Fish 'n Brewis 'n Vereniki

It’s the 30th Anniversary of the Dictionary of Newfoundland English. 

“What’s that,” you ask? “Are you sure that’s English ə-tall?” 

Wha’ dat y’ say? Yer some crooked t’day, me by! Bin spiken yer fish ‘n brewis again, me by?

I’ve been “ta Newfland,” and can attest to the colourful nature of the dialect, but can’t half understand some of it, so the Dictionary of Newfoundland English is going into my suitcase the next time I visit.

I grew up in a place with similar characteristics. Where Newfoundland patter draws heavily on origins in the British Isles, mine is more a mixture of a Low German that was the day to day language of my people before and after immigration in the late 19th Century, the Ukrainian and Jewish neighbourhoods adjacent to them for a hundred years in Russia and the gradual incorporation of English words borrowed to cover cases unfamiliar to my people’s history. 

Take Vereniki. We pronounced it Vren’-ə-tje and grew up thinking it was ours. Turns out it’s a mispronounced варе́ники, the Ukrainian word for a stuffed dumpling. But we made it ours by varying the contents of the dumplings, smothering them in cream gravy and plums and eating them with “Mennonite Farmer Sausage.” (I was recently asked how many Mennonite farmers had to be ground up to make a tonne of sausages!)

Borscht, similarly, became our word although traceable to the Ukrainian борщ.

There was a time when Low German and English were freely mixed in speech, a practice still persisting in more conservative Mennonite villages in Canada. Not every word is easily translatable, like Daugnikjs, for instance. Made up of Dauge—to amount to something—and nikjs (nix), it had no handy English equivalent, so mothers were apt to improvise with “You little Daugnikjs!” 

But it worked the other way ‘round as well, particularly where no German equivalent of an English word was to hand: “Dau mutt here somewheres jewesz ən loophole senne!” (There’s certainly got to be a loophole here somewhere.”) 

I confess I’m often torn between the “correctness” guaranteed by preserving the language as it was and the linguist’s understanding that all aspects of language--including grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc.-- are fluid, and that the way to find out how to say a thing is to listen to how people commonly say it. I still balk, however, when I hear the pronoun “I” used in the objective case, as in “John went out with Jenny and I,” or at the splitting of an infinitive, as in “To quickly escape was mandatory.” 

Likewise, mixing languages seems to me to be either snobbish or boorish, depending on whether the foreign word used is French or Low German: de rigueur is a language snob’s fashionable and Klutz a language-boors clumsy person.

One thing, though, language is endlessly interesting. My linguistics prof posed a question that still bugs me: “Can you think without words?” he asked. In other words, is conceptualization bound by language such that a person who owns only a small vocabulary can’t possibly think loftily. Or a person who doesn’t know the jargon of science can’t think scientifically. An intriguing conundrum.

We ate at Velma’s in St. John’s. It’s touted as the place to go for authentic Newfoundland fare. I passed up on the cod cheeks and opted for fish and brewis with Figgy Duff for dessert. You may protest that cod don't actually have cheeks, but then, chickens don't have balls either.

There were no Vereniki on the menu, me by.

A Reflection Concerning a New Found Land

It was, for us, a New Found Land although we knew the maps, had seen the pictures and heard regularly of this island that is not-quite-Canada in the news. The rugged beauty of the out ports, the magnificence of Gros Morne National Park, the charming architecture of St. John’s are not exaggerated in the travel brochures.

But like the majority of the planet, you can hardly find a place where the majesty of the created and evolved planet isn’t mitigated by the presence of humans and the things humans make: highways, railroads, cities and towns, docks and ships and salt-box houses clinging to the rocks. For the filming of the CBC mini-series—Random Passage—a cove was found from which no sign of human activity can be seen; such a place is a rarity. What’s unique in Canada about Newfoundland as a province is that every human endeavour there has faced daunting obstacles in the steep, rugged landscape. Quite literally, it means that every structure must cling to the side of a rocky hill, every fish or chunk of coal must be carried uphill and down to reach its market.  

And then, there’s the sea from which Newfoundlanders have traditionally earned their daily bread. A map of the shipwrecks around Cape Bonavista is so cluttered with Xs that they overlap each other. Still, the map doesn’t include the dories smashed against the rocks in storms, their planks scattered on the shore, husbands and fathers and brothers drowned.

For men must work and women must weep

 For there’s little to earn and many to keep

 And the harbour bar be moanin’.

Although written for fishermen off the coasts of Great Britain, the song popularized in Canada by Stan, Nathan and Garnet Rogers summarizes well the agony of out port life on the sea.

               All this complicated further, of course, by the hurricanes that roar up from the Caribbean, blow kisses to Boston and Halifax and vent their nearly-spent fury on the Avalon Peninsula. The remnants of Hurricane Marie blew us off Signal Hill but barely raised an eyebrow among native islanders. The winds that powered the ships were, indeed, fickle and truculent friends.

               So Newfoundlanders are a hardy, friendly, honest lot like everybody says? I’m not going to add to this generalization: I’m sure that kind folk, happy folk, thieves and liars appear in the same proportion in Newfoundland as in Saskatchewan. Furthermore, visitors (tourists) are catered for and pampered because they have—in fact—replaced cod as the staple in much of Newfoundland and should therefore hesitate to judge the smiles and courtesies of their hosts as indicative. I do know that you can pile your firewood along the roadways in Northern Newfoundland without fear of its being stolen, and front doors are seldom locked except in downtown St. John’s. I also know that the off-the-record chats with hosts at the historical sites were highlights of our trip; most seemed relieved to branch off the official discourse into the friendly, dignified stories of the real Newfoundland, its beauty and its warts. Their Newfoundland.

               I took hundreds of photographs, as we tourists tend to do. My favourite is of the young woman who passed by me in St. John’s, walked decisively to the end of a deserted wharf and sat for fifteen minutes gazing pensively out to the harbour mouth. I could say that this photo summarizes the personality of Newfoundland, but for all I know, she was a student from Saskatchewan studying archaeology at Memorial University, as some have done.

               Give me a break; I’m just a tourist!