Newfoundland and Labrador remained outside the mainstream of social, political, and economic development in North America throughout most of their history. By the time we joined Canada in 1949, our oldest English-speaking dialect areas had experienced about three hundred years of local development with minimal influence from Standard English. This had allowed a number of local linguistic subsystems to become well established, especially in pronunciation and grammar. Major consonantal variation involves three distinct pronunciations of l , dropping and adding of initial h , pronunciation of th as t or d and loss of r . Sentences such as Give 'in to I for Give it to me show non-standard use of pronouns in the grammar.
Lexical variation includes many non-standard word forms and word meanings.
Several traditional dialect studies show a high degree of regional variation, and sociolinguistic studies show that this variation can be due to social factors such as gender, age and social class. Studies of language attitudes indicate rather mixed feelings towards non-standard varieties of speech in the province. More specifically, the urban population harbours surprisingly positive feelings towards speakers of non-standard dialects. French Only one group of French speakers has had a long history of settlement in the province. During the 20th century, this group underwent much cultural and linguistic assimilation, a process hastened by the lack of French- language education prior to the 1970s.