Newfoundland English

While there was an early dominance of merchants and migrants from Devon, they accounted for only around 30 percent of the English population in places like St. John's and Conception Bay in Newfoundland.[8] Most of the coast, except the Avalon Peninsula, was settled by migrants from Dorset, Somerset, and Hampshire, which Handcock[8] refers to as Wessex.

A major reason for this migration pattern is that Poole in Dorset became a major port for the Newfoundland fish trade in the mid-1700s, which resulted in settlements that were densely clustered and mainly derived from Devon, Dorset, Somerset, and Hampshire, as these were located near major ports in the West Country of Britain.[8] This group of migrants accounts for almost 80 percent of all English settlers on Newfoundland.[8]

Ultimately, it allowed for the preservation of speech patterns derived from Britain's West Country in Newfoundland English. Paddock[9] illustrates how the speech pattern survived in 72 coastal communities in Newfoundland. Specifically, the use of "dark" or "velar" allophone in the communities which are phonological features of the West Country. There are, however, regional differences in phonological features. Another preserved phonological feature is the Irish-like fronting for all vowels which is found in communities on the southern shores of the Avalon Peninsula.[8]

Another speech pattern that is adopted is the conservative paradigm for the verbs "have" and "do" found in the West Country. The verbs "have" and "do" are dependent on their function, either as auxiliaries or lexical verbs. As auxiliaries, the vernacular paradigm remains uninflected, for example, "he haven't seen her".[8] In contrast, when used as lexical verbs, the -s inflection appears throughout the paradigm, as in "they haves/has no business being here" or "we doos [du:z]/does that all the time".[8]

Other forms of preservation are specific terms in vocabulary like moreish, meaning a particular food that one cannot help but have more of,[10] which are still being used in Newfoundland.

Newfoundland was a British colony for nearly two centuries, but in 1939, it became a province of Canada. Because of this, Newfoundland's English features are similar to those found in English found in Britain's West Country. These features include the use of certain vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. However, Newfoundland English has also developed its own distinct features over time, particularly due to the influence of Irish and French migrants, and its isolation from the rest of Mainland Canada.

Irish involvement in Newfoundland fisheries can be traced back to 1675.[8] Approximately half of the population of most settlements on the shores of the Avalon Peninsula was Irish by 1750.[8] While this is true, the first significant influx of immigrants occurred mainly in the first 30 years of the 19th century. The number of immigrants on the island had grown to 38,000 by 1836, which constituted half of the total population of Newfoundland.[8]

Approximately 85% of Irish immigrants originated from the counties of Kilkenny, Wexford, Waterford, Tipperary, and Carlow located in the south-eastern part of Ireland.[11] The remainder came from western counties, like Cork and Kerry.[11]

Irish migrants inhabited relatively limited areas of the province, primarily in the southern parts of the Avalon Peninsula.[8] Irish and English migrants were divided due to their different religious affiliations of Catholicism and Protestantism.[11] While there was intermingling of local economics, these interactions were limited. The geography of the island reinforced this religious division, resulting in distinctive and resistant dialects of English in Newfoundland. Thus preserving the south-eastern speech patterns of Ireland in Newfoundland.

The speech pattern of using the "after" form of the perfect aspect of the verb has been widely adopted in Newfoundland English. This particular construction, as in "look what I'm after doin now!", has quickly spread throughout the region, despite the existence of several other alternatives such as "I've done", "I've adone", and "I bin done" that come from Britain's West Country.[9]

While another speech pattern that is preserved is the slit fricative [t] variant, a well-known feature of Irish English. The postvocalic, non-preconsonantal /t/ contexts, prevalent in pre-pause positions, are commonly used in Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula.[8] On the other hand, this is not a characteristic shared by settlements from Britain's West Country in Newfoundland.[8] In addition, the monophthongal /e/ and postvocalic /l/ pronunciations are inherited from the Irish, and are mainly used today by older Irish ethno-religious people.[12]

French settlement influences are prevalent in the Bay d’Espoir and Port au Port Peninsula on the west coast of the island.[10] Newfoundland French was deliberately discouraged by the Newfoundland government through the public schools during the mid-20th-century, and only a small handful of mainly elderly people are still fluent in the French-Newfoundland dialect. In the last couple of decades, many parents in the region have demanded and obtained Canadian French education for their children, but that would be Standard French education and does not represent a continuation of the old dialect per se. Some people living in the Codroy Valley on the south-west tip of the island are also ancestrally francophone but represent Acadian settlers from the Maritime Provinces of Canada who arrived during the 19th century. That population has also lost the French language.

Unfortunately, a majority of the Indigenous influence within Newfoundland English has been assimilated and forgotten about due to colonialism. The Beothuk, the Indigenous people of the island, whose language and people were eradicated in the 19th century, have had bits and pieces of their vocabulary poorly transcribed.[7] None of which are used in today’s vernacular. Despite this, there still exists a scarce amount of Indigenous terms in Newfoundland’s lexis today, influenced by the Inuu, Mi’kmaq, and Inuit peoples. For example, the term tabanask, a term from the Inuu language, refers to a toboggan, while the term babbish refers to stretched animal hide used in snowshoes.[7] Borrowed from the Inuit language, sina is referred to the edge of a floating ice field.[7]

Th-stopping

The [d] is used to represent the voiced “th” sound /ð/, and a [t] to represent the voiceless one /θ/. For example, “that thing over there” becomes “dat ting over dere”. This is derived from Hiberno-English. This stopping of the interdental /ð/ is present in the speech of those in Petty Harbour, a region south of the capital, St. John’s.[13] Research has shown that men tend to do more /ð/ stopping than women within this region, however that is not the case with function words like, “this, them, that, these.” It was found that middle-aged women started /ð/ stopping when using function words, meaning these words would change to “dis, dem, dat, dese.” [14]

Slit fricative t

The phoneme /t/ when appearing at the end of word or between vowel sounds, is pronounced as in Hiberno-English; the most common pronunciation is as a voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative, also known as a "slit fricative". It does not have a separate symbol in IPA, and can be transcribed as [θ̠] (a retracted voiceless dental fricative). Thus, "hitting" [ˈɪθ̠ɪŋ] is distinguished from "hissing" [ˈɪsɪŋ] only by the fact that the fricative in the latter word is pronounced with clenched teeth (see sibilant consonant) and is laminal, rather than being apical like the slit fricative in "hitting". As the th-sounds are stopped in the dialect, there is no confusion between the slit /t/ and the /θ/ sound. As a result, it is very common to hear the word “thing” pronounced as “ting” as mentioned above. The slit fricative /t/ that replaces the standard Canadian pronunciation /θ/ acts as a marker of Newfoundland identity for Newfoundlanders.[15]

The modification of initial voiceless fricatives to voiced fricatives can be heard by those in the West Country region (regions of the North-East coast, South coast, West Coast, and Labrador).[16] Voiceless fricatives, such as /f/ and /s/, will often be modified to its voiced fricative counterparts /v/ and /z/. Terms like salt and fir will then change to zalt and vir as a result of this modification. While these speech patterns are less prominent today, they still survive in pockets in the West Country regions.[17]

The West Country is known to simplify, therefore remove the last letter, of consonant clusters in their speech.[18] Terms like loft, bald, and almost, would then be pronounced as lof, bal, and almos.

H-dropping

Both h-dropping and h-insertion occur in the English West Country as well as in many varieties of Newfoundland English – for example, Holyrood becomes “‘Olyrood” and Avondale becomes “H’Avondale”

Rhoticity

Newfoundland is mainly a rhotic accent like most of North America, as well as Ireland and the English West Country. However, some non-rhoticity can be found in some regions.

L-darkness

Some speakers of Newfoundland English pronounce /l/ as unvelarized and so the phrase sell it later is pronounced [ˈsɛl ɨθ̠ ˈleɪθ̠ɚ] (cf. General American [ˈsɛɫ ɨʔ ˈɫeɪɾɚ]), which may be due to Irish-settled varieties of English exhibiting light variants in both coda and onset positions.[19]

In much of Newfoundland, the words fear and fair are homophones. A similar phenomenon is found in the Norfolk dialect of East Anglia and in New Zealand English.

Newfoundland English traditionally lacked Canadian raising; however in the generations since Newfoundland's 1949 merger with Canada this has changed to some extent. However, those in the Avalon Peninsula (Irish settlement) display obvious Canadian Raising pattern for /ɑɪ/ but not typically for the /ɑʊ/ diphthong. While the /ɑʊ/ diphthong is not a new feature in Newfoundland English, it is not very common. It is common however, in the rural south coast community of Newhook, said to be in the speech patterns of more women than men.[20]

In a move almost certainly taken from Hiberno-English and influenced by the Irish language, speakers avoid using the verb to have in past participles, preferring formulations including after, such as I'm after telling him to stop instead of I have told him to stop. This is because in the Irish language there is no verb "to have", and more particularly because Irish Gaelic uses a construction using the words "Tar éis" (meaning "after") to convey the sense of "having just" done something – "Táim tar éis é a dhéanamh" meaning "I am just after doing it" or " I have just done it". Possession is indicated by "Ta ... agam" literally ".... is at me".

Newfoundland English often follows the Northern Subject Rule, a legacy of settlement from South East Ireland, which in turn was influenced by Anglo-Irish settlement from Northern England into Ireland.[21] For example, the verb "to fly" is conjugated for third-person plural as the birds flies. According to a 2011 study by Philip Comeau,[22] this feature of Newfoundland English differs from the Northen subject rule of British dialects, because it is a marker of habitual aspect or verb stativity.

Ye is the plural form of you (singular) instead of you (plural), similar to how you guys is often used to replace you (plural) in Standard Canadian English. For example, when addressing two or more people, or when addressing one person but referring to everyone that person is with, a speaker of Newfoundland English would ask "What do ye think?" instead of "What do you guys think?" However, "What do you think?" would still be used to refer to a single person alone and only then, which avoids the confusion present in other English dialects in which a group of people would not know whether the speaker is inquiring about the opinion of the person they are directly speaking to or the various opinions of the entire group. In most areas of the province that use the pronoun such as the Avalon Peninsula outside St. John's, ye mirrors the same variant in Hiberno-English in which you (singular), you (plural), and they correspond to you, ye, and dey (the latter simply arising from a change in pronunciation and so the term is spoken dey but written they, but the rest are written and spoken in the same way). Variants of ye are also used for alternative cases, such as yeer (your), yeers (yours), and yeerselves (yourselves).[23] In some communities on the island's northeast coast, you (singular), you (plural), and they correspond to ye, dee, and dey, respectively.

The word bes [biːz] is sometimes used in place of the normally-conjugated forms of to be to describe continual actions or states of being, as in that rock usually bes under water instead of that rock is usually under water, but the normal conjugation of to be is used in all other cases.

"Does be" is an Irish grammar calque into English. Since there is no habitual aspect in English, so Irish speakers learning English would say "does be" as a literal translation of "bíonn mé" "I (habitually) am".[24]

Use or ownership in Newfoundland English is characterized by pronouncing "my" as "me", which is common also in Irish, Scottish, Northern English, Western English, and some overseas dialects like that of Australia. Before the Great Vowel Shift, "my" was pronounced /miː/, "mine" as /miːn/, and "me" as /meː/. As with all other sound shifts, not all possible words have been changed in the other dialects noted. An example in Newfoundland would be "Where's me hat?" for "Where's my hat?".[25]

The older usage of /miː/ has carried over into present-day Newfoundland English like for the other dialects noted. An example would be "Where's me hat?" for "Where's my hat?".[25]

The use of "to" to denote location is common in Newfoundland English by using "where's that to?" rather than the more standard "where's that?" That usage comes from West Country dialects and is still common in southwest England, particularly in Bristol.

• Archaic adverbial intensifiers are preserved in Newfoundland (e.g., in Newfoundland that play was right boring and that play was some boring both mean "that play was very boring"). That is also retained in Northern English dialects such as Yorkshire and Geordie and is sometimes heard elsewhere in Atlantic Canada.
• Newfoundland English is not homogenous and can vary markedly from community to community as well as from region to region. That reflects both ethnic origin as well as relative isolation. For many decades, Newfoundland had very few roads connecting its many communities. Fishing villages, in particular, remained very isolated.
• In Newfoundland English, the affirmative yeah is often made with an inhalation rather than an exhalation among the older generations. This is an example of a rare pulmonic ingressive phone.
• In Newfoundland English, it is typical for a response to a metaphorical question like How's she cuttin'? with a dry literal response.[26] A proper response to the foresaid question would be Like a knife (the question/greeting of "How's she Cuttin'?" is a phrase still current in the Irish Midlands and North but is rarely, if ever, responded to with such a literal answer).
• To non-Newfoundlanders, speakers of Newfoundland English may seem to speak faster than speakers of General Canadian. The perceived tempo difference may be a coupling of subtle pronunciation differences and unusual sayings and can be a contributing factor to the difficulty non-Newfoundlanders sometimes experience with the dialect.