I am going to take a little stop on our travels before I take you all to Twillingate. I had experienced at almost every stop to eat the different dialects and greetings by waitstaff, cashiers, people I passed by. I had listened to a certain kind of Newfoundland accent when I went to see "Come From Away" on Broadway and in the numerous times I have listened to the score since. Now I was hearing the nuances and enjoying the differences and most especially being called "my darling" or "my love" or "l'il darling". These are not terms of endearment that I heard said to anyone very often, if at all, and especially not to me. Mostly it was women who were of a certain more mature age that said them, but it wasn't just them. What I do know is that it felt wonderful, a delightful little surprise, a welcoming. There were other idioms and localisms that gave me a hint of the local ancestry and way of life.
More than once I found myself in so many ways thinking about the United States and the absolute push and honoring of ourselves as a melting pot. I was having a conversation about this and the person said to me that they were a salad bowl. I looked this metaphor up and here is what Wikipedia had to say about the "salad bowl":
What is the metaphor of the salad bowl?
A
salad bowl or tossed salad is a metaphor for the way an intercultural
society can integrate different cultures while maintaining their
separate identities, contrasting with a melting pot, which emphasizes
the combination of the parts into a single whole.
There you have it, that was what I was experiencing on this remote rock anchored in the North Atlantic Ocean. I don't want to wax poetic about the Canadian "salad bowl" but it is real, and I really saw it, felt it and wanted more. This shared intercultural identity shows up in how one talks about a town or village, or a craft, or in language. Highway and tourist signs were in English, French and the most prominent Indigenous language in that area. So simple. So different than shaming and blaming if you don't speak english a certain way. So very fun to hear the different dialects, and a pride in assuring that they don't disappear. I have had this experience, to some degree, in the times that I have visited the maritime and eastern provinces. Being so far away, being in such an isolated place it was even more pronounced and noticeable and appreciated.
And people called me "my love" ! As we traveled north to Iceberg Alley into the Central and Eastern parts of the province the rhythms of speech and the absence or presence of a accent, dialect or the hearing of different phrases occurred. I found a number of websites and a variety of links that share about "Newfoundland Speak". So very fun and at times a little hard to understand what was just said to you.
Here is a sweet little video that talks about one term of endearment. I enjoyed listening, hearing and I hope that each one of us can have an "I dies at you" moment!
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