Slip of the Tongue

By Volodymyr Kish

Back some four decades ago when I was still in my teens, one of the most divisive controversies within the Ukrainian community was the subject of language.  The large activist wave of Ukrainian immigrants that came to Canada after the Second World War was having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that the younger generations of Ukrainians born in Canada had poor if any Ukrainian language skills. 

Their efforts to maintain language fluency through the creation of after hours and Saturday Ukrainian schools (Ridn Shkoly) met with limited success.  The more that immigrant parents tried to force the ancestral language on their children, the more resistance they met.  Part of the reason of course was just normal adolescent rebellion, but also significant was the assimilation factor, the desire by our young people to identify with their Canadian peers and shed what many perceived to be a “backward” culture. 

 Most Ukrainian organizations did not cope well with this phenomenon.  In trying to keep their organizations and their associated activities linguistically pure, they succeeded in alienating much of their potential future membership.  In not doing enough to make Ukrainian culture more relevant in a Canadian context, they made their children more susceptible to the attractions of the external assimilated Canadian culture.

The effects of this social and cultural conflict are reflected in the seriously weakened state of most Ukrainian organizations in Canada today.  Most are but a shell of what they were four or five decades ago.  Interestingly, those that are still enjoying some degree of active life and growth have accepted the fact that they need to function in a bilingual context, that speaking fluent Ukrainian is not a pre-requisite to being a participant in Ukrainian community life.  Most Ukrainian churches have become bilingual. Most Ukrainian dance groups, professional organizations, foundations, and social clubs operate primarily in English.  Most the meetings held within the UNF system are conducted either in English or a mix of English and Ukrainian.

I had thought that the language debate of decades past had been settled, but recently I discovered that it is an issue that refuses to go away.  I have been involved in the past several months in organizing a traditional Shevchenko concert here in Oshawa, Ont. in my capacity as a member of the local Ukrainian Canadian Congress branch.  In putting together a programme that happened to include some elements spoken in English, I was taken to task for not keeping the concert purely in Ukrainian.  The objections came not only from some recent immigrants from Ukraine, who thought it would somehow be inappropriate to Shevchenko’s memory to have English content, but also from some Canadian born Ukrainians who still harboured that idealistic traditional instinct and desire to keep Ukrainian cultural events here in Canada linguistically pure.

Now, I must make clear that I have no objection to anyone in the Ukrainian community here in Canada, be they immigrant or Canadian born, wanting to do all they can to promote the learning and use of our mother tongue.  In fact, I admire their dedication and idealism and would clearly support all educational efforts aimed at promoting the expansion of Ukrainian language usage.  However, history has shown that commendable ideal should be promoted with a carrot and not a stick.  The ideal should never be used to exclude those people within our community that for whatever reason are not fluent in our ancestral mother tongue.  It is not only pointless, but damaging to our unity, strength and identity to create language ghettos within the Ukrainian hromada. 

 There can be no argument that language is a critically important aspect of our identity and culture, but let us not forget that being Ukrainian has as much to do with what is in our hearts and souls as what comes out from the tips of our tongues.  And above all, we must do all we can to stand together, and not find ways to divide ourselves even further.  To quote Shevchenko himself:

Learn my dear brothers
Think, read
Teach others
But don’t shun your own...

Embrace each other
I pray of you, I beseech you.