A Few Things about Newfoundland English

There is not just “one” Newfoundland English. There are many variations in vocabulary and pronunciation and grammar across the province. But some things are very common. ▬ 

Sources: 

→ The Dialect Atlas of Newfoundland and Labrador. Memorial University. 2012.  https://dialectatlas.mun.ca/. ||

→ Dictionary of Newfoundland English. 2nd ed. with supp., edited by G. M. Story, W. J. Kirwin, and J. D. A Widdowson, 1990. https://www.heritage.nf.ca/dictionary/. ||

→ “NL Sayings Bars.” Newfoundland Chocolate Company, 2024, https://www.newfoundlandchocolatecompany.com/collections/newfoundland-sayings-bars. || ▬ 

Transcript

I find Newfoundland English really fascinating, partly because it is one of the variations of English across Canada that is so distinctive. If you were born in, say, a small outport community in Newfoundland and you make your first visit off the island to Vancouver when you’re 35, it’s very likely people are going to notice, as they call it, your “accent.” Not only that, but you are likely to talk faster than the Vancouverites do and also use words that they’ve never heard before. Plus, your grammar will be different. On the other hand, if a guy from Toronto makes his first trip outside the city to Vancouver when he’s 35, nobody would likely notice a thing. I’m not sure, there might in fact be some regional differences between Toronto English and Vancouver English, but I am sure that they are not as extensive as for Newfoundland.

Before I get started on pointing out some of the characteristics of Newfoundland English, it’s important to say that the language varies across the province just as Canadian English varies across the country. That’s one of the basic facts about how language works: people in one locale undergo different influences on the way they speak and write that people in a different locale—a hundred or seven thousand kilometres away—do not.

Our knowledge of Newfoundland English also benefits from having a lot of scholarly attention devoted to it. There are two main works here, one pretty well known and the other not so much. The well-known one is the great Dictionary of Newfoundland English, edited by G. M. Story, W. J. Kirwin, and J. D. A. Widdowson. When I attended Memorial University in the late ’70s and early ’80s, I was lucky enough to have two of these scholars as my teachers—Professor Story teaching research methods, and Professor Kirwin teaching an introductory linguistics course. The three men had started the dictionary research in the ’60s and they published the first edition in 1982, all before computers and searchable databases. A second edition with a substantial supplement adding about 20% to the total page count was published in 1990. The additions-and-corrections supplement unfortunately—likely due to the expense of re-typesetting the entire book—was not incorporated into the main text, but appended at the end. It means that any time you look up a word, alas, you have to look in two places. It’s more or less the same in the freely available version online as well (check the show notes for the link): they’ve done some corrections and the like, but if you search a word that was in the original dictionary and in the supplement, you end up with two search results. What the dictionary really needs is the giant undertaking of a third edition, which would not only integrate the supplement, but would take account of words and changes that have appeared and happened in Newfoundland English since 1990. But that is a huge undertaking that would require a scholar willing to give several years of their research to it, and getting grants and grad students and volunteers to help them out.

Before I get to the lesser-known scholarly work on the language, I wanted to say a bit about the popular compilations of Newfie words and phrases and sayings—you know, the ones that you see at the airport or in stores. I will compile a list of these in a future episode of the podcast, which are not only fun and very accessible (and attainable) but also likely contain words and phrases that you couldn’t find in the big dictionary, partly due to these modern compilations being, well, modern, and so being published within the 35 years since. You can get some of these phrases and a treat too in the line of chocolate bars made by the Newfoundland Chocolate Company with various Newfoundland sayings on the wrappers (sayings like, to choose just a few, WHAT ODDS, GOT ME DROVE, and I DIES AT YOU—which mean, respectively, that doesn’t matter, you piss me off, and you’re funny).

So.

I mentioned a second scholarly work that many people have likely never heard of. It’s called The Dialect Atlas of Newfoundland and Labrador (see the link in the show notes) and it covers not only words but grammar and pronunciation as well. Also, the Dialect Atlas of the title is referring to the fact that it covers how the words and grammar vary in different parts of the province. For example, a word or a quirk of grammar may be common in one community, and not used at all in another. It’s a really fascinating look at how the English of Newfoundland is not a monolith: there are variations, there are dialects. It depends on where you live.

I want to cite one example of what the Dialect Atlas does, and then talk about some aspects of Newfoundland English that are almost universal across the island (and in Labrador). For example, I can search by community, so I’ll look at Corner Brook, where I was born. From there I can then look either at pronunciation of certain works or at certain grammar usages. Let’s look at pronunciation. One of the categories under that is what the atlas calls “deletion of word-final T and D,” that is, the tendency not to pronounce the t or d at the end of certain words. Three words are listed: field, gold, and old. And here’s the cool part: the atlas is based on oral interviews with real Newfoundlanders, so there’s a short snippet of a person actually pronouncing these words, but leaving off the d in each case. Here are the snippets, each just a couple of seconds long. The speaker is saying, respectively: goes around the field and come around by the cliff; and they buried the gold about ah; old man and he had a big sea coat on:

https://dialectatlas.mun.ca/app/atlas/audio/8073.mp3

https://dialectatlas.mun.ca/app/atlas/audio/8008.mp3

https://dialectatlas.mun.ca/app/atlas/audio/8015.mp3

And this is just a tiny, minor example of the great things you can do with the Dialect Atlas.

So, with that context of the variations aside, I want to point out a few of the things about the English in Newfoundland that are very common, and that the visitor or tourist is likely to hear no matter where they go:

1. The present tense of verbs is in the form that is used for he/she/it, the “third-person singular” as scholars put it. Pick almost any verb. Standard English is I walk, you walk, she walks, but the common Newfoundland usage is I walks, you walks, she walks. You hear this almost everywhere and almost all the time (I feel I have to put the caveat of almost in there, because I haven’t been everywhere and I haven’t studied everything). We’ve already seen an example on the chocolate-bar wrapper: I dies at you. There are not many exceptions to this usage that I can think of. One is the verb to be, which is often the most irregular verb in any language, and certainly in English: I am, you are, it is. This one is tricky in Newfoundland English, and what you normally hear is variation on top of variation from standard English. I would conjugate this one as:

I’ne, you’re, he’s / we’re, you’re, day are

As you can hear, contractions are used. It gets a little more regular when you are asking questions:

is I? is ya? is she? / is we? is ya? is day?

More use of is, but the pronouns are pronounced differently.

2. The use of after to indicate the past tense of a verb. You hear this all the time. For example, instead of I lost my watch, you’ll hear I’m after losin’ me watch.

3. Some “possessive pronouns,” as the linguists call them, that are non-standard. The ones that stand out are my and his. It is very common to hear these pronounced as in the following:

I washed me car.

’E washed eez truck.

4. Different meanings for the adjectives right and some. In essence, they mean very in Newfoundland English. It’s pretty straightforward and as far as I can tell, it’s the exact meaning of very with no nuance. For example, Dat baby is right colicky. As for the use of some, I still remember an event at our house in Corner Brook a good fifty years ago, when one of my aunts was staying over. We heard a sound in the night, and maybe from watching too many gangster movies or something, some of us in the house were worried. My brother ultimately got up to have a look, and of course there was nothing—back in the ’70s the murder rate in the city was routinely zero. But I remember my aunt saying the next morning, Oh, I was some proud when he got up to check. And there you have a double-whammy of Newfoundland English, with proud meaning pleased or happy.

I’ll leave it there for now, but consider this just a small taste, a few hors d’oeuvres of Newfoundland English usage. I’ll devote a few future episodes to other aspects of the various dialects. One important thing to remember is that there is nothing wrong or incorrect about Newfoundland English. That is not how language works. The overriding criterion for assessing regional dialects is usage, that is, what are the words that the people who speak and write the language actually use? There is no exalted standard that a dialect is expected to conform to.

And that’s all for this episode. Thanks for listening. Comment or give a rating if you like the show. And please join me again next Tuesday. ▬