Newfoundland 1

Listen to Newfoundland 1, a 41-year-old woman from St. John’s, Newfoundland (and also Halifax, Nova Scotia), Canada. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 41

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1959

PLACE OF BIRTH: St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: environmental coordinator for the Canadian government

EDUCATION: university

AREA(S) OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

The subject lived for one year in Halifax, Nova Scotia, while attending high school.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: Susan Stackhouse

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 08/04/2000

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Great crowd of friends, we’ve got, uh, been playing softball with the same group of girls now for twenty years; since 1979, 1980, we’ve been, the core of us been together.  And, uh, we have a great time.  We, we do two or three road trips a year and, uh, we, uh, we still play ball competitively but we’re, we’re really in- into it for the social side of things.  And some of the girls play volleyball with me as well.  We’ve been together for probably over ten years; but, uh, my softball friends and I really are, uh, unique, I think; we’ve been together so long that, uh, we’re like sisters, basically.  We have a lot of fun together and, and, uh, it’s a long time to be together on, on one team.  Well, St. John’s, if you go down the southern shore there’s, uh, there’s Renews and Fermeuse, Ferrylands; there’s, uh, Cappahayden, and, uh, Trepassey.  There’s, uh, Jerseyside, Placentia, Argentia.  And if you go up the northern shore, there’s, uh, well, some of the bays are Fortune Bay, Placentia Bay, Trinity Bay.  There’s, uh, a lot of places that are kind of humorous.  They’ve actually changed the names of some of the places.  There used to be Hibbs Hole, but they’ve renamed that.  There’s, uh, Dildo, a place called Dildo.  There’s, uh, Gayside, which they recently named Bayside.  In Newfoundland, there’s definitely different dialects.  The southern shore’s very Irish, so people say, “eight o’clock” [pronounced with a crisp “t”]; you know, very Irish on the southern shore.  And, uh, some of the outports are, are very strong, their accents.  You know, “you’s and we’s,” and my accent is a townie accent. I grew up in St. John’s, so it’s, it’s more of, uh, I guess a tow-, they call it a townie accent.  Different from the further out you get in the outports.  Uh, “you’s,” “I’s,” “we’s,” you know; and uh, you-, well I say “ye” instead of “you”: “ye-ye guys.”  It’s got a lot of words that are different.  Um, uh, we say gar-, “Whataya at?” when we say, “Hello, how you doing?” “Whataya at?” and “Go way, go way, b’y [boy].”  Yea, so once a friend of mine once said that to a fellow that came up to give her something; she said sh- she’d won something and, uh, she said, “Go way, b’y!” and he thought she meant, “Go away!” and started to leave.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Lynn Baker

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 06/08/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Of great interest is the change of the vowel sound [o] to [ah], and this is found in the words “long,” “lot,” “not,” “got,” “St. John’s,” “strong,” “won,” “beyond,” “gods,” “pot” and both first and last syllables of “volleyball” and “softball.” Also of interest is the use of the closed [a] in words “that,” “Trepassy,” and “places,” with a slightly more open sound for “call.” Often the [e] will be closed as well, as in “legend” and “end”; and in this sample “miracle” is pronounced “mairicle.” There is a particularly strong example of Canadian Raising (mid-central starting point when the following consonant is voiceless) with the words and phrases “white light” and “out,” and this remains present in “side,” “high,” “sign,” “townie,” and “round.” Pay close attention to the pronunciation of “crowd of friends,” “a lot a places,” “round,” “ye (you) guys,” “whataya at” (hello, how are you doing?), “go way, b’y” (go away, boy; loosely translated: “I don’t believe you”). Note the light Irish lilt and the crisp [t]s as in “twenty,” “great,” “eight o’clock,” and “white light.” You will notice that the [f] is dropped from “of” and the “o” becomes “a,” as in “pot a gold” and “got a lot a words.” Many final consonants are weak. The [r] is always strong, though. Some examples in this sample: “are,” “air,” “together,” “strong,” “great,” and “Irish.” Most vowels preceded or followed by a nasal consonant become nasalized vowels. This dialect utilizes strong nasal resonance.

COMMENTARY BY: Susan Stackhouse and Paul Meier

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 2000

The archive provides:

• Recordings of accent/dialect speakers from the region you select.
• Text of the speakers’ biographical details.
• Scholarly commentary and analysis in some cases.
• In most cases, an orthographic transcription of the speakers’ unscripted speech.  In a small number of cases, you will also find a narrow phonetic transcription of the sample (see Phonetic Transcriptions for a complete list).  The recordings average four minutes in length and feature both the reading of one of two standard passages, and some unscripted speech. The two passages are Comma Gets a Cure (currently our standard passage) and The Rainbow Passage (used in our earliest recordings).

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