Consonants TH

Throughout Newfoundland and Labrador, both /θ/ and /ð/ regularly occur in casual speech as the alveolar stops [t] and [d], or the affricates [tθ] and [dð]; in unstressed function words such as the, a stop realization for /ð/ is not uncommon even among middle-class urban speakers. In rural communities of the Irish-settled Avalon, dental and postdental variants, both stop and fricative, occur variably among traditional speakers, who may thereby maintain the phonemic contrast with alveolar /t/ and /d/. In rural areas of the province settled by the SW English, /θ/ and /ð/ in non-word-initial position are occasionally articulated as [f] and [v] e.g. in bath, Matthew, breathe, father. A highly stigmatized [s] articulation for non-initial /θ/ has also been noted in one such area; its voiced counterpart [z] does not occur, however. In two lexical items – a’r (= either, meaning any), na’r (= neither, meaning none) – medial /ð/ is deleted by traditional speakers (as occasionally in other such items, e.g. whether).