structural:scholar_edition, information:classification, quality:correction, linguistic:paraphrasing
History

Newfoundland was long inhabited by indigenous peoples of the Dorset culture, the Beothuk, who spoke the now-extinct Beothuk language.

The island was possibly visited by the Icelandic explorer Leif Erikson in the 11th century as a rest settlement when heading farther south to the land believed to be closer to the mouth of St Lawrence River called " Vinland ". The first confirmed visit was by the Norse who built a temporary base at L'Anse aux Meadows, a Norse settlement near the northernmost tip of Newfoundland (Cape Norman), which has been dated to be approximately 1000 years old. The site is considered the only undisputed evidence of Pre-Columbian contact between the Old and New Worlds if the Norse– Inuit contact on Greenland is not counted.

The next European visitors to Newfoundland were Portuguese and French fishermen. The island was possibly visited by the Venetian navigator John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto), working under contract to Henry VII of England on his expedition from Bristol in 1497. In 1501 Portuguese brothers Gaspar Corte-Real and Miguel Corte-Real charted part of the coast of Newfoundland in an attempt to find the Northwest Passage.

On 5 August 1583, Humphrey Gilbert claimed Newfoundland as England's first overseas colony under Royal Charter of Queen Elizabeth I, thus officially establishing a forerunner to the much later British Empire. Newfoundland is considered Britain's oldest colony.

Settlers developed a variety of dialects associated with settlement on the island: Newfoundland English, Newfoundland French. In the 19th century, it also had a dialect of Irish known as Newfoundland Irish. The closely related Scottish Gaelic was also spoken on the island during the 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly in the Codroy Valley area, chiefly by settlers from Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. The Gaelic names reflected the association with fishing: in Scottish Gaelic, it was called Eilean a' Trosg, literally 'Island of the Cod '. Similarly, the Irish name Talamh an Éisc means 'Land of the Fish'.