Since its independence in 1991, Ukraine’s language regime has evolved in a context of intense cultural heterogeneity. The most crucial element of the language situation in Ukraine concerns cohabitation and intermingling between Ukrainian and Russian language-oriented populations. Ukraine’s competitive state tradition produced a contested language regime. Formed at the crossroads of civilizations, it has been influenced by both East and West. The critical juncture of Ukraine’s independence marked a rupture with its past and generated a new language regime that actively embraced priority for the Ukrainian language. But because of its competitive state tradition, this language regime remained unsettled, solidifying only gradually and non-linearly. Inherited institutions that were both executive dominant and fragmented produced radical shifts when new elites took power. Through these shifts, Ukraine’s language regime has gradually coalesced around a dominant conception, though the tradition of competitiveness remains. Ukraine’s language regime reveals the embedded normative and institutional legacies of its experience under Russian and Soviet rule, as well as the reactive nationalism this imposition provoked. It continues to occupy a crossroads, pulled at once by East and West, paradoxically asserting the very monolingual nationalism perfected in Europe but now cautioned by appeals to minority language rights.

It has been widely recognized that how languages behave, particularly under conditions of contact with other languages, depends on their context. Using the Ethnolinguistic Vitality framework, this chapter describes the demographics, linguistic attitudes and institutional supports for heritage languages, defining the concepts and illustrating them with examples from Toronto, the context in which the HLVC project is conducted. Demographic information includes population sizes, language shift rates, and history of settlement in Toronto. Status information includes both reflections on the status of heritage languages, as a whole, in Canada and labels attributed to the specific varieties. The institutional support section reports on the number of language classes available for each language. The chapter also includes discussion of language policy, particularly for education, and the demographics of the university where the research is centered, enabling other researchers to best consider what aspects of the project might need adjusting for adaptation in other contexts.

This chapter reports on trends of continuity and divergence within the heritage generations examined and between heritage and homeland varieties. It discusses the degrees of similarities between the varieties in terms of (a) rates of use of innovative forms and (b) conditioning factors in the constraint hierarchy. The three variables examined are voice onset time (VOT, n=8,909), case-marking on nouns and pronouns (CASE, n=9,661), and variable presence of subject pronouns (PRODROP, n=9,190), each in three or more languages. The similarity in rates and conditioning effects across generations for (PRODROP), examined in seven languages, particularly contrasts with findings for this variable in experimental paradigms. Similarly, findings of little simplification or overgeneralization of the case system in three languages stands in contrast to the outcomes of several previous studies. (VOT) shows a drift toward (but not arriving at) English-like values for only some of the languages examined. For each variable, models are presented and interpreted; a table then details which aspects of the analysis contribute to the interpretation of stability and of each type of variation.

The variables examined in Chapters 5 and 6 show little evidence of being used for identity work. That is, they do not show (consistent) effects of ethnic orientation measures or speaker sex. This chapter explicitly contrasts variables that reflect indexicality (correlation to social factors) in homeland varieties to non-indexical variables. We begin by considering three indexical variables in Italian: (VOT) in unstressed-syllable contexts, (APOCOPE), and (R), illustrating the extent to which indexicality is maintained in the heritage variety. We find increasing use of the more standard variant only in (VOT). Furthermore, we find that younger speakers (both in homeland and heritage) favour the non-standard variant. We then compare the variable (R), the contrast between trill (or tap) and approximant variants, in Italian and Tagalog, where it has indexical value in the homeland varieties, to Russian and Ukrainian, where it does not. Finally, we consider two additional indexical variables: Cantonese denasalization and Korean VOT. We conclude by contrasting the behavior of homeland-indexicals in heritage varieties. The presence of indexical value in homeland varieties does not consistently influence outcomes in the heritage varieties.

This chapter draws cross-linguistic comparisons among the patterns reported in Chapter 5 for three linguistic variables that occur in at least three languages in the project: (VOT), (CASE), and (PRODROP). Conditioning factors, both linguistic and social, are discussed. Collapsing across rate and constraint hierarchy for each variable, we note any indication of change in either. Half the context we examine exhibit stability. Of the eight that indicate difference, half of these can be attributed to English (including both convergence and divergence). With few differences between homeland and heritage speakers to work with, we find few generalizations about what parts of the language, or which languages, change. We do see more change in one morphosyntactic variable, (CASE), than in the phonetic variable (VOT), but less in the other morphosyntactic variable (PRODROP).

Ukraine is the largest country by territory within the European continent and a global geopolitical flashpoint. At a time of trauma and transition, Ukrainian cultural producers have begun to confront questions of Ukraine’s national identity and linguistic diversity with new urgency and fresh perspective. This chapter sheds light on the evolving dynamic between multilingualism and identity in contemporary Ukrainian culture by employing the practices of both sociological and literary analysis. Through semi-structured interviews and close readings of prominent artistic texts, we focus on the ways in which Ukrainian cultural producers embrace linguistic diversity while simultaneously privileging the Ukrainian language and promoting national consolidation in wartime. This ‘practical multilingualism’ is particularly evident in literary and cinematic dialogues that feature characters discussing their belonging to Ukraine across languages. In the field of nationalism studies, such ‘scenes of talk’ (Herman 2006) invite a reassessment of the almost exclusive emphasis on narrative in analyses of the role of culture in the life of the nation.

This chapter explores a representative cross-section of heritage languages, in Spanish-speaking Latin American nations and in Brazil. The presentation is organized by the circumstances that gave rise to heritage language enclaves: voluntary immigration, including recruitment efforts by Latin American governments, immigration of religious minorities. Immigration resulting from contract labor, and continent-internal migration, often resulting from economic hardship. None of the heritage languages enjoys official recognition, but some encompass entire communities while others have dwindled to small groups of speakers. Among the heritage languages examined are German and Mennonite Low German, Italian, Ukrainian, Polish, Haitian Creole, Japanese, and American, British, and Creole English as well as transplanted varieties of Spanish and Portuguese. Attitudes toward heritage languages as well as linguistic self-esteem of speakers are equally diverse, ranging from ethnic pride to scorn, and the discussion includes an overview of circumstances that both favor and endanger heritage language maintenance.