UKRANIAN SPOKEN LANGUAGE IN THE COUNTRYSIDE OF PARANÁBRAZIL: CURRENT AND HISTORICAL DATA

The Ukrainian language is one among many other European languages spoken in Brazil, along with Polish, Italian, German, and others. In the state of Paraná, Brazil, especially in the Midwestern region where the State University of the Midwestern is located, the Ukrainian culture remains alive in the practices of the descendants of immigrants who moved there in the 19th century, present mainly in culinary, handicrafts, religious rituals, and linguistic use. We hereby present historical registers of the Ukrainian language in cemeteries which demonstrate the strong Ukrainian identity of the immigrants and their descendants who, even though illiterate in both Ukrainian and Portuguese in some cases, or with little formal education, used to write in the tombstones, and still do it, in Ukrainian and not in Portuguese. We shall present current data collected via interviews by researchers from NEES -Slavic Studies Center- (COSTA E LOREGIAN-PENKAL, 2015) in several cities in the region, which are oral evidences of use of the Ukrainian language by the investigated communities. Data collections show comprehensive registers of bilingual informants in different levels and of those whose first language is Ukrainian and not Portuguese and also the occurrence of passive bilingualism, an increasing phenomenon. Oral reports also show that social practices contribute to the maintenance of the language and identity in both public and private spheres.