Sibilant assimilation

Traditional speakers in English-settled areas of the province display assimilation of /z/ to /d/ before syllabic /n/. Just as in the southwest of England, however, this assimilation is restricted to contracted negatives of the verb be, i.e. (it) isn’t > , (it) wasn’t > . A similar phenomenon occurs for the lexical items seven and eleven, which are variably pronounced with the sequence .