The Maintenance and Revitalization of Doukhobor Russian in British Columbia, Canada: Prospects and Problems

by Gunter Schaarschmidt

Over the past 75 years, the Doukhobor Russian dialect has sustained a slow but steady decline after reaching its peak of usage and functionality in Canada in 1940. This is in large part due to the increasing use of English, on the one hand, and of Standard Russian, on the other hand.  The following article by Gunter Schaarschmidt of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies, University of Victoria, examines the root causes of this trend and identifies a strategy for its maintenance and revitalization among the Doukhobors of British Columbia.  The author contends that to save Doukhobor Russian from imminent extinction, a second language program in Doukhobor Russian must be established at the elementary school level, with Doukhobor elders and culture incorporated into the school programs. Reproduced with the author’s permission from “Topical Problems of Communication and Culture, Collection of Research Articles of International Scholars (Moscow-Pyatigorsk, 2013).

1. Introduction

The Doukhobors are a pacifist and anarchist splinter group from the Russian Orthodox Church. Their views led Tsar Nicholas to ban them from their first concentrated settlement in the fertile Crimea to barren Transcaucasia. In 1895, the group created a huge bonfire of weaponry as a gesture to the government that they they opposed conscription. Fearing extermination for the group, the writer Leo Tolstoy with the aid of the Quakers in Great Britain enabled approximately 7,500 Doukhobors to leave Russia in 1899 and settle in Canada. Following a dispute with the Government and after living in the Province of Saskatchewan for 9 years, the colony split into two groups, with the larger group (approximately 4,000) moving to the Province of British Columbia (BC) in the years 1908-1913.

It is estimated that there are currently 25,000 Doukhobors living in Canada, 8,000 in Saskatchewan and 12,300 of them in British Columbia, with smaller groups in Alberta (3,000) and other provinces (between 1,500 and 1,700)[1]. Until the demise of the USSR there were 7,000 Doukhobors living in the Republic of Georgia, with many other members of the group dispersed all over Russia including Siberia.[2]  At the time of the group’s move to Canada, Doukhobor Russian was a language composed of two functional styles: the colloquial language based largely on a South Russian dialect and the ritual language based on Russian Church Slavonic and handed down orally from generation to generation until the early part of the 20th century.[3]  There are no written sources in Doukhobor Russian until the Book of Life (Životnaja kniga; also often translated as “Living Book”) was published in Russia by Bonč-Bruevič (1909 [1954]).[4]  The colloquial language was oral until the Doukhobors’ move to Canada and here well into the 1930s (see Section 3.1. below).

Although Doukhobor Russian (“DR”), with its estimated 15, 000 speakers[5], is as distinct from Standard Russian as Plautdietsch is from Standard German, the former has not been included as a language or as a minority language in any of the current handbooks while the latter has been (see, for example, Lewis 2009 and Moseley 2007). Plautdietsch is included as an endangered language of some 80,000 to 100,000 speakers in Canada (Moseley 2007:265; Lewis 2009: online). To some extent perhaps Russian scholars and possibly Doukhobor writers themselves are to blame for this omission since DR is often referred to as a “variety of Russian” (Makarova 2012: x) or as a “dialect” (Harshenin 1961).[6]  And yet, the Doukhobors clearly form a minority group distinct from other Russian émigré groups in three geographic areas outside of Russia: 1) the Province of British Columbia (Canada); 2) the Province of Saskatchewan (Canada); and 3) the Republic of Georgia. The possibility of revitalization and maintenance is possible in BC if something is done before the current older generation(s) disappear (Schaarschmidt 2012: 255-57); it is becoming very unlikely in Saskatchewan (Makarova 2011); and probably still has a small chance in Georgia (Lom [Lohm] 2006).

In this pilot study we shall first provide a summary of the history of DR from the first homogeneous settlement in the Crimea in 1801 until the move to Canada (Section 2); then describe the development of DR from the group’s arrival in Saskatchewan and the partial move to British Columbia, the onset of both diglossia and bilingualism in the community in BC and the present linguistic situation (Section 3); and, as DR is currently on the brink of extinction in this province, a preliminary outline of an “eleventh-hour” proposal how to go beyond the process of preservation to a systematic maintenance and revitalization process of the language (Section 4).

2.    From Koine to Leveling (1801-1899)

2.1. Some linguistic prerequisites.

According to Trudgill, new-dialect formation proceeds generally in three stages (quoted here from Kerswill 2002, 679; see also Schaarschmidt 2012, 238-9):

Stage Speakers involved Linguistic characteristics
I  Adult migrants Rudimentary leveling
II  First native-born speakers  Extreme variability and further leveling
III Subsequent generations

 Focusing, leveling and reallocation

There is a great deal of variability in the time-depth of koineization, with focusing possible already by Stage II, and the absence of focusing sometimes persisting over several generations of Stage III. In this section, we deal with Stage I, what Siegel calls the “pre-koine.” This is the unstabilized stage at the beginning of koineization. A continuum exists in which various forms of the varieties in contact are used concurrently and inconsistently. Leveling and some mixing has begun to occur, and there may be various degrees of reduction, but few forms have emerged as the accepted compromise (Siegel 1985: 373).

2.2. Rudimentary leveling: Milky Waters.

When Tsar Alexander decided to create a concentrated settlement of the Doukhobors in the area near the Moločna River (whence the English term “Milky Waters”), he also created the foundation for the rise of Doukhobor Russian, originally as a mixture of dialects, a sort of koine [i.e. a standard dialect that has arisen as a result of contact between two or more mutually intelligible varieties of the same language], later as a language with distinct functional styles (see especially Schaarschmidt 2008). The only uniting feature at this point was the ritual functional style (hereafter short: “ritual language”). We have no direct evidence of the Doukhobor colloquial functional style of this period or, for that matter, for a good 100 years before the Canadian period. The details of the koine situation of this period can thus be gleaned only from 1) the evidence provided by interviews with second- and third generation speakers in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s; 2) interference phenomena in the ritual language; and 3) the experience gained in the internal reconstruction of other languages. This evidence allows us to assert that for the Milky Waters period rudimentary leveling of the dialect features was in process and that because of the interruptions in this process caused by the migrations to Transcaucasia and Canada the leveling process took longer than it normally takes for a non-migrant community of speakers. There is no tangible evidence of a diglossic situation [i.e. where two dialects are used by a single language community] Doukhobor Russian – Standard Russian as the large majority of Doukhobors were illiterate, as was the case for four fifths of all Russians in the Empire, (acording to the first census of 1897; see, in this respect Rašin 1951: 49).

This figure is reproduced by permission from the Doukhobor Genealogy Website (www.doukhobor.org). Copyright Jonathan J. Kalmakoff. All rights reserved.

2.3. Further leveling: Transcaucasia.

We may assume that the Transcaucasian period marked the continuation of the rudimentary leveling process mentioned above in Section 2.1. For the first native-born speakers, however, there probably existed a combination of extreme dialect variability and further leveling. By the time adult speakers migrated to Canada in 1899, both the variability and the leveling were part of their dialect and were, to some extent, reflected in the ritual style.

This figure is reproduced by permission from the Doukhobor Genealogy Website (www.doukhobor.org). Copyright Jonathan J. Kalmakoff. All rights reserved.

There is no tangible evidence of a diglossic situation Doukhobor Russian – Standard Russian during the Transcaucasian period. There may, however, have been elements of bilingualism, as trading with the non-Slavic peoples (mainly Turko-Tatars) would have required a vehicle of communication, if only a pigeon [i.e. a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two groups that do not have a language in common] of the Russenorsk type or that used today in trading on the Russian-Chinese border area in the Far East. Many of the linguistic features collected are based on interviews with speakers in their 60s and 70s, i.e., those who migrated from Transcaucasia to Canada (see, in this respect, Schaarschmidt 2012: 241-3). We shall select here only the category of loans to illustrate the partial leveling process at this stage in language development (see also Tarasoff 1963 and Beženceva 2007:123-6). Due to the later influence of Standard Russian it is not always clear whether such loans are actually genuine loans directly from Turko-Tataric or indirect loans in a later period. This can be exemplified by the apparent Doukhobor loan from Turkic džiranka ‘deer’, for which there exist the Standard Russian variants džejran, dzeren and zeren/zerenka, referring, however, to a kind of antelope (see Fasmer 1964–73, I: 510–11; II: 95). The Doukhobor language in present-day Georgia also contains many loans from the adjacent or co-territorial non-Slavic languages but here again many assumed Doukhobor loans may in fact also be loans in Standard Russian or internationalisms, as exemplified by the loan mazun ‘matzoon/madzoon’ (a type of yoghurt), cf. Standard Russian maconi, borrowed from Armenian.

The Transcaucasian period was marked by a considerable variability in the area of phonology, morphology, lexical structure, and syntax. An apparent Doukhobor Russian innovation in morphology is the replacement of the neuter gender by the feminine gender in the first and second generations (Inikova 1995, 156). The loss of the neuter gender may have been caused by the coalescence of unstressed o, a, e in post-tonic desinences and that coalescence was then extended to stressed endings and modifiers, i.e., эта жабa [èta žaba] ‘this toad’: это сало [èta sála] ‘this lard,’ therefore моя жабa [majá žába] ‘my toad’: моё сало *[majá sála] ‘my lard.’ This coalescence can be seen widely in the Anglicization of place-names, such as Ootischenia, a locality in Castlegar, BC, referred to in a modern spelling Ooteshenie in Tarasoff (2002, 470), cf. Russian утешение ‘consolation.’

The Doukhobor settlements today are found primarily in the Republic of Georgia.

This figure is reproduced by permission from the Doukhobor Genealogy Website (www.doukhobor.org). Copyright Jonathan J. Kalmakoff. All rights reserved.

The question of the revitalization and maintenance of DR in the Republic of Georgia is not within the scope of the present investigation. It seems, however, that in spite of the significant exodus of speakers to Russia, present levels of maintenance appear to be vigorous. To be sure, the chances of a successful revitalization and maintenance process of Doukhobor Russian in Georgia are decreasing rapidly because as the leader of the Georgian Doukhobor community, Tat’jana Tixonova put it: “out of the more than 6-7,000 Doukhobors who lived in Georgia at the end of the 1980s no more than 800 are left, and these are basically between 50 to 70 years old“ (Beženceva 2007, 100; translation mine – GS). A somewhat more optimistic view is expressed in Lom [Lohm]: 2006, 48 (translation mine – GS): “One must note, however, that there are often apocalyptic[7] prophecies concerning the future of the Doukhobors. Already in the 1960s the scholars predicted that the Doukhobor identity would disappear in the near future. When saying goodbye to us, a Doukhobor woman told us: ‘you know, every year we say that we are going to leave for Russia. But in the end we always stay.’”

3.    Focusing and Reallocation: 1899-1938

3.1. Saskatchewan

Focusing, i.e., the selection of one of the competing forms, was considerably impeded by the influence of the language of the “Galicians”, i.e., of Ukrainian.[8]  This influence was still felt for a short while after the move to British Columbia (see 3.2. below). Reallocation took place, for example, in the borrowing of words from English into DR primarily in the workplace (Harshenin 1964, 1967), thus narrowing the linguistic functions of either Ukrainian borrowings or traditional DR lexical items. This period also saw the beginning of diglossia since in a letter of February 1, 1899, to Leo Tolstoy the Doukhobors’ spiritual leader in exile had stated that “teaching literacy to the children, including the girls, must be considered a priority right at the start” (Donskov 1995, 43).

This figure is reproduced by permission from the Doukhobor Genealogy Website (www.doukhobor.org). Copyright Jonathan J. Kalmakoff. All rights reserved.

The time for a revitalization of DR in Saskatchewan may have passed: Makarova (2011) predicts that the language will be extinct within a decade.

3.2. Move to British Columbia

The Doukhobors’ move to British Columbia in a relatively secluded area, free from interference with Ukrainian, allowed the Doukhobor community to conclude the focusing, leveling, and reallocation of linguistic features resulting in the demarcation of three functional styles: the colloquial language, the ritual language, and the written language. English – Russian bilingualism developed fully within one generation (roughly between the 1930s to the 1960s), primarily due to forced schooling in English (Schaarschmidt 2009: 35-36).

Due to the increasing use of English, on the one hand, and of Standard Russian (“SR”), on the other hand, both the colloquial DR style and the ritual language began their inevitable retreat after reaching their peaks of usage and functionality between 1801 and 1940. This is manifested in 1) a growing SR component in the diglossic DR/SR situation in the form of home-schooling in Standard Russian using old-country bukvari (primers) as well as in the launching of Russian schools maintained by the Union of Spiritual Communities of Christ in the main Doukhobor centres of Grand Forks and the West Kootenays in BC since 1935; 2) an increase in code-switching in the colloquial style; 3) the marginalization of the DR colloquial style or its replacement by the Standard Russian colloquial style; 4) the translation of ritual texts into English or the standardization of DR ritual texts, e.g., by removing Church Slavonicisms or obscure passages; and 5) the launching of Russian-language courses from kindergarten to Grade 12 in schools in the Doukhobor areas in the early 1980s, thus further marginalizing the DR colloquial style.

This figure is reproduced by permission from the Doukhobor Genealogy Website (www.doukhobor.org). Copyright Jonathan J. Kalmakoff. All rights reserved.

4. A Strategy for the Maintenance and Revitalization of DR

4.1. The present situation

There can be no question that DR in British Columbia has sustained some heavy losses in the past 75 years, resulting in a crisis situation in our days. It is good to know, however, that there is currently a kind of revitalization of DR carried out in this province. To be sure, this “revitalization” is more aimed at recording lexical items and texts for the sake of saving as much information as possible for future generations. From efforts such as a series of thus far sixteen two-page articles of DR data in the monthly magazine Iskra (Popoff 2012) it is still a long way to the revival of DR as a vehicle of communication and a school subject. But it is a good testing ground as to how far educators in conjunction with the community are willing to go in this revitalization process.

4.2. What can be done?[9]

As in traditional native cultures, the Doukhobor elders “were the source of all knowledge and the keepers of the value and belief systems. The elders used oral language as a means of passing on their knowledge and cultures and thus education … meant that elders, language and culture were inextricably interwoven.” (Native Language Education 1986: 1; Government of Alberta 2010:2).Thus, in order to develop a Second Language Program in DR from Grades 1-3, the Doukhobor elders and cultures must be brought into the school programs. The subject DR faces stiff competition from a numerically stronger relative, i.e., Standard Russian (SR), historically a compromise language based essentially on the Moscow dialect.

The current need for the maintenance and revitalization of DR is similar to the needs of many other minority languages including autochthonous ones. We will select here one that is within our research experience and competence, viz., Lower Sorbian (a Slavic language) in Germany. About a dozen years ago, Lower Sorbian was spoken only by people older than 60 years, and it was predicted that in about 15 to 20, maximally 30 years, the language would be dead (Jodlbauer, Spieß and Stenwijk 2001: 204). The remedy for this was seen in revitalizing Lower Sorbian as a second language beginning in pre-school years. For this purpose, a special day-care centre, called Mato Rizo, was established in a district in the city of Cottbus. In that day-care centre, part of an anticipated chain of such centres called WITAJ (“welcome”), Lower Sorbian was taught as an immersion course in the hope that a new generation of second-language speakers would compensate for the losses suffered in the last two decades. In addition, as a possible interim supporting measure it was hoped that Lower Sorbian could be increasingly taught as a foreign language with English and possibly French and Russian as powerful competitors (Jodlbauer, Spieß and Stenwijk 2001: 207-208).

Like in the case of Canada’s First Nations languages, such efforts for the revitalization of Lower Sorbian require the active involvement of elders with native or next-to-native (semi-speaker) proficiency in the WITAJ project. But similar to the Doukhobor Russian situation, Lower Sorbian language activists have come out against making two languages, viz., Lower Sorbian and English compulsory subjects even though they do not agree with public opinion that learning two languages in addition to German would present a burden. Admittedly, the possible range of applicability of Lower Sorbian as a second language is very limited in present-day German society; however, the language does have a rich written tradition to look back on. On balance, then, Doukhobor Russian is more in the situation of Canada’s First Nations Languages: for the latter, especially the smaller groups like some Salish languages in British Columbia, it is often suggested that they would be better off learning a major First Nations language, such as Cree (see also Schaarschmidt 1998:463). This is similar, then, to the view expressed in the Doukhobor community that Doukhobor children should learn Standard Russian but that all efforts should be made to document as much as possible of Doukhobor Russian so as to preserve it as a museum language.

At the time of writing, only the oldest generation of Doukhobors in BC is still using the language in one or the other function. Children pick up bits and pieces from grandparents but they don’t speak it for the simple reason that their parents don’t know how to speak it any more. This situation in general implies the impending death of a language/dialect. True, there are many who would like to save the dialect and they can learn a lot from the situation of the First Nations languages in British Columbia where considerable progress has been made even in those cases where there were only 50 adult speakers. There are also opponents who either do not see any value in maintaining and revitalizing the language of the elders or view this process as an extra burden on the children in the light of Standard Russian as a school subject. It is difficult to counter value judgments except perhaps with the argument that there are benefits in maintaining something that could be of good use some day (Harrison 2010:274). The extra-burden argument does not hold water because the human brain between three and six years of age can pick up an indefinite number of languages or dialects (even closely related ones) without any difficulty (for a detailed discussion of the pros and cons of multiple-language acquisition, see Harrison 2010: 221-242). Another hindrance to the revitalization project is the auto- and heterostereotype perception of DR: 1) the Doukhobors themselves consider DR to be outdated and not good Russian (being based on a South Russian, DR is often felt to be like Ukrainian). The notion of DR being outdated is perhaps best expressed in this quote from a Doukhobor: “Personally, the so-called ‘Doukhobor dialect’ is interesting as a minor artifact of life, but the real future is in learning Standard Russian, one of the important international languages of the world” (Koozma Tarasoff, Spirit Wrestlers Blog, May 21, 2011. www.spirit-wrestlers.com). This negative autostereotype perception is enforced by the heterostereotype perception as exemplified by references to DR as being “artificial” and “defective” (Golubeva-Monatkina 1997: 35; translation mine – GS).

As stated in the Introduction, the present study should be viewed as a pilot study to be followed by a detailed proposal how to 1) get DR into the school system at least in Grades 1-3; 2) develop a teacher training programme and curriculum as well as teaching aids in consultation with elders; and 3) secure funding for such a programme perhaps in the form of a foundation grant as well as grants from the Provincial Government.

4.3. Getting DR into the BC school system

4.3.1. Teacher training programs

Selkirk College in Castlegar, BC, would be the most appropriate place to develop a teacher training programme and workshops as well as curriculum and teaching aids perhaps with the assistance of the University of Victoria, a traditional supporter of DR studies and teacher training initiatives since the early 1980s. A Doukhobor foundation grant would help with the financing of these efforts as well as with the preparation of the kinds of materials mentioned in 4.3.3. below.

4.3.2. Writing DR

One of the first things that were done for Sencoten, a language like DR with an oral tradition, was to develop an alphabet for the language. This was carried out by John Elliott, a non-linguist who has managed to incorporate four of his new graphic symbols into UNICODE (see www.languagegeek.com/salishan/sencoten.html and Claxton & Elliott 1994). For DR it will make good sense to use the cyrillic alphabet but perhaps with the addition of the Greek letter γ (gamma) to denote the pronunciation of Cyrillic г as either [γ] or [h] in DR as well as the letter ў to denote bilabial [w].

4.3.3. Texts, dictionaries and a grammar

A second task will be to create an archive of texts in both oral form and cyrillic letters. A grammatical outline of DR as well as dictionaries will also be essential as teaching aids.

5. Conclusion

In concluding this pilot study we wish to emphasize that we take it for granted that saving a language from extinction is just as important as ensuring the survival of an animal or plant species. As the Australian language expert Wurm (1991: 17) put it: “With the death of a language […] an irreplaceable unit in our knowledge and understanding of human thought and world-view has been lost forever.” And to paraphrase Harrison (2010: 274), what the elder generations of the Doukhobors know – “which we’ve forgotten or never knew – may someday save us.” It is imperative that, once a community decision has been reached to embark upon a revitalization program, a school program in DR should be started very soon, certainly while the elders are still around because creating a generation of DR as second-language speakers may make good economic sense the benefits of which might only be felt a couple of generations later.

As Harrison quoted one of his “last speakers”: “trouble is, they say they want to learn it [=the language, G.S.], but when it comes time to do the work, nobody comes around” (Harrison 2010: 249). It is noteworthy that in those cases where somebody did come around (Sencoten, Lower Sorbian), the experience has invariably been a rewarding one.

Footnotes

[1] This statistics are based on the possibly quite outdated information given in Popoff 1983, 117. Later figures put the totals somewhat higher, e.g., in Tarasoff 2002, 12.

[2] Current estimates for the Republic of Georgia vary widely due to a lack of reliable statistics from 800 speakers to a mere 150 (see also Section 2.3. of the present study).

[3] DR has been variously referred to as a “language’, a “dialect”, or a “variant” (of Russian). We are using “language” where many writers have been using “dialect”, and we prefer to use “style” as opposed to “dialect”. This question of nomenclature is not trivial, see also the discussion of the hetero- and autostereotype perception of DR in Section 4. of the present study.

[4] In the transliteration of cyrillic, we follow the “ISO Transliteration System”. In one instance, viz., in the discussion of the loss of the neuter gender in DR in Section 2.3., we decided to use the original cyrillic because it seemed to us to make the opposition stressed : unstressed clearer.

[5] This is on the assumption of a 60% language maintenance estimated in Schaarschmidt 1998, 466. The level of maintenance has probably shrunk to something like 50% during the last 15 years, amounting to a total of 12,500 speakers including a large number of semi-speakers.

[6] We prefer to label the relation DR – SR in BC as a diglossic situation. Due to the fact that Canadian English is rapidly becoming the first language for BC Doukhobors, there is bilingualism in addition to diglossia (Schaarschmidt 2012: 249-50). For a discussion of the various forms of diglossia, as opposed to bilingualism, see Myers-Scotton 2006: 80-89.

[7] The term “apocalyptic” seems to refer to the “Day of Judgment” said to arrive possibly in the year 2000, as quoted in Inikova 1995, 194. For some recent literature on the protection of the Doukhobors in Georgia, see also also Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Georgia: Treatment of Doukhobors (Dukhobors) and state protection available to them, 1 January 1999, GGA31028.E, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3ae6ab9448.html [last accessed 6 February 2013]. For the reduction in the number of schools with Russian instruction in Georgia and an action plan to remedy this situation, see Council of National Minorities (2012).

[8] Young (1931:185) reports many cases of intermarriage between Doukhobors and Ukrainians.

[9] Most of these steps are outlined in Hinton and Hale 2001. A convenient shortcut guide for indigenous languages can be found in FPCC 2013 http://www.fpcc.ca/language/toolkit/begining_an_Indigenous_Language_Initiative.aspx (last accessed February 20, 2013).

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  • Schaarschmidt, Gunter (1998). “Language in British Columbia” in John Edwards (ed.), pp. 461-8. Language in Canada. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
  • Schaarschmidt, Gunter (2008). “The Ritual Language of the British Columbia Doukhobors as an Endangered Functional Style: Issues of Interference and Translatability.” Canadian Slavonic Papers 50 (1–2): 102–22.
  • Schaarschmidt, Gunter (2009). “English for Doukhobors: 110 Years of Russian-English Contact in Canada” in Nadezhda Grejdina (ed.), pp. 30-43. Aktual’nye problemy kommunikacii i kul’tury. Vyp. 10. Mezhdunarodnyj sbornik nauchnyx trudov. Moskva – Pjatigorsk: Pjatigorskij gosudarstvennyj lingvisticheskij universitet. (also published as https://www.doukhobor.org/Schaarschmidt-Russian-English.htm).
  • Schaarschmidt, Gunter (2012). “Russian Language History in Canada. Doukhobor Internal and External Migrations: Effects on Language Development and Structure” in Veronika Makarova (ed.), pp. 235-260. Russian Language Studies in North America. New Perspectives from Theoretical and Applied Linguistics. London: Anthem Press.
  • Siegel, J. (1985). “Koines and koineization” in Language in Society 14: 357–78.
  • Tarasoff, Koozma J. (1963). “Cultural interchange between the non-Slavic peoples of the Soviet Union and the people of Russian background in the greater Vancouver area.” Term paper, Slavonic Studies, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
  • Tarasoff, Koozma (2002). Spirit Wrestlers: Doukhobor Pioneers’ Strategies for Living. Brooklyn, NY: Legas/Ottawa: Spirit Wrestlers Publishing.
  • Trudgill, P. J. (1998). “The Chaos before Order: New Zealand English and the Second Stage of New-dialect Formation” in E. H. Jahr (ed.), pp. 1-11. Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Trudgill, P. J., E. Gordon, G. Lewis and M. Maclagan. (2000). “Determination in New-dialect Formation and the Genesis of New Zealand English”. Journal of Linguistics 36: 299–318.
  • Wurm, Stephen A. (1991). “Language Death and Disappearance: Causes and Circumstances” in Robert H. Robins and Eugenius M. Uhlenbeck (eds.), pp. 1-17. Endangered Languages. Oxford and New York: Berg.
  • Young, Charles H. (1931). Ukrainian Canadians. Toronto: Nelson.

For More Information

For additional research about the Doukhobor dialect spoken in Canada, see Gunter Schaarschmidt’s articles Four Norms – One Culture: Doukhobor Russian in Canada as well as English for Doukhobors: 110 Years of Russian-English Contact in Canada.  Read also about his Day-trip to Piers Island: Reminiscing About the Penitentiary, 1932-1935.  Finally, for Gunter Schaarschmidt’s exclusive translations of 19th century German articles about the Doukhobors, see The Dukhobortsy, 1822-1828 by Daniel Schlatter; Passage Across the Caucasus, 1843 by Kuzma F. Spassky-Avtonomov; The Dukhobortsy in Transcaucasia, 1854-1856 by Heinrich Johann von Paucker; Notes from the Molochnaya, 1855 by Alexander Petzholdt; Doukhobors in the Caucasus, 1863-1864 by Alexander Petzholdt; Report from the Caucasus, 1875 by Hans Leder; and Travels in the Caucasus and the Armenian Highlands, 1875 by Gustav I. Sievers and Gustav I. Radde.