Talk:Irish language in Newfoundland

Beothuk/Mi'kmaq
Removed a section falsely claiming Irish settlers exterminated these peoples in Newfoundland. Beothuk died of cold weather and were only ever attacked once by Portuguese explorers, never by Irish people. There is not a single documented case of this happening. Mi'kmaq were living with French settlers and never had a population reduction in Newfoundland. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.162.216.220 (talk) 03:16, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Untitled
Does anyone know the name of towns where Irish was spoken? Irish Hermit 15:41, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Newfoundland Irish speakers today
I reverted an edit by 205.251.32.207 today, in which it was asserted that "small communities" along the Irish Shore of Newfoundland host living speakers of this dialect. The only external reference available to me on this subject, the external link at the bottom of the article, clearly indicates the last speakers of this dialect were almost all gone by the early part of the last century&mdash;much less today.

As for Newfoundland's joining with Canada in 1949, I fail to see the relevance of this because A) it seems Newfoundland Irish was nearly extinct well before the late 1940's, and B) many other dialects and languages have in fact done well in Canada, while no clarification is offered as to exactly how Canada contributed to the decline of Newfoundland Irish. As such, this statement seems only to offer potential POV issues. --Ryanaxp 03:16, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)

The Newfoundland census from 2001 indicates that there were about 2 dozen people whose native tongue was Irish in Newfoundland four years ago. Contrary to what is written above, the Irish language in Newfoundland is not extinct. --Jcmurphy 03:16, Aug 16, 2005 (UTC)


 * Granted, but that document does not indicate whether they were Newfoundland Irish-speakers specifically (as opposed to speakers of Irish who spoke dialects of Irish as found in Ireland, and who later emigrated to Newfoundland speaking those non-Newfoundland Irish dialects). In fact, the document merely indicates they are speakers of "Gaelic languages," which indeed could be Scottish Gaelic and not Irish at all; furthermore, there are not "two dozen" reported Gaelic speakers in that document, but merely ten speakers total, all of them male&mdash;a far cry from a community, and perhaps comprising but a single class of hobbyist language learners for all anyone can tell without further evidence. &mdash;Ryanaxp 19:10, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

I have changed the infobox to indicate that Newfoundland Irish is extinct. This page, which says that NF Irish died in the 20th century, was written by three linguistics professors at MUN. It is a verifiable source, written by experts in the field. If anyone can cite an equally valid source that shows that Newfoundland Irish is still spoken, please do so. (The 2001 census report does not demonstrate this, as Ryanaxp argues above.) WillNL 12:29, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I have changed it again because what, "was written by three linguistics professors at MUN ... a verifiable source, written by experts in the field." (this page) was NOT that "NF Irish died in the 20th century". What they said was, "Irish Gaelic disappeared from the island early in the 20th century." They make no mention of a Newfoundland Irish (dead or alive) anywhere in this source, and you won't find any mention by experts in the field (i.e., linguistics) anywhere of Newfoundland Irish dialect (or accent), none. Carpasian (talk) 20:35, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Dialect or accent?
"Newfoundland Irish is a dialect of the Irish language specific to the island of Newfoundland and widely spoken until the mid-20th century. It is very similar to the accent heard in the southeast of Ireland". (My italics.) It is not terribly clear which language is being referred to in the southeast of Ireland. My first thought was actually that it referred to Irish English. If it refers to accents in Irish, perhaps there should be a link to Irish dialects. --Telsa 15:11, 13 July 2005 (UTC)


 * I was a little confused by that too. Leinster Irish is an extinct dialect of Irish language, so it would have been quite remarkable if Newfoundlanders were speaking with Leinster accents in Irish (as opposed to a Leinster accent of Hiberno-English). By the bye, accent is just the phonetic and phonological aspects of dialect (as opposed to the grammatic aspects), so it's not such a hard-and-fast distinction... Quartier Latin   1968  00:51, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I think that line was rather confusing, I changed it to this: "It is very similar to the language heard in the southeast of Ireland centuries ago, due to mass immigration from the counties Tipperary, Waterford, Wexford and Cork." - which seems to be a bit more clear, hopefully?

Memorial only?
Does the line about Memorial being the only Canadian university to teach Irish courses, mean that they're the only ones to teach Irish as a subject or as a medium? I assume it means Irish as a subject, in which case that statement's false; I graduated from UofT in 2004 and studied Irish there as a subject. It's in the Celtic Studies program of St Mike's. Quartier Latin  1968  00:00, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Memorial only? continued
Irish gaelic is also taught at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia (another Atlantic Canadian University).

Revival of Newfoundland Irish?
I removed this from the article because it is not linguistically valid:


 * however, Newfoundland Irish is slowly being revived as Irish language classes are taught at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Memorial is the only university in Atlantic Canada to teach courses in the Irish language.

Irish language classes are indeed being taught (quite sporadically) at Memorial; however, this is not a revival of Newfoundland Irish -- the dialect taught in these classes is not Newfoundland Irish, it's some form of Standard Irish. "Newfoundland Irish" refers to a specific dialect of Irish that developed and was once spoken in Newfoundland -- NOT to any form of the Irish language that happens to be spoken in Newfoundland. (A parallel might make this point more clear: the fact that French is taught in Newfoundland schools does not mean that Newfoundland French is on the rise -- Newfoundland French is a specific dialect of French that arose in a specific part of Newfoundland, not a blanket term for any French spoken in Newfoundland.) --WillNL 13:39, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

More clarification
"I think that line was rather confusing, I changed it to this: "It is very similar to the language heard in the southeast of Ireland centuries ago, due to mass immigration from the counties Tipperary, Waterford, Wexford and Cork." - which seems to be a bit more clear, hopefully?"

So it was Déise Irish they spoke? Some non Irish people might think they are all in the SE of Ireland (and by implication Leinster Irish), when only Wexford is bang there, and Waterford sits between South and SE. What I'm saying is that you know geographical and historical information on Ireland stuff, and that information is making for some implied material that not everyone will get correctly.

O Rahilly "Irish Dialects, Past and Present" suggests that Leinster was divvied up by Ulster (down to Meath and Louth), Connacht (perhaps Longford and Westmeath, maybe some influence on Laois and Offaly), and Munster (up to the midland, Dublin and south Meath), so if this is the case, and a real 'Déilbhíocht Laighean' existed but died out (perhaps as O Rahilly suggests, where Irish reclaimed ground) the difference between a middle irish leinster dialect and a spread dialect from another region should be made clear.


 * It would probably have been a lot closer to Deise Irish than any other form. Even today, the Newfoundland accent (English) is more like a Waterford/Tipperary accent than that of a Wexford accent. From what I've read, the connections between the Waterford area and the port of Waterford to Newfoundland are far stronger than those of Wexford.--Jmccormac 12:00, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Existence of "Newfoundland Irish"
While many may wish for the existence of a separate "Newfoundland Irish" dialect, as opposed to Irish Gaelic spoken in Newfoundland, none of the sources for this article give any evidence for its existence. The main, more or less, scholarly source for this article actually makes no reference to "Newfoundland Irish" (though original version here made it seem like it did).
 * Irish Gaelic
 * Most Irish settlers came from southeastern Ireland in the first half of the 19th century. Though some of this group spoke Irish Gaelic and little if any English on arrival, there are few actual accounts of Irish being spoken in Newfoundland, or of Irish being passed on within families. Irish Gaelic disappeared from the island early in the 20th century, but has left a number of traces in Newfoundland English. These include vocabulary items such as scrob "scratch", sleveen "rascal" and streel "slovenly person," grammatical patterns such as the "after" perfect as in "she's already after leavin'," and pronunciation features such as the "light" Irish l in words like "hill" or "pole". Language, in Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage Web Site

If there is not reasonable evidence of "Irish being passed on within families" and, "there are few actual accounts of Irish being spoken in Newfoundland", there is no evidence (other than wishful speculation) of a 'Newfoundland Irish dialect'. A search of academic linguistic sources will find no sources that give any evidence for the existence of a separate Newfoundland Irish dialect. This article should be flagged as a Wikipedia hoax. Carpasian (talk) 20:47, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Further to this, in the section [| Language and culture] the article states, "The use of the Irish language in Newfoundland was closely tied to the persistance of an ancestral culture preserved in scores of enclaves along the coast." But the source, which is not an academic source, is on Irish in New Brunswick with nothing in it on Newfoundland.Carpasian (talk) 16:28, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Dialect or not?
It should be born in mind that the foundation dialects, though similar (being of Munster origin), were not identical. Assuming the persistence of Irish in Newfoundland (as most scholars do), the dialects would have merged. One would expect, therefore, a new dialect, though with ancestral features. What is needed, apart from that, is statistical and other information regarding Irish speakers in Newfoundland in the early twentieth century. The New Brunswick census of 1901 offers a glimpse, and Peter Toner of UNB has done interesting work on this, showing that the language was passed on.

Colin Ryan (talk) 22:27, 8 December 2013 (UTC)


 * "Assuming the persistence of Irish in Newfoundland (as most scholars do)..." Which scholars? Again, all that there is evidence for is Irish speakers (who learned their language in Ireland) in Newfoundland. As I noted above, the main scholarly source for this page states, "there are few actual accounts of ... Irish being passed on within families". So there is no evidence of dialects being merged, none. Unless someone can produce some. And Ally O'Brien is not evidence for that, he learned his Irish "by means of language records, cassette tapes" and his mother was a later immigrant from Ireland who learned her Irish there, not in Newfoundland. Carpasian (talk) 16:39, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

What Does This Mean?
"Thomas Nash (Newfoundland), an Irish Catholic, was one of the later pioneers of Irish settlement in Newfoundland. A native of Kilkenny, he arrived on the Southern Shore in 1765, and eventually settled in the Branch area."

Why is this one particular person being mentioned here? And why does it say "(Newfoundland)" after his name? The sentence itself says he settled in Newfoundland. Why also include the name of the island in parentheses after the person's name? GeneCallahan (talk) 03:53, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Correction
Quite right. I have changed it accordingly. I have also removed specific references to Newfoundland Irish as a separate dialect, given the lack of evidence. This does not mean, of course, that such a dialect did not exist. Colin Ryan (talk) 00:03, 15 December 2013 (UTC)


 * To recognize that uncertainty, should we move the article from Newfoundland Irish to Irish language in Newfoundland? Q·L·1968 ☿ 19:14, 3 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree, and remove all the speculation about what 'Newfoundland Irish' would have been like or how it changed, etc. Either that, or set up pages on 'Newfoundland Cantonese' and 'Newfoundland Yiddish' and 'Newfoundland Hindi' [corrected] etc. Carpasian (talk) 16:43, 3 March 2014 (UTC)Carpasian (talk) 15:31, 24 March 2014 (UTC)


 * (I assume you mean Hindi?) In this case, I suppose we should also remove the infobox, which shows Newfoundland Irish under Irish as though it were a constituent dialect thereof. Is there a more appropriate infobox to use instead, I wonder? "Article in a series on the Irish language", or "language [X] around the world", or something? Perhaps I'll do some hunting around... Q·L·1968 ☿ 18:47, 3 March 2014 (UTC)