Here I am in Nova Scotia, and although this place is crawling with Newfies, I can’t help but realize how much my accent stands out sometimes. For example, I absolutely cannot say the word “dog” without Cailin O’Neil (and even her mother) teasing me by mimicking my pronunciation, which is “dag.”
So here’s another that often slips into my dialect: the pluralisation of prepositions, and the improper pluralisation of certain verbs.
For example, a normal person would say, “Oh, I like that shirt!”
But when I’m extremely excited, or in a rapid-fire conversation with someone, I lose all sense of proper grammar. I’ll exclaim, “Oh, I likes that shirt!” or “I loves that!”
I knows the difference.
Then there are the verbs. For example, most people would say, “I want to borrow that shirt.” But in the heat of the moment, I’ll say, “I wants to borrow that shirt.” Maybe a little rougher, more like “I wants ta borrow dat shirt.”
If you ever find yourself in Newfoundland, be sure to add inappropriate pluralisation everywhere, unless it sounds awkward. You can’t just throw it out there all willy-nilly. Remember the lesson about flow I taught you from using “b’y.”
Bonus round combination of past three lessons: “I likes them Nunny Fudgers, b’y.”
And for being such great students, I’ll share this video with you. It has nothing to do with this lesson, but it’s a brilliant car commercial that never aired because it was apparently “offensive” (or was pulled from TV, not sure). Honestly, you’re not a Newfie if you can’t appreciate this ad.