Dictionary of Newfoundland English: Second Edition [With Supplement]

by J.D.A. Widdowson, W.J. Kirwin, G.M. Story

Book Overview

The Dictionary of Newfoundland English, first published in 1982 to regional, national, and international acclaim, is a historical dictionary that gives the pronunciations and definitions for words that the editors have called "Newfoundland English." The varieties of English spoken in Newfoundland date back four centuries, mainly to the early seventeenth-century migratory English fishermen of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, and Somerset, and to the seventeenth-...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802068197
• ISBN13: 9780802068194
• Release Date: November 1990
• Publisher: University of Toronto Press
• Length: 847 Pages
• Weight: 3.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 6.8" x 9.9"

Customer Reviews

Absolutely necessary for a trip to Newfoundland

The Canadian province of Newfoundland is a gorgeous land where the people sprinkle their English with a colorful 'brogue'. Their heritage comes from Irish, English, Scottish, French and Native American and Europe with a bit of American from the US forces that were there in WW II....and the language includes some colloquial (slang-type) words that are difficult to understand...what's fun is that this book by scholars cuts through the mystery of some menu items like what's a jigg's dinner to Cod cheeks to other folklore and sayings...it's a lot of fun to take with you on your trip....or for a linguist -- necessary to have on your shelf.

The Definitive OED for Newfoundland

Any observant English speaker who visits Newfoundland and Labrador soon realizes that English as spoken by Newfoundlanders on this beautiful, boggy island in an isolated corner of North America, is an incredibly ingenious, imaginative, endearing, rich, pungent, and delightful language. This amazing book, the life's work of a team of excellent and dedicated scholars at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. Johns, Newfoundland, reflects the rich linguistic and literary history of the extraordinary sturdy people of Newfoundand and all aspects of their unique reality--their net-mending and barking, their cod fishing and salt-drying, their seafaring life, and their sweet, heartbreaking lives in the isolated fishing villages in the outports and coves of this island--which now struggles under a cod-fishing moratorium that has largely destroyed the economic base of their unique way of life. Based on wide reading of the literature of Newfoundland, this definitive dictionary reflects the evolution of their language, their delicious slang, their sayings and proverbs, and their folk tales and stories. On winter evenings in the remote cities of the East Coast, with this book one can recreate in one's mind something of that rich heritage and way of life.