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Do you speak Yukon English? These researchers want to hear it
'Linguists know very, very little about what's going on with Englishes in the Canadian North,' researcher says
CBC News · Posted: Aug 10, 2025

If you're not quite sure where Yukon is, it's way up there in northwest Canada, between British Columbia to the south, Alaska to the west, and Northwest Territories to the east.  It's cold, bitterly cold in winter, the coldest place in North America, with the abandoned town of Snag dropping down to −63.0 °C (−81.4 °F) in February, 1947.  Believe it or not, it gets extreme high heat in May and June, with the Mayo Road weather station, located just northwest of Whitehorse, recording a temperature of 36.5 °C (97.7 °F) in June, 2004.

As you might expect, the population of Yukon is sparse, with an estimated total of 47,126 as of 2025.  But now it gets interesting, at least to me.

As of the 2016 census, the top ten ancestries in the Yukon were:

Rank	Ethnic group	Population (2016)	Percentage
1	English	9,680	27.57%
2	Aboriginal	8,665	24.68%
3	Canadian	8,640	24.61%
4	Scottish	8,295	23.63%
5	Irish	6,930	19.74%
6	German	5,575	15.88%
7	French	5,040	14.35%
8	Ukrainian	2,200	6.27%
9	Dutch	1,760	5.01%
10	Norwegian	1,380	3.93%

Ranked at #3 is "Canadian".  I couldn't help but do a double take when I read that.  So I had to look it up, and I found that "Canadian" ethnicity is this:

Canadian ethnicity refers to the self-identification of one's ethnic origin or ancestral roots as being Canadian. It was added as a possible response for an ethnic origin in the Canadian census in 1996. The identification is attributed to White Canadians who do not identify with their ancestral ethnic origins due to generational distance from European ancestors. The identification is more common in eastern parts of the country that were first settled by Europeans than in the rest of the country.

(Wikipedia)

As for languages spoken in Yukon:

Mother tongue, 2021 census
Rank	Language	Population	Percent
1.	English	31,995	80.31%
2.	French	1,785	4.48%
3.	Tagalog	985	2.47%
4.	German	600	1.51%
5.	Punjabi	410	1.03%
6.	Spanish	235	0.59%
7.	Cantonese (Yue)	200	0.50%
8.	Japanese	135	0.34%
9.	Ma[n]darin	130	0.33%
10.	Tuchone Languages	115	0.29%

(Wikipedia)

So 4/5ths of the people of Yukon are English speakers, but that doesn't mean their English is of a kind with Englishes spoken elsewhere in Canada.  That's why there's a need for the type of research described in the article cited at the beginning of this post:

As research projects go, it sounds pretty skookum.

Derek Denis, an associate professor of linguistics at the University of Toronto, is in the Yukon this week listening to how people talk. It's part of an ongoing research project to better understand and document regional dialects of Canadian English.

"Right now, the most … 'accurate' map, dialect map of Canada, it has cut off the territories," he said. "I'd like to change that."

Out in the field, Denis' modus operandi may seem rather laid back, but I trust it will be exacting back in the lab when they analyze their data:

His research team is in Whitehorse looking for volunteers to, essentially, shoot the breeze a bit. 

"We just wanna talk to them, hear their stories, and then later, down the road, do some linguistics with those recordings," he explained. "And we also get people to read a short story, and a list of words as well."

Denis says he's long been fascinated by how languages evolve over time, in different geographical areas and among different cultures.    

"The idea that multiple languages could be related to some long-gone language blew my mind and sparked a lifelong interest in language change," he writes on his website.  

Now, he teaches about the different ways the English language is used and heard in different parts of the world, from Europe to Africa to Asia. He said the dialects in many regions have been well-studied, but it's a different story in North America. 

"It turns out linguists know very, very little about what's going on with Englishes in the Canadian North," he said.

Denis is not just interested in the quirks of local vocabulary — for example, the way Yukoners might use "outside" to refer to areas beyond the territory — but also things like pronunciation. He cites the linguistic phenomenon of "Canadian raising," which refers to a distinct, supposedly signature Canadian way of saying some vowel sounds (often mocked as "oot and aboot").

"I'm really curious about that, if that's happening up here as well," he said.

He admits that a lot of research over the years has involved that most famous Canadianism — "eh" — but after a couple of days in the Yukon, he said he hasn't heard it used much.  

"Not saying it's not here. I'm gonna be listening out for it," he said.

The times and routes by which people moved into Yukon make a big difference in what kind of languages evolved there.

For Denis, the notion of a distinct sort of "Yukon English" intrigues him because of the territory's unique history of settlement.

"The migration history here is very different from elsewhere in western Canada, and so those influences are coming together in different ways," he said.

He's also aiming to continue his research beyond the Yukon, by studying the varieties of English usage in the N.W.T. and Nunavut as well.

Good idea, mate.

Oh, wait a minute.  Gotta keep my Englishes straight, eh?

Selected readings

• "'United Kingdom (the)'" (5/29/22)
• "Canadian 'eh' and Japanese 'ne'" (5/2/05)

[h.t. rit malors and Mark Metcalf]

August 11, 2025 @ 11:57 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Dialects, Idioms, Interjections and exclamations

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