Newfoundland English refers to several accents and dialects of Atlantic Canadian English found in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Most of these differ significantly from the English commonly spoken elsewhere in Canada and North America, reflecting the province's history and geography. Newfoundland was one of the first areas settled by England in North America, beginning in small numbers in the early 17th century and peaking in the early 19th century. After the 1783 independence of the colonies that formed the United States, Newfoundland remained part of British North America, becoming a Dominion within the British Empire in 1907. It joined Canada in 1949 as the last province to join the confederation.
The dialects of Newfoundland English developed in relative isolation due to the province’s geography. Newfoundland is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, separated from Labrador by the Strait of Belle Isle. This isolation allowed the dialects to develop independently of those on the North American mainland. Historically, Newfoundland English was first recognized as a distinct dialect in the late 18th century when George Cartwright published a glossary of Newfoundland words. Today, some words from Newfoundland English, such as "b'y" (a form of address), have gained recognition through popular culture in other parts of Canada, particularly in Ontario and eastward.
Newfoundland English shares some linguistic features with Bermudian English, likely due to historical connections between the two regions. Both were part of the See of Nova Scotia until 1839, after which they became part of the Diocese of Newfoundland and Bermuda. The shared ecclesiastical and cultural ties, along with movement between the regions, may have contributed to similarities such as the use of "b'y" in Newfoundland and "bye" in Bermuda."'BERMEWJAN VURDS' – Our Bermuda Dictionary", by Peter A. Smith and Fred M. Barritt, which lists: "BYE 1) A male child. 2) Plural BYES: WE BYES wrote this book and US BYES and THEM BYES and we sold it to YOU BYES."guide to Newfoundland Slang, which records: "B'y – Though originally a short form of 'boy' it's actually gender neutral and isn't interchangeable with 'boy'. It adds emphasis to a phrase. Example: Yes, b'y, Go on, b'y."
Newfoundland English is often referred to as Newfinese (also spelled Newfunese). The term Newfie is also used but can be considered pejorative.
Clarke (2005) identifies two major dialect types, based on ancestry: Newfoundland Vernacular Irish English (NVIE) and Newfoundland Vernacular British English (NVBE).
Influences Much of Newfoundland’s English has been influenced by the languages and dialects of European settlers of the past, such as those who were British, Irish, or French. Also, Indigenous languages prevailed on the island, with some of their influence remains today.
British 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. Most of the coast, except the Avalon Peninsula, was settled by migrants from Dorset, Somerset, and Hampshire, which Handcock refers to as "Wessex."
A major reason for the migration pattern is that Poole, 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 England. That group of migrants accounts for almost 80 percent of all English settlers on Newfoundland.
Ultimately, that has allowed for the preservation of speech patterns derived from the West Country in Newfoundland English. Paddock illustrates how the speech pattern survived in 72 coastal communities in Newfoundland. Specifically, the use of "dark" or "velar" allophone in the communities are phonological features of the West Country. There are 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.
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 as auxiliaries or lexical verbs. As auxiliaries, the vernacular paradigm remains uninflected: "he haven't seen her". 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."
Other forms of preservation are specific terms in vocabulary like "moreish," meaning a particular food of which one cannot help having more, and are still used in Newfoundland.
Newfoundland was a British colony for nearly two centuries until 1949, when it became a province of Canada. That makes Newfoundland English have features similar to those found in the English of the West Country. They include the use of certain vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Newfoundland English has also developed its own distinct features over time, particularly by the influence of Irish and French migrants and its isolation from the rest of Canada.
Irish
Irish people in Newfoundland fisheries can be traced back to 1675. Approximately half of the population of most settlements on the shores of the Avalon Peninsula was Irish by 1750. The first significant influx of immigrants occurred mainly during the first thirty 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.
Approximately 85% of Irish immigrants originated from the counties of Kilkenny, Wexford, Waterford, Tipperary, and Carlow, in south-eastern Ireland. The remainder came from western counties, like Cork and Kerry.
Irish migrants inhabited relatively limited areas of the province, primarily in the southern parts of the Avalon Peninsula. Irish and English migrants were divided by their different religious affiliations of Catholicism and Protestantism. There was intermingling of local economics, but those interactions were limited. The geography of the island reinforced the religious division resulted in distinctive and resistant dialects of English in Newfoundland and thus preserved 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. That 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," which come from the West Country.
Another speech pattern that is preserved is the slit fricative [t] variant, a well-known feature of Irish English. The postvocalic /t/ contexts are prevalent in pre-pause positions except before consonants and are commonly used in Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula. On the other hand, that characteristic is not shared by the Newfoundland settlements from the West Country. 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.
French French settlement influences are prevalent in the Bay d’Espoir and Port au Port Peninsula on the west coast of the island. Newfoundland French was deliberately discouraged by the government of Newfoundland in the public schools during the mid-20th century, and only a small handful of people, who are mainly elderly, still fluently speak 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.
Also, some people living in the Codroy Valley, on the southwestern tip of Newfoundland, have ancestors who were francophone but represent Acadian settlers from Canada's Maritime Provinces. They arrived during the 19th century and have lost the French language as well.
Indigenous Most of the Indigenous influence within Newfoundland English has been assimilated and forgotten under 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. None of it is used in today’s vernacular.
A scarce number of Indigenous terms are still used in Newfoundland’s lexis and are influenced by the Innu, Mi’kmaq, and Inuit peoples. For example, the term tabanask, a term from the Innu language, refers to a toboggan. Also, the term babbish refers to stretched animal hide used in snowshoes. Sina refers to the edge of a floating ice field and is from the Inuit language.
Phonology
Consonants Th-stopping A notable feature of Newfoundland English, deriving from Hiberno-English, is the fortition of the fricative sounds and to become plosives and , respectively, a process known as th-stopping. For example, "that thing over there" becomes "dat ting over dere". One study of the Petty Harbour dialect showed that men tend to have stopping more often than women within this region, but that is not the case with function words like "this, them, that, these." Middle-aged women were found to start -stopping when they say function words, which would thus change to "dis, dem, dat, dese."
Slit fricative /t/ A feature found only in dialects of the Avalon Peninsula, also deriving from Hiberno-English, is the lenition of the phoneme to (called a slit fricative) after vowels (postvocalic) and when not preceding consonants (non-preconsonantal). This is the opposite process as the th-stopping described above. This sound is similar to , but with less of the high-pitched "hissing" sound characteristic of .
Voiced fricatives The modification of initial voiceless fricatives to voiced fricatives can be heard by those in the West Country region (the Northeast, South, and West Coasts and Labrador). Voiceless fricatives, such as /f/ and /s/, are often modified to their voiced fricative counterparts, /v/ and /z/ respectively. Terms like salt and fir thus change to zalt and vir as a result of that shift. Those speech patterns are less prominent today but survive in pockets in the West Country regions.
Simplified consonant clusters The West Country is known to remove the last consonant of clusters in their speech. Terms like loft, bald, and almost are simplified to like lof, bal, and almos.
H-dropping Both h-dropping and h-insertion occur in the West Country, and in many varieties of Newfoundland English. For example, Holyrood becomes Olyrood, and Avondale becomes Havondale.
Rhoticity Newfoundland is mainly rhotic, like the rest of North America, and in Ireland and the West Country. Some non-rhoticity is found in some regions.
L-darkness Some speakers of Newfoundland English pronounce as unvelarized and so the phrase sell it later is pronounced (cf. General American ). That may be from Irish-influenced varieties of English since they have light variants in both coda and onset positions.
Pulmonic ingressive Speakers of Newfoundland English, especially older speakers, often pronounce the affirmative yeah with an inward airstream.
Similar forms of ingressive speech are also observed in the local Christmas folk tradition of Mummering, where it is used to obfuscate the identity of the speaker.
Vowels In much of Newfoundland, the words fear and fair are homophones. A similar merger is found in the Norfolk dialect of East Anglia, England, and in New Zealand English.