Grade 8 Social Studies Curriculum
Unit 2. Newfoundland and Labrador from the Turn of the 19th Century through the Early 20th Century:
History as a Story of People
Lesson 1 on the Dialect Atlas of Newfoundland and Labrador: Word Finding and Map Task
Information for Students (and Student Worksheet)
Student instructions:
Search the online Dialect Atlas of Newfoundland and Labrador (www.dialectatlas.mun.ca) for each of the words (terms) in ONE of
the following seven groups, as assigned to you by your teacher. If you are assigned a word group that contains Supplementary Words,
your teacher will advise you whether or not to search for these.
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Make sure that you are using the ‘Whole Province’ option in the pull-down menu under ‘Atlas’ at the top left of the home
page, rather than the ‘By Community’ option.
Under ‘Select a Category,’ click on ‘Words’; then type each term in your word group into the ‘Search for a word’ box, and
click on this term when it appears immediately below what you have typed in.
This will bring up the question in the Atlas to which your term was given as an answer; beneath the question, you will see
all the responses that were provided for this question.
If your term has a
symbol beside it, click on this symbol to find the definition of the term as provided by the online
Dictionary of Newfoundland English (DNE), and note down what the term means, according to the DNE.
Note that the
symbol may not lead directly to your term, but to another dictionary entry in which your term can be
found. For example, clicking on this symbol for the word ‘redberries’ leads to the entry for ‘red’ in the DNE; by scrolling
down through this entry, you will find, in paragraph 2, your term ‘red berry.’
In the map at the right of the screen, the communities (or community) in which your term occurred are indicated by a blue
pin. (The Atlas documents word use in 20 communities throughout the province, in 10 different regions.)
Clicking on this pin will give you the name of these communities (along with details on the speakers who gave this term,
details which are not relevant to your assignment).
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On the worksheet for this lesson, write down in the table the number of the word group you have been assigned. Then write
the words in this group in the first column. As you click on the pin(s) on the map for each term, note the name of the
community/communities in which it occurs, and enter this/these in the second column of the table. In the final column,
write the meaning of the word.
Also, on the map you have been provided (the Dialect Atlas Activity Map), write in the names of the communities in which
each of your words occurs, in its proper geographical location, within one of the labeled boxes. (Each box represents one of
the 10 regions of the province documented in the ‘Words’ section of the Dialect Atlas. Each of these regions is represented
by two communities. Some of your words may occur in the Atlas in only one region, or even one community, while others
have a wider distribution.)
In the third column of the table, write in the region in which each word occurs (as labeled on the Dialect Atlas Activity
map).
Present your map and your words to the class. (Your teacher will discuss with you various ways in which you can do this.)
(Additional reflection activity) As you map, keep the following questions in mind:
i) What region(s) of the province are your words found in?
ii) What does the regional distribution of these words suggest about the origin of the words?
Points to consider:
[Word groups 1 through 4]: Where did early European settlers to these parts of the island come from? Some
information may be found on pages 36 to 39 of your textbook, Voyage to Discovery.
[Word group 6]: Does the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (DNE) give you an idea of where all words in this
group might have originated?
[Word group 7]: In addition to searching for the regions in which these words are found, determine what parts of the
island they do not occur in. Did those regions have different European settlement histories?
Word Groups
Note: Words marked with an asterisk (*) are linked in the Atlas to their definitions in the online Dictionary of
Newfoundland English (DNE); the DNE entry may give you additional information as to the source of the word. Note that
when a word’s definition is given in brackets, this means that the term may appear in the DNE, but may have a somewhat
different meaning from the meaning supplied by Atlas speakers. Alternatively, more than one meaning for the term may be
given by the DNE.
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Group 1
*fairy squall
darn needles
*bresna/bress
*scrabbing (‘scratching’; scrob in the DNE)
*lincoln (‘sou’wester’)
Supplementary Words:
*sulick (‘last milk from a cow’s udder’; this word has a
somewhat different meaning in the DNE)
*spruce crumpins (‘dry, dead firewood’; crump in the
DNE)
Group 4
scones
barley-bucks
beaver pucks
pot-heads/pot-head rackets (not with the meaning of
‘whales’)
glamour
Group 5
*flummies/flummy dumplings
mosquito hawks
*beaver-tails
shoe-crops
*redberries
Group 2
devil’s needles
*fairy caps
lugs/ear lugs
sponge
*scowish
Group 6
mukluks
*komatik
ulu
*etta (in the DNE, see ra)
*ouk
Group 3
*bogie (‘tin kettle’; this word has a somewhat different
meaning in the DNE)
salvays
tallihockies
balsam
bonk
Group 7
*forel
emmets
*sprinkles, bough sprinkles
*firking
*myrrh
Supplementary Words:
*dunch/dunchy (‘soggy’)
*fair (‘(hanging) straight’)
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Lesson 1. Dialect Atlas Word Finding and Map Task Worksheet
Word Group # ______________
Word
Community/communities Map area where found
where found
(see labels on map)
Word Meaning