Newfoundland Three - Text
Subject is a white male, born in 1963. Born in St. John's and raised in Eastport, Newfoundland, Canada. College educated. Has also lived in Grand Falls and Argentia both of which are in Newfoundland. Recorded on April 8, 2000 by Susan Stackhouse. Further editing by Paul Meier July 17, 2000.
This is a particularly strong example of no dental fricatives. The [th] of 'the' and 'there' is changed to [d] and pronounced 'de' and 'dair' as in 'I said to de guy, dair, he was from Oshawa, meet me out on de bridge in a half an hour or sump'n . . . de bridge, de bridge, ya know de bridge, on de fron a de house . . . is de step, de step is de bridge from de house to de rest a de world', 'people love to go dere' and 'all dat stuff'. Examples of this can be found throughout the recording. There is a strong example of Canadian Raising (mid central starting point when the following consonant is voiceless) with the words 'white light', 'enlightenment', 'nice', 'out', 'houses'. As in Newfoundland1 and 2, the vowel sound [o] is changed to an [ah] so 'got' is pronounced 'gaht', 'lot' pronounced 'laht' and 'modern' pronounced 'mahdern'. This sample also displays a strong example of final [t]'s and some medial [t]'s and [d]'s being glottalized as in 'Eastport', 'outport', 'different', 'built', 'enlightenment', 'hundreds'. Often the 'g' is dropped from '-ing' endings as can be found in 'looking', 'viewing', 'tearing', etc. The [h] may be dropped from the initial position as in 'Hebrews'. The pronunciation of the name Newfoundland (Nufelan) is an example of the nasalization of vowels (sequence of vowel plus nasal consonant) specific to this dialect. Running time 00:03:43.
TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH
No question, you’ve got to go to Eastport, which is where I’m from, coincidentally enough. And, uh, Eastport is different. It’s right next, St. James is on the Eastport Peninsula. And, uh, Eastport is, uh, a little bit different than anywhere else in this land; probably a lot different than anywhere else in Newfoundland. For starters, it isn’t really the, uh, typical outport fishing village. It’s a fairly new and modern community that was built in the center of a bunch of, uh, fishing communities and typical outports, and was built, uh, uh, primarily around agriculture. And it was actually, uh, it was actually planned by a guy who had a degree in, uh, in agriculture and planning, so it’s-it’s-it’s well laid-out. And it’s, uh, you know, it’s a nice place, nice houses, all that stuff. But the thing we’ve got that, uh, most people don’t have is a-a beautiful, beautiful beach. So that, uh, people love to flock down to the beach in the summertime. It’s silver sand and. . .but it’s, uh, very nice and, uh, the road goes right down there, and people love to go there. Um, it’s culturally quite a bit different; as I say, it’s not like an outport per se, but, uh, we’ve had, uh, several waves of, uh, enlightenment over the years. Uh, in the, in the late 1960’s we had the, uh, hosted the Eastport Festival, in which, uh, there were hundreds of hippies descended upon us, and, uh, draft dodgers and, uh, a lot of them still live there. They’ve really affected people’s thinking; they’ve, you know, uh, opened up a lot of minds to, uh, alternate, uh, ways of, yo--, worlds, you know. That would probably shock the hell out of a lot of small communities around the coast, probably. Uh, years ago when I was in a program called Katimavik, on the west coast and, uh, said to the guy in there, who was from Oshawa, “Meet me out on the bridge.” And you know, in a half hour or something, he looks at me and says, “Meet me on the what?” I said, “On the bridge; come on, I’m in a rush!” “We don’t have a bridge.” “The bridge, the bridge; you know the bridge on the front of the house. The bridge!” “No, we don’t have a bridge.” It’s the step; the step is a bridge from the house to the rest of the world. Good one I heard recently, though, is-is-- because people make ‘em up as they go along--but, uh, I don’t know, probably this is used comedy elsewhere, but a guy said to me, he says, “There’s a difference between scratching your eyes and tearing them all to pieces.” That means there’s a difference, uh, between doing something and taking it to an extreme. So you can, uh, you know, you can set out to, uh, play a part, for instance, in the current context; or-or you can, you know, go to hell with it, you know, is all that means. The difference between scratching your eyes and tearing them all to pieces.