Showing posts with label dialec. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dialec. Show all posts
Is the Newfoundland accent disappearing?
Monday, December 22, 2008 | Labels: dialec, labrador, links, newfoundland | 0 comments »
Newfoundlanders, Van Herk points out, speak the most linguistically diverse English on the planet.
"There's more different ways of saying things, or pronouncing things, in Newfoundland English than in any of the other varieties," he says.
People in Petty Harbour, where the accent is a mix of west English and Irish, don't speak like those in Ferryland a few kilometres down the Southern Shore highway, or in Marystown, Corner Brook or La Scie. For that matter, they don't speak like people in the capital, where the accent even varies from one part of the city to another.
"Newfoundlanders are very aware of where people are from. But people from outside Newfoundland have this idea that there is a Newfoundland accent. And you see that famously in The Shipping News, where (the author) takes features from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English and puts them all together in a way that no one person would likely use so by the time she's finished she's got this sort of invented Newfoundland English."
"There's more different ways of saying things, or pronouncing things, in Newfoundland English than in any of the other varieties," he says.
People in Petty Harbour, where the accent is a mix of west English and Irish, don't speak like those in Ferryland a few kilometres down the Southern Shore highway, or in Marystown, Corner Brook or La Scie. For that matter, they don't speak like people in the capital, where the accent even varies from one part of the city to another.
"Newfoundlanders are very aware of where people are from. But people from outside Newfoundland have this idea that there is a Newfoundland accent. And you see that famously in The Shipping News, where (the author) takes features from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English and puts them all together in a way that no one person would likely use so by the time she's finished she's got this sort of invented Newfoundland English."
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