’un désordre qui affecte leur développement langagier (par exemple le syndrome de Down, l’autisme, le syndrome de Williams) ou bien ils peuvent avoir une déficience auditive qui les empêche d’accéder correctement à la langue parlée (mais étrangement pas à la langue des signes s’ils y sont exposés). Alors, même parmi les enfants qu’on peut considérer comme ayant un développement normal, au regard du langage, la chronologie du développement varie. Certains enfants atteignent les étapes majeures bien plus tôt que d’autres, mais tout ça dans des tranches d’âge normales. Par exemple certains enfants vont prononcer leurs premiers mots avant l’âge de 10 mois tandis que d’autres ne pourront pas les prononcer avant leurs 2 ans. C’est comparable à l’éventail d’âge où les enfants commencent à marcher, allant de l’âge de 9 mois pour certains à l’âge de 18 mois pour d’autres. Le retard linguistique n’est diagnostiqué que chez les enfants de plus de 4 ans parce qu’avant cet âge, les enfants peuvent varier énormément dans leur développement sans que cela ne soit alarmant.

La personnalité de l’enfant affecte aussi son développement. Certains enfants sont calmes et prudents alors que d’autres seront plutôt loquaces. La nature de l’interaction linguistique avec les personnes qui s’occupent d’eux importe aussi. Certaines études ont montré que le statut socioéconomique est un facteur significatif pour le développement lexical et syntaxique. Des chercheurs ont suivi des familles américaines et ont analysé leurs paroles. Les personnes de statut socioéconomique plus bas ont moins de chance de poser à leurs enfants en bas âge des questions ouvertes du type : « Qu’est-ce que tu dessines ? » mais plus de chances de s’adresser à eux avec des questions totales [dont la réponse est ‘oui’ ou ‘non’] comme « Est-ce que tu dessines ? ». De plus, elles ont aussi plus de chances d’utiliser des mots d’interdiction, comme « ne fais pas ci ! » en comparaison à des adultes de statut plus élevé. Les enfants de statut élevé ont en moyenne un vocabulaire plus large et atteignent les jalons du développement syntaxique un peu plus tôt.

MI : Comment un enfant affecte-t-il la langue de ses parents?

AC : Ma recherche répond directement à cette question mais c’est un domaine qui a déjà reçu par le passé beaucoup d’attention théorique mais peu de recherche a été faite à partir de données réelles. En d’autres termes, beaucoup de chercheurs pensent que les enfants jouent un rôle dans le changement linguistique mais quant à savoir si c’est vrai ou pas, la réponse n’est pas encore claire du point de vue concret de la recherche. Nous savons que les adolescents sont des « adoptants précoces » ; ils sont plus à même d’adopter et de répandre les changements linguistiques. Pensez, par exemple, à l’utilisation de la formule de citation en anglais « be like » (faire genre) : « He was like, ‘thank you’ » (il m’a fait genre ‘merci’). Cependant est-ce que ces nouvelles variantes dans la langue émergent à partir d’innovations effectuées dans la langue enfantine ?

J’examine cette question pour les expressions modales (les mots qui expriment la possibilité en anglais : must, can, might, maybe, probably, etc.) Il apparait effectivement que les enfants font des analyses compatibles avec l’évolution de la langue au cours du temps. Cependant, ‘compatible’ ne signifie pas nécessairement ‘causal’, alors restez à l’écoute !

MI : Est-ce que votre recherche affecte votre façon de parler aux enfants maintenant?

AC : Je ne pense pas, à part peut-être que, plus je travaille avec des enfants, plus je suis à l’aise avec tout plein d’enfants différents ! Ceci dit, travailler sur le langage des enfants affecte sans aucun doute ma façon de les ’écouter’ ! J’adore leur parler pas seulement à cause du contenu de ce qu’ils disent, mais à cause de la forme linguistique de ce qu’ils disent.

MI : Qu’est-ce que vous préférez dans votre travail d’étude ?

AC : La créativité linguistique ! Les enfants utilisent leur langue qui est en plein développement pour vivre leur jeune vie et ils produisent beaucoup de phrases créatives lorsqu’ils essaient de s’exprimer. Le problème en soi est fascinant et complexe : comment un enfant sans langue part-il de cette étape pré-linguistique pour devenir un adulte pleinement linguistique ? La langue est complexe et systématique, et il est tellement facile de la prendre pour acquise. Mais quand on doit réfléchir explicitement à ce qu’un petit apprenant fait, on est régulièrement frappé : c’est merveilleux de voir que les humains peuvent même apprendre une langue.

[Ma maman et sa jumelle étaient en train de discuter l’économie.]

Un grand merci à Ailis Cournane de nous avoir ramenés dans notre enfance et de nous avoir appris comment on a un jour appris à parler. L’un des grands avantages des études linguistiques, ou des langues plus généralement, c’est que vous êtes constamment stupéfaits par les complexités du langage et par notre capacité à manier inconsciemment et sans effort cette complexité.

Le fait que la version bébé de ma personne a été capable d’apprendre le mot « tracteur » parmi ses premiers mots, est plutôt remarquable. Petit Michael a été capable de trouver où commence et où se finit le mot (avec un « t » et un « r »), d’identifier les sons au milieu, et d’associer cette suite de sons à cette machine énorme que mon grand-père conduisait avec moi dans son champ, et puis de produire ces sons sans qu’on me le demande, lorsque je l’ai vu la semaine suivante. Pas si mal quand on considère que, après 10 ans, je bataille toujours pour utiliser correctement la négation en français.

A tantôt,

 

Michael Iannozzi

Merci bien Floriane pour ton aide avec la traduction.

 

A new year, thank you for the old one

Happy New Year to you all!

 

Just a brief post from me today. I just wanted to thank you all for supporting the museum over 2015. I joined the Canadian Language Museum in the late summer of 2014 as a volunteer. I have since then run the blog, twitter and Facebook accounts.

 

It has been, and continues to be, an enormous honour, and a terrific amount of fun. I am able to speak to fantastic professors, graduate students, and community members who do essential and amazing work. I am able to share the things that I love about language(s) with all of you, and I want to say that I am extraordinarily grateful and thankful to each of you for your support. So I want to thank you for being patient with me, and for supporting the blog, twitter, and Facebook, but also for supporting the Museum more broadly.

 

In particular I want to thank all of the wonderful people I’ve spoken with over the past year for the blog. You have all been incredibly patient and endlessly kind and helpful in sharing your work with me, and with the readers of our blog. I apologize for any delays in my replies in email, and I will do my best to keep up with all of the people I hope to speak with, and continue to work hard in 2016 to keep bringing new interviews, and new research to the blog.

 

I also want to sincerely thank Elaine Gold and Katharine Snider-McNair; the Museum’s chair and executive assistant. This may sound self-congratulatory, but I don’t actually see either one of them very often, and I don’t speak with them as often as I likely should. They/you have both been continually supportive and kind, so thank you for allowing me to keep doing this. I love every part of this.

 

I also want to thank Floriane Letourneux. She has been a fantastic, and fantastically understanding and patient, translator for our blog posts. Any faults with the French translation are always my own (especially today as she hasn’t seen this), but the amazing quality of the translations are entirely due to her. Thank you.

 

Finally, thank you from the core of my heart to my friends and family for always supporting me, and serving as test subjects for my ideas and initial drafts of blog posts. I try to write everything so that non-linguists can appreciate the amazing work the people I talk with and about are doing, and my friends and family are never anything less than entirely patient and kind with helping me.

 

In 2016, I’d really like to begin brief weekly profiles of graduate students, something I tried to start in September, but the start of the year was just too busy a time for many students and Universities. So, if you are a graduate student in Canada, or a Canadian graduate student elsewhere, or someone working on something Canadian-y and language-y, please get in touch at CanLangMuseum@gmail.com. I will be sending out an email to linguistic departments all over, but the document is attached below, and I would love to hear from you.

CLM – Graduate student profiles – Questions – The Document!

In general please feel free to contact me at any point with any advice, ideas, or otherwise. I am always happy to speak with anyone about the museum, and I don’t pretend to be an expert at any form of social media, so please get in touch if you have something you’d like to share—news, events, ideas etc.

 

Take care everyone, thank you, and have a good year eh,

 

Michael Iannozzi

 

 

Talking Baby Talk

This week I’m talking with Dr. Ailís Cournane of The University of Toronto. We are discussing first language acquisition, or FLA. We spoke about the way babies and infants acquire their mother tongue(s), the first language(s) they learn, and how they go about doing that.

Have you ever wondered if your infant understands your baby-talk? Whether you could raise a perfectly trilingual child? Or if it matters that your kid can’t remember that we don’t say “gooses” or “meeses”?”. Understanding how our children acquire language through FLA is the first step in answering some of these questions. Even if you don’t have a child, you were one once, so let’s find out what the kid in us thinks about how we all learned our first language

Like so many aspects of child rearing, having one’s own child tends to make people feel like experts on how babies develop. When it comes to first language acquisition, we can turn to researchers like Doctor Cournane to help understand out the science behind how our babies develop, and what kind of universal truths actually exist. Even if you don’t have a child, you were one once, so let’s find out what the kid in us thinks about how we all learned our first language.

[Child version of me being encouraged to speak by being given macaroni…still works 24 years later]

Michael Iannozzi : What first got you interested in studying first-language acquisition?

Ailís Cournane : I originally worked on language change, and I continually saw reference to the role of the child learner in driving language change [Language change is the way language evolves over time, which usually means over generations]. Children are thought to reanalyse the language when they learn and build their own [internal and subconscious] mental grammar. However, despite seeing that theory everywhere, and it being widely accepted, no one had explored it sufficiently in how languages change. So I got into child language because I’m interested in change. Development and change have much in common.

MI : How is first-language acquisition defined?

AC : FLA [First-Language Acquisition] describes the process and properties of the language of infants/toddlers/young children as they acquire their mother tongue(s). The child begins with no language (but with the capacity for language!), and with social input from speakers around her, she gradually builds her language(s). I say “language(s)” because many infants are exposed to more than one language, so they acquire these simultaneously.

MI : How is the learning of a first language different from the learning of second language?

AC : There are a few important differences. Firstly, with FLA there is no other language in place. If you are a child acquiring English you are building your first language using just your language capacity and exposure to older speakers. For Second Language Acquisition [SLA] you already have a language in place! So when you learn English as a teenager, for example, you learn it in relation to your mother tongue (say, Mandarin). The English you learn as an L2 competes in some ways with the Mandarin you learned first [An L2 is someone’s 2^nd language. The one they acquired second]. Secondly, SLA appears to require more motivation and explicit learning (classes, drills, forcing yourself to practice with native speakers, etc.) than FLA. SLA also seems to show less defined milestones (or stages) than FLA.

MI : Who are the main sources of input for an infant’s first language [L1] acquisition?

AC : The primary caregivers are the main source of input during infancy and early childhood. Very early on, when most infants are relying heavily on their mother, the maternal input is usually strongest. Older siblings also play a role early on in development. Once the child attends daycare or preschool the peer-group begins to play a larger role.

MI : From whom does a child learn their accent?

AC : Well, at first a child – especially an oldest or only child – models their language on their primary caregivers’ language, from who they are hearing most of their language input. However, children very quickly adapt to their peer-group as soon as they enter daycare or elementary school. This is why people with immigrant parents do not share their parents’ accent, but instead sound like their peers. For example, my parents are from Ireland, but my brothers and I grew up in Montreal. We have Canadian English accents with the features expected of Montreal Anglophones. We occasionally have some Irish influence in our language, but we sound much, much, more like our peers than our parents.

MI : Are the parts of a child’s language (accent, grammar, pronunciation, etc.) learned separately/from different sources, or is it all learned concurrently?

AC : Concurrently, however, the focus or main concentration of developmental changes may be in different areas at different times. For example, since words are made up of several sounds the infant needs to begin to crack the sound system of a language before they can really grasp words (let alone complex words or sentences). That said, sounds are contained in words so the child is also necessarily learning about words when they are focusing on sound development. There are very complex interactions at work.

MI : As children learn their first language, they all make some mistakes, what do they tell us about how the children are learning to speak?

AC : I like to call mistakes or errors “divergent” or “creative” analyses, because these analyses are productive and systematic and emerge from aspects of how the child is learning [Meaning the mistakes a child makes like calling geese, “gooses”, or moose “meese”, make sense even though they aren’t correct. In other words, the mistakes are patterned, and can be explained].

They only seem like mistakes when we compare them to adult grammar norms, but they aren’t actually mistakes, they’re (for example) the child uncovering rules of the language and applying those rules (sometimes to exceptions). For example, children sometimesover-apply the regular past tense (-ed) to irregular past tense (e.g., goed for went, or eated for ate). This shows that the child understands how to productively form a past tense in English – that’s a big achievement, and shows pattern recognitions and the ability to generalize a rule.

MI : Are the mistakes a child makes in speaking all the same “kind” of mistake? Is a mispronunciation the same “kind of mistake” as eated or goed?

AC : Not necessarily. Mispronunciation, for example, can have either or both physiological (muscle-control, shape of the developing vocal tract, coordination, etc.) and cognitive (understanding of the sound system of the language, planning, etc.) causes.

Omissions of grammatical words (e.g., saying wan go, leaving out the pronoun “I” and the “to” infinitive marker, I wanna go), and what these mistakes mean, are notoriously debated. Does the child omit them because they’re not salient in the sound signal of the language [Is the child not hearing the other parts?]? Or because they are more grammatically complex and abstract? Or because they can be omitted pragmatically (i.e. they’re not necessary to be understood when speech happens in context, as most daily speech does, especially for a child)? Or some combination of these? [It is pretty clear what “want eat” means coming from an infant at supper, even if grammatically it isn’t “correct”]

MI : Is there an “order” to the way children learn a language? Do they learn certain parts first and last?

AC : Yes. Some of this order is logically determined – sentences are made up of words and words are made up of sounds, so you can’t jump right to learning sentences if you haven’t figured out something about the sound system of the language you are learning. Thus, simplifying somewhat, the infant’s first task is to break into the sound system of the speech around them (or the gestural system of the sign language around them). Part of learning the sound patterns in a language is learning where word boundaries are in the stream of speech. Our speech is a continuous acoustic stream with no boundaries, but our mental grammar knows where to put boundaries [This is often why, when we hear a language we aren’t familiar with, we think they are speaking quickly. Because we can’t hear where words end].

We learned to do this as infants by solving what is called the “segmentation problem”. This problem refers to how the child learns where in the continuous stream one word ends and the next begins. Current research mostly argues that children rely heavily, or solely, on monitoring transitional probabilities between sounds. Sounds that frequently pattern together in the speech stream are thought to pattern together as words. Only by having some understanding of the phonology of the language, e.g. which sounds pattern together and how, can the child progress to associating meanings to words and learning how words can be combined together into complex words and sentences.

MI : Is that order the same across languages? What are the differences in children who learn different first languages?

AC : Yes, as far as we know the order is remarkably similar across diverse languages. The infant, unlike someone trying to learn a second language, has no knowledge of any previous language, so much of what constrains development is determined by how the child learns, and if the child has any learning or language impairments. The child must figure out the sound system, word forms and word-patterns, word meanings, grammatical rules (syntax), etc. The task is broadly the same one, despite the language that is being acquired varying. American Sign Language, despite being in a different mode (gestural-visual, rather than oral-aural), is known to be very similar in development to spoken languages when we consider milestones – babbling, first words, first word combinations (early sentences), overgeneralization of rules, etc. That said, most languages have not been sufficiently studied in development, the focus has been primarily on Western European languages and other prominent/widely-spoke languages (e.g., Japanese, Mandarin).

MI : How do adults/parents/caregivers change their speech when talking with children/infants?

AC : Caregivers often use what is called “Child Directed Speech”, or CDS. This is also called Infant-Directed Speech or Motherese. CDS has distinct phonetic features – it is higher pitch than the speaker’s regular voice, stress patterns are exaggerated, and vowels are held for a longer duration. These phonetic features are perceived as having a “happy affect”. Infants and young children respond preferentially to happy affect.

There is also some evidence that adults simplify their word choices to represent basic-level categories, for example, a mother might call a tiger a “kitty” when talking to her young child. Further, there is also some evidence that adults might simplify the sentences containing words the child is poised to learn. For example, a father might say “You want water?” to his 1-year old rather than, “Do you want a glass of water?”. Adults are thought to subconsciously complexify their child-directed language as the child grows linguistically.

MI : Is this change helpful for the learning children?

AC : It seems to be helpful, but not necessary. There are cross-cultural differences in the ways adults, and particularly caregivers, interact with children. We know that CDS is something that infants and young children respond to, and it may help exaggerate word boundaries and other features of the speech stream and thus help with learning words, but helping is different from being necessary. Most of our research has been conducted on children learning a language in western societies in recent times, so it is fair to say that it this point we know more about this learning situation than all other extant learning situations.

MI : Do different children learn their first language differently?

AC : Yes. There is variation across children, but this needs to be viewed as secondary to very robust trends and similarities. Thus, there is more that is the same about how children learn their first language than there is that differs. With that in mind, let’s talk about what varies.

First, children may have a disorder that affects language development (e.g., Down Syndrome, Autism, Williams Syndrome), or they may have a hearing impairment that impairs their access to spoken language (but not to sign language if they are exposed to a sign language). Then, even among children who are considered typically-developing with respect to language, the time course of development varies. Some children reach milestones much earlier than others, all within the normal range. For example, some children will use their first words by 10 months of age, while others may not use their first words until 24 months old. This is comparable to how some children start walking at 9 months while others start walking at 18 months. Language delay is only diagnosed in children over age 4 because children can vary widely in early development without any cause for alarm.

The child’s personality also affects development. Some children will be quiet and cautious, while others will be quite loquacious. The nature of linguistic interaction with caregivers matters as well. Some studies have shown that socioeconomic status (SES) is a significant factor in vocabulary and syntactic development. Families in the US were followed and their speech analysed; caregivers of lower socioeconomic status were less likely to ask their young children open ended questions (e.g. “What are you drawing?”) and more likely to address young children with yes/no questions (e.g., “Are you drawing?”), and more likely to use prohibitive language (e.g., “Don’t…”) compared to higher SES caregivers. Children from higher SES families on average had larger vocabularies, and reached syntactic development milestones somewhat earlier.

MI : How does a child change the language of their parents?

AC : My research directly addresses this, but it is an area that has previously received a lot of theoretical attention, but very little data-driven research. In other words, many researchers think children play a role in how languages change, but it’s unclear from real-world research whether that is true or not. We know that teenagers are “early adopters”, and most likely to embrace and spread language changes (think about, for example, use of quotative “be like” as in “He was like, ‘thank you’”), however do these new variants in the language emerge from child-language innovations?

I look at this question for modal expressions (words that express possibility: must, can, might, maybe, probably, etc). Children do appear to make analyses that are compatible with how languages change over time. However, compatible is not necessarily causal, so stay tuned!

MI : Does your research affect the way you now speak with children?

AC : I don’t think so, except perhaps that I’m more and more comfortable with lots of different children the more I work with kids. That said, working on child language definitely affects how I listen to children! I love talking to children not just for the content of what they say, but for the linguistic form of what they say.

MI : What is your favourite part of studying the way children learn languages?

AC : The linguistic creativity! They are using their developing language to live their wee lives, and they make many creative sentences when they try to express themselves. The problem itself is fascinating and complex – how does a language-less infant go from that pre-linguistic stage to becoming a fully-linguistic adult? Language is complex and systematic, and it is so easy to take it for granted. When you have to explicitly think about what the little language learner is doing you are regularly struck by how marvellous it is that humans can learn language at all.

[My mum and her twin sister sharing sandbox gossip]

A great thank you to Ailís Cournane for taking us back in time, and teaching us how we once learned language.

One of the great advantages of studying linguistics, or language more broadly, is that you are constantly amazed at the complexities of language, and how subconsciously and effortlessly you are able to handle that complexity.

The fact that the little child version of me was able to learn “Tractor” as one of my first words, is quite remarkable. Infant Michael was able to find out where the word began and ended (with a “t” sound and an “r” sound), pick out the sounds in between, and attach that collection of sounds to a massive machine my grampa drove through the field with me, and then produce those sounds without being asked when I saw it the next week. Not bad work considering I still struggle after 10 years to use dont correctly in French.

 

Take care eh,

 

Michael Iannozzi

 

International Mother Language Day

International Mother Language Day

The IMLD Poster for 2010. Others can be found here.

Language is so much more than just “how we communicate”. Language evokes our emotions – forming our poems, stories, songs and many more powerful forms of self-expression. It shapes who we are, and it connects us to other people. Language is for more than being simply understood, it is allows us to be able to understand one another at a much deeper level.

Saturday is International Mother Language Day (IMLD), and it is a day to celebrate one’s identity. IMLD gives us an opportunity to recognize and appreciate celebrate the beauty that comes with the 6,000+ languages on earth. The comparison is often made that endangered languages are like endangered animals: we could only have five or ten, but wouldn’t the world be a whole lot less pretty and interesting without them? Our different languages shouldn’t be seen as causing confusion, or misunderstandings, they are each and every one an essential part of the fabric that makes up humanity. With each loss of a language, we lose another point-of-view to being human. We lose how that language’s speakers saw the world, and so we lose another lens with which to look upon the world.

According to the last census figures, 45% of Torontonians don’t speak English in the home. Many Canadians across the country have a Heritage language. My gramma on my mum’s side grew up speaking Dutch, my grampa grew up with an Italian-immigrant father, and my dad’s first language was Italian; his parents emigrated from Italy just before he was born. We should celebrate where we come from, and remember that our identity is shaped not just by being Thai, Cree, or French, but also by the languages that come with that heritage.

My first language is English, and it is easy to take for granted that everywhere I go, English resources surround me. However, for many, English might be the language of work, school, or exteriorities, but their Mother Language is the one used in the home, with the family, and for self-reflection.

There is a concept in linguistics called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which states that certain things can’t even be conceived of in a different language. For example, if your language doesn’t have a term for schadenfreude, then you will have a hard time grasping the idea. The idea being roughly, “taking the guilty pleasure from the pain of others” (think people falling over on America’s Funniest Home Videos). However, this hypothesis is found to be untrue. There is no English term for sobremesa, which is a Spanish word describing the lovely and winding conversations had at the dinner table after eating; however, I think most of us can identify with the sentiment. Although the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis may be mostly untrue, there are certain things that are different depending on your first language. I have read Leonard Cohen translated into French, and I would argue that there is something indescribable missing when the work is translated—some important part of the beauty is translated out of the text.

This Saturday you should consider promoting, teaching, and using any languages you know how to speak. But don’t stop there! Continue on after Saturday. Don’t let it stop with one day. We should all be proud of our languages, and we should be excited to share our heritage with those around us.

So whatever your heritage is, whatever languages you speak, and wherever you come from, use International Mother Tongue Day to think about the steps have led to you being where you are today. The world is so much better with variety and diversity, and language is another way we can prove that point.

So go out and prove that point!

Council of Europe poster for Minority Language Rights

And, if you are in Toronto please join us at Maria A Shchuka library from 10-4 for family-friendly activities that celebrate many languages.

 

Take care eh,

 

Michael Iannozzi

 

Saving languages in a new home

This week we are looking at ELAT, which works to document the endangered and minority languages of Toronto. Specifically, the interview focusses on their first project: working on the Harari language.

This interview is a bit different because there were two people interviewed, but not simultaneously. Anastasia Riehl is a director of the organization; however, in order to get a first-hand view of the Harari language. I also asked some questions of Abdullah Sherif, a Harari speaker who has worked with ELAT on the transcription and translation of recordings in Harari.

 

Michael Iannozzi : You are a part of ELAT, what does that stand for, and what are its objectives?

Anastasia Riehl : ELAT stands for Endangered Language Alliance Toronto. Our objectives are to document endangered languages (as well as other small or understudied languages) spoken in the GTA, to support communities in their efforts to strengthen their languages and to celebrate our multilingual city.

MI : Why is it important to document these languages in Toronto? Why is Toronto such a great place to do this documentation work?

AR : It is important to document these languages wherever they are spoken. Approximately half of the world’s 6000+ languages are at risk of extinction, and many of these have never been studied or recorded. Toronto offers a unique opportunity to undertake documentation work due to the large number and diverse range of languages spoken here, including languages that are globally endangered.

MI : What projects are you currently working on?

AR : Some of our ongoing projects include Sri Lankan Malay, Harari (Ethiopia), Bukhori (language of the Bukharan Jews of Central Asia), Urhobo (Southern Nigeria) and Cellese (Francoprovencal variety in Italy). In all of these cases there are at least a few dozen speakers in the city, and we hope to record a range of individuals for each.

 

I then inquired about ELAT’s work on Harari to Abdullah Sherif, who is a community leader and speaker of the Harari language in Toronto. The following are his responses.

Abdullah with his father Abdusamed

MI : The Harari community appears to be one with a couple thousand speakers in Toronto. How vibrant is the community in Toronto?

Abdullah Sherif : I believe there are more than 2000 Harari people in Toronto but it is true, not all would be categorized as being able to speak the language. I would say the Harari community is very vibrant when taking into consideration their small number. They can be found in every part of the city of Toronto: bankers, nurses, cab drivers, bus drivers,  lawyers, business owners, students at all levels: elementary, secondary, college, university, Master students, PhD students… The community is socially active as well, holding numerous cultural and religious events in large circles and in small ones too.

MI : Harari comes from the Harar region, so where is the Harar region?

AS : Harar is now a walled city in eastern Ethiopia.

MI : Are there languages that are related to Harari?

AS : Harari is a relatively unique language. It is actually a Language Island. It is Semitic [The most well-known Semitic languages may be Arabic and Hebrew] surrounded by Cushitic languages [Such as Somali—many of the languages of the horn of Africa]. A language that is very similar to Harari is spoken by the Silte people from the Gurage community. They happen to be in a region that is relatively far from Harar. Many Hararis were scattered throughout Ethiopia during the 16^th century. It is suggested that the Silte’s ancestors are some of those scattered Hararis or at least have been heavily influenced by them.

MI : Why do you think it is important to document the Harari language in Toronto?

AS : I feel it is important to document it because the language has been considered endangered. Many of the youth do not speak it, or do not speak it well, giving credence to the claim that it is endangered. Also, much of the language’s history is almost lost. Documenting it now might encourage people to properly investigate its past and give its future a better chance at survival.

MI : Does the Harari language community have any community places like a restaurant or place of meeting in Toronto?

AS : In spite of the small size of the community, there is a Harari community/heritage centre. What is interesting is there are at least 90 languages in Ethiopia with almost each one associated to a different ethnic Ethiopian community. Hararis are among the smallest in population. Yet, here in Toronto you have the one Ethiopian community centre which serves all Ethiopians, and in addition Hararis have their own independent community centre. It is possible there may be other specific Ethiopian community centres like the Harari one, but I am not aware of any. As for the Hararis, other than that one Community Centre, they also have other medium to small community groups and religious groups. Some of the small groups are called “Affochas” and can be made up of as few members as three people. Affocha loosely translated means “community group”. In Harar there are many Affochas and many types: youth Affocha, women’s Affocha, men’s Affocha, etc. We also consider the larger community centre as an Affocha too.

MI : With almost all the speakers in Ethiopia and Canada being multilingual, what does that mean for the Harari language?

AS : As is already the case, Harari will be heavily influenced by the other languages. Interestingly, Harari speakers in Ethiopia use many Amharic words (Amharic is the official language in Ethiopia) and some were surprised by me when I would use the Harari words where they would have likely used Amharic words. But I am guilty of often using English words in many places while speaking Harari.

MI : How do you think the language can survive in Toronto?

AS : The language will survive only if the youth speak it. For that to happen they need to appreciate its importance.

[Abdullah’s father speaking Harari with captions]

 

I then asked more broad-based questions regarding ELAT and endangered languages in Toronto to Professor Riehl to end the interview.

MI : ELAT produces videos and audio of the language projects. Why is this important to you? What is the power of videos and modern technology for the survival of these languages?

AR : There are various methods of language documentation – collecting wordlists, undertaking grammatical analysis, creating dictionaries, recording audio and video of different styles of speech. All of these are important. At this stage, our focus is on producing short videos which we hope will have broad value and appeal – to linguists studying the languages, to community members interested in preserving examples of their language or using them for educational purposes, and to the general public interested in learning more about the languages and lives of the speakers.

In terms of content, we usually ask the participants to discuss the experience of being a speaker of their language in the context of Toronto – and also where relevant their experience immigrating to the city. In this way, we wish to explore the common themes of the immigrant experience in Toronto and Toronto as a city of languages.

MI : What do you think is the most crucial thing for the survival of Harari, and the other languages studied, in Toronto?

AR : Languages survive by being passed down to younger generations. Once this transmission declines, a language is at risk of disappearing. Although there are often outside forces working against a community’s retention of its language (governmental policies, economic factors, etc.) the motivation for maintaining a language must come from within the community. There are, however, things that others can do to support these communities, such as undertake documentation projects, create educational materials and assist with organizing classes and events.

In talking with endangered language communities in Toronto, I often hear speakers express concern that their language is dying because young people, in particular, are not interested in speaking it. However, I also often hear from young speakers or partial speakers who are very motivated to ensure that their language survives. These young community members are the key to their language’s future. Supporting and collaborating with these individuals by sharing ideas, tools and resources is an important way to ensure a language survives, whether in Toronto or elsewhere in the world.

MI : What can the average person do to help these languages?

AR : Talk to your relatives, friends and neighbours about their linguistic histories. You will be surprised how many people have interesting stories to share. If you meet someone who speaks one of the world’s smaller languages, seek help with documentation. If you are interested in particular languages, you can get involved with the relevant community groups in your area. You can also lend your time, expertise and resources to organizations that work to document and preserve endangered languages. Perhaps most importantly, support a world where multilingualism and the rights of minority language communities are valued.

 

A sincere thank you to Anastasia Riehl and to Abdullah Sherif. The work they do is undeniably valuable. Every language in the world is worth saving and documenting. In recent decades with so many communities fracturing and moving to various parts of the world, the widespread pieces of the community cannot keep their language alive when surrounded by a new language. These efforts at documentation are important because these languages have not been studied a great deal, but also because the communities in Toronto might speak a different variety or dialect of the language than the people who remain where the language is originally “from”.

If you want to learn more, please follow this link to the Endangered Language Alliance of Toronto: http://www.elalliance.com

 

Take care eh,

 

Michael Iannozzi