Newfoundland Irish () is an extinct dialect of the
Irish language specific to the island of
Newfoundland,
Canada. It was very similar to
Munster Irish, as spoken in the southeast of
Ireland, due to mass immigration from the counties
Waterford,
Wexford,
Kilkenny,
Tipperary, and
Cork.
Irish settlement of Newfoundland
Seven
English colonies were established by royal charter in Newfoundland between 1610 and 1628, and
London-based mercantile companies used
Celtic-speaking peasants to settle each one. The colonists were primarily
Welsh peasants but there were also many Irish peasants who usually only spoke
Irish. The language was commonly spoken in rural areas until the mid-20th century. There is evidence to suggest that as many as 90% of the Irish immigrants to Newfoundland in the 17th and 18th centuries only spoke Irish.
Court records show that defendants often required Irish-speaking interpreters, which indicates that the dominant language in many areas of the
Avalon Peninsula was Irish rather than
English. Ecclesiastical documents bolster this case; for example, in the mid-1760s a
Methodist missionary named Reverend Laurence Coughlan converted virtually the whole North Shore to
Methodism. Observers credited the success of his evangelical revival at
Carbonear and
Harbour Grace to the fact that he was fluently bilingual in English and Irish. The
Roman Catholic bishops...
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