We have islands in Maryland where the accents and dialect have remained largely unchanged for hundreds of years - Tangier and Smith.
Probably not for much longer, though - a lot of it is probably changing, now...
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20180206-the-tiny-us-island-with-a-british-accent
Thanks for making this point.
drunkenese is the spoken language on the island of ocean city maryland...
Do they make cheese in Tangier? Maybe that was the inspiration for this:
https://youtu.be/jllhCYvrYgI?si=i7n9fHjV6rDdm8xu
Used to live in Tidewater area of VA and on the coast of NC and yep, you’d hear people speak this way.
One guy in my Buddhism class at university, when we were discussing that monks wouldn’t eat sentient beings, asked “Wha abohte eh plunts?”
The professor didn’t understand, so the guy’s friend translated “what about the plants”. True story.
Those islands (Tangier Island, I think) were featured in Robert McNeil’s PBS series, “The Story of English.”
There was a guy in college. I could never understand what he was saying. He came from Martha’s Vineyard and grew up there and spoke with the accent of the island. Somebody did a study years ago and found that young people were using the accent to show that they weren’t summer people from the mainland, but I don’t know how much of the accent remains now.
Tangier Island has a runway there. It is like an aircraft carrier landing strip. The people there gave me the creeps. I took off asap.