There was a conference banquet yesterday night. Dr. Wally Read gave a talk about Newfoundlanders. The speech was entertaining and informative. He was very proud of his Newfoundland origin. He was talking about the natives and was commenting on the attitude of the native people here. He was a very good narrator.
According to Wally, the native Newfoundlanders are not found in St. John’s. People in St. John’s are called townies. People in the ports are called baymen. He named a place where they are found (I had difficulty following him). The Newfoundlanders speak rapidly and have a CFA (Can Fix Anything) attitude. If one wants to communicate with them, he should not be pushy. After you talk to a Newfoundlander for more than 2 hours, he/she becomes uncle/aunt. The dialect and pronunciation is different from English language. They abbreviate many sentences and words. When using invectives, they tend to prefix them with so many adjectives that the common listener would be perplexed. After the talk, I picture Newfoundlanders as naïve and innocent.
Some of the Newfoundland words that were discussed in the banquet are listed below along with their meanings:
ARN - any
BANNIKIN – a small tin cup
BIVER – to shiver
CRANNICKS – dry roots of trees
DUCKISH – time between sunset and darkness
DWOI – short snow shower
FLANKERS – chimney
GLUTCH – swallow with difficulty
KINGCORN – the Adam’s apple of a throat
LONGERS – wooden rails for fence
PUDDOCK – stomach
SCRAWB – to scrape with finger nails
SLIEVEEN – a slime and deceitful person
TWIG – to get the meaning of
YAFFLE – measure for a pile of salt codfish
Please refer to the
Dictionary of NewFoundland English for more words and reference.
