The nine texts presented in this chapter constitute a representative sample of speakers of NLE. Since many examples of contemporary NLE are accessible online (see e.g. the CBC NL sites listed in the ‘Web resources’ section at the end of Chapter 6), this chapter's primary focus is the more traditional speech of the province. Section 7.1 contains transcriptions of two conservative rural NBE speakers, while two speakers of conservative NIE from the Irish-settled Avalon Peninsula appear in section 7.2. Section 7.3 presents a traditional NBE speaker from the postvocalic /r/-deleting area of Conception Bay North. Section 7.4 has two examples of fairly traditional speech from coastal Labrador, the second representing an ethnically mixed community in which English came into contact with Inuktitut, as spoken by the region's earlier inhabitants. Speech samples from two young contemporary Newfoundlanders are provided in section 7.5.

Accompanying audio files for all nine speech samples can be accessed online at http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/dialects.

In the texts that follow, the following transcription conventions have been adopted:

Bold font indicates words and phrases drawn from these samples to illustrate linguistic features presented earlier in the volume, particularly in Chapters 2 and 3. Bold may also indicate illustrative words noted for any particular speaker in the comments immediately preceding each text below. Bold is generally restricted to the first occurrence of a word or phrase.

Pauses A hyphen represents a false start or a hesitation, as well as an interrupted sequence.