A word of advice: If you're going to do a piece on an accent, maybe give more examples of it. The Smith Islander woman you featured did not represent a particularly strong example of the dialect. Lazy journalism.
This accent is still heard in Appledore, North Devon on the West coast of the United Kingdom, from which area the original Grenville and John Smith settlers sailed, over 30 years before the 'Founding Fathers' set foot on American soil.
+Tony Koorlander all except 9 of the 'founding fathers' were born in the colonies i think you are confusing the term to mean some of the earlier settlers but it only refers to the signers of the constitution and declaration of independance
Timescale is what my comment refers to. Settlers were here before the much historically vaunted sailing from England that is accredited with carrying the first settlers.
@@babyrocasmama AMAZING! There is a load of research done by a friend of mine - who now lives in N.Carolina. He would be as fascinated as I am to hear your ancestry details and family story. Do you mind if I forward your comments to him? He has been on the History Channel with his research.
im english. sounds like devon/ cornwall. the crew of the mayflower,(who weren't god fearing puritans!!) were from the (original english) plymouth area of devon\cornwall. so one time, most early "americans" would have spoke like this and gradually picked this accent up.
I believe that most of the Pilgrims who originally settled at Plymouth, Mass., came from the Fens region of England. Those who settled Smith and Tangier islands came from elsewhere, the Cornwall region as you you described.
Aaron Feldman Actually, while they set off from the Fens, where they actually started out from was the Notts/S. Yorks. area, on the borders of the Midlands and North of England.
Aaron Feldman Actually, while they set off from the Fens, where they actually started out from was the Notts/S. Yorks. area, on the borders of the Midlands and North of England.
You're right. We do have Cornish ancestry. There is a grave on Tylerton, (a separate community) in which the person was from Cornwall. Tylerton also has a slightly different accent. I grew up on the island. I also lived in England for 3 years as well. When we went to Glastonbury, I head someone talking and they sounded just like someone from home.
Russ Beardsley You’re exactly right. All of these idiot ‘experts’ have called it ‘Elizabethan’ for years, because they don’t know anything about Britain. It’s Cornish, and I knew it was Cornish the first time I heard it. And so do the islanders; the flag of Tangier Island has the Cornish flag in its canton.
I grew up in Charles County, along the Potomac and Patuxent, my family's been on this side of the bay for the last 3 generations, before that we were on the Somerset mainland, and Smith Island, where we lived since the mid 1600s. It's a gorgeous place, and having Smith Island heritage makes me extremely proud.
Do your relatives talk like this? It sounds like people on the outer banks in NC. Honestly, I think it sounds like Elizabethan English with a strong Southern accent mixed in. How could people in Maryland have southern accents?
@@Mark-pe2sh Yes, I realize Maryland is at very least historically a Southern state, but since WWII the mass influx of people from the north and Midwest has made the state more like the northeast. The Southern culture can still be found in much of MD today, but the eastern shore is the only part that still talks southern. I can slightly hear it in people from Baltimore though, but it’s very faint.
@@BB-kt5eb To varying degrees, yes, they do talk like this. Mine is much thicker than many of my family's, but theirs is definitely present. The South has dozens of different accents; This particular one being found in Southern Maryland (primarily Charles, and St. Mary's), the Eastern Shore of MD and VA, and along the Outer Banks. The reason being, much of the coastal sections of the Mid and Upper South were settled by people from England's West Country region - our surviving accents are a mix of Somerset, Cornwall, Dorset, and Devonshire dialects, primarily.
This showed something I've always wondered about. They say "lănch" a boat or "căm" waters. In the South, people usually pronounce "aunt" to rhyme with "ant," not "not," and we all say "gaige" when it's spelled "gauge." In Appalachian mountain country, people say "haint" instead of "haunt," and that can mean a ghost as well as a haunted place or to haunt. All those have short A like in cat, apple, ash, or long A/AI/AY, but they're all spelled AU/AW, except for calm, AL. -- So this means there was a more widespread dialectal trend back in history, on both sides of the Atlantic, to say Ă or Ā, short or long A, for AU/AW, and sometimes even AL. Really interesting, and I wonder why or how that got started.
before the late 18th century most brits spokr rhoticaly with strong rs. we know this from books and a proffessor thinks shakespeare spoke like it. rhotic rs are still found in parts of england like the west country so its likely brits and americans sounded like hagrid sorry for grammar on phone
I believe that many of the traits of the Smith Island and Tangier Island dialects are found in the Crisfield area on the mainland. It's from Crisfield, where you take the ferry that goes to Smith Island. My late paternal grandparents were from Crisfield, and I remember how words that ended in a -y that are usually pronounced "ee" - they pronounced with an "-ih" sound. For example - "Salisbury" pronounced "Salizburih". And those "o's" - ... " - "out" pronounced like "ö-et", etc. etc.
This is really interesting. In Texas there are some German and Czech communities where they speak English with distinctive accents from those languages...but it's dying out fast.
You can check if the accent is Elizabethan because in Shakespeare's verse, he often rhymes words that no longer rhyme in a modern English accent. The Virginian accent is a little closer, which makes sense as Virginia is named after Elizabeth I and was settled at that time. For example, Shakespeare rhymes Love and Jove and there are various other weird rhymes. Having said that the English accent changed every 30 miles, sometimes in the extreme. You have to remember that back in those days most people never left their village or town in their entire lives. There was no media to get an accent from and so you spoke the same as the people who lived near you. So people might settle in the USA from England but everyone in England spoke differently. There wasn't one "Elizabethan" accent. One assumes Shakespeare wrote in a posh London accent.
Shakespeare would not have had a posh London accent. First of all, it didn't exist until late Georgian early Victorian times, and secondly William Shakespeare came from Stratford-upon-Avon, which is in the West Midlands, specifically Warwickshire
@@dnr2089 - I didn't say he had a posh London accent. I'm well aware he came from Stratford. I said, "wrote in" not "had a". And I already established in the rest of my comment that whatever the Elizabethan court accent was it wasn't the same as the posh London accent of today. I stated there were different accents all over the UK. As he was creating upper-class characters including historic English Kings etc. I assume he wrote how the upper classes around the London court spoke. i.e. a posh London accent of the day. Why would I mean a posh London accent of today after already saying they probably sounded like Virginians?
Very similar to parts of Newfoundland. Not surprising as both groups hail in large part from Devon and Dorsetshire.My wife was a Poole and can trace her roots to England (Devon).
This reminds me a lot of the Down East Brogue that is spoken in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. If the water is glassy, it’s “dead slick cam” back home.
In Canada on the east coast there are smaller communities that have very strong accents....these people remind of newfies...who sound like the Irish of Cork
My ancestor was the original owner of Smith Island. No joke. He lost it when he was run out of town for being "The Meanest Man on Eastern Shore." My grandfather was born and raised on Eastern Shore. His accent was like this, but much more pronounced.
"You can't find places like this anywhere else"..."or find languages quite this special". Sorry, Jenny Kay Paulson, but you've obviously never heard of Newfoundland English, the umbrella term for the several historic dialects of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, the first English language of North America originating from the speech of fishermen-settlers from England's West Country in the 1500s. She should check out the Facebook site "TNT - Traditional Newfy Talk"!
Both Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman were born as slaves on Maryland plantations, but managed to escape. MD is definitely a Southern state, except around D.C. where most people are from somewhere else, and moved there for government jobs. D.C. actually sits on land that was taken from MD to form the Federal City, so if D.C. wants to be a state, they should return the land to MD and join with them, but I doubt that MD people would want D.C. back, considering it’s current inhabitants, lol.
Yeah would've been great to hear more of the actual islanders, rather than ppl talking about them.
Agreed
The reported should have shut her hole and let us hear the accent. And then half the interviews were with a guy who just moved there.
A word of advice: If you're going to do a piece on an accent, maybe give more examples of it. The Smith Islander woman you featured did not represent a particularly strong example of the dialect. Lazy journalism.
Agreed.
I didn’t notice any English accent in her
I grew up in crisfield. I have a lot of islander friends. The accent is quite amazing
This accent is still heard in Appledore, North Devon on the West coast of the United Kingdom, from which area the original Grenville and John Smith settlers sailed, over 30 years before the 'Founding Fathers' set foot on American soil.
+Tony Koorlander all except 9 of the 'founding fathers' were born in the colonies i think you are confusing the term to mean some of the earlier settlers but it only refers to the signers of the constitution and declaration of independance
Timescale is what my comment refers to. Settlers were here before the much historically vaunted sailing from England that is accredited with carrying the first settlers.
Tony Koorlander yes true, and there were vikings here almost a thousands years ago :D
My ancestors were on Eastern Shore in 1502. My family are the Original Pilgrims.
My ancestor was the original owner of Smith Island.
@@babyrocasmama AMAZING! There is a load of research done by a friend of mine - who now lives in N.Carolina. He would be as fascinated as I am to hear your ancestry details and family story. Do you mind if I forward your comments to him? He has been on the History Channel with his research.
I agree with T Parks, the Smith Islander woman also sounded very... congested and stuffy. No way to really hear the accent well.
im english. sounds like devon/ cornwall. the crew of the mayflower,(who weren't god fearing puritans!!) were from the (original english) plymouth area of devon\cornwall. so one time, most early "americans" would have spoke like this and gradually picked this accent up.
I believe that most of the Pilgrims who originally settled at Plymouth, Mass., came from the Fens region of England. Those who settled Smith and Tangier islands came from elsewhere, the Cornwall region as you you described.
Aaron Feldman
Actually, while they set off from the Fens, where they actually started out from was the Notts/S. Yorks. area, on the borders of the Midlands and North of England.
Aaron Feldman
Actually, while they set off from the Fens, where they actually started out from was the Notts/S. Yorks. area, on the borders of the Midlands and North of England.
You're right. We do have Cornish ancestry. There is a grave on Tylerton, (a separate community) in which the person was from Cornwall. Tylerton also has a slightly different accent. I grew up on the island. I also lived in England for 3 years as well. When we went to Glastonbury, I head someone talking and they sounded just like someone from home.
Russ Beardsley You’re exactly right. All of these idiot ‘experts’ have called it ‘Elizabethan’ for years, because they don’t know anything about Britain. It’s Cornish, and I knew it was Cornish the first time I heard it. And so do the islanders; the flag of Tangier Island has the Cornish flag in its canton.
I grew up in Charles County, along the Potomac and Patuxent, my family's been on this side of the bay for the last 3 generations, before that we were on the Somerset mainland, and Smith Island, where we lived since the mid 1600s. It's a gorgeous place, and having Smith Island heritage makes me extremely proud.
Do your relatives talk like this? It sounds like people on the outer banks in NC. Honestly, I think it sounds like Elizabethan English with a strong Southern accent mixed in. How could people in Maryland have southern accents?
Gerald Beasley u can hear this accent still on deal island, however come on down to eastern va for a more pronounced tidewater drawl
@@BB-kt5eb Maryland is a southern state. What you hear today is the influence of D.C. and all the people who moved to Maryland.
@@Mark-pe2sh
Yes, I realize Maryland is at very least historically a Southern state, but since WWII the mass influx of people from the north and Midwest has made the state more like the northeast.
The Southern culture can still be found in much of MD today, but the eastern shore is the only part that still talks southern. I can slightly hear it in people from Baltimore though, but it’s very faint.
@@BB-kt5eb To varying degrees, yes, they do talk like this. Mine is much thicker than many of my family's, but theirs is definitely present.
The South has dozens of different accents; This particular one being found in Southern Maryland (primarily Charles, and St. Mary's), the Eastern Shore of MD and VA, and along the Outer Banks. The reason being, much of the coastal sections of the Mid and Upper South were settled by people from England's West Country region - our surviving accents are a mix of Somerset, Cornwall, Dorset, and Devonshire dialects, primarily.
This showed something I've always wondered about. They say "lănch" a boat or "căm" waters. In the South, people usually pronounce "aunt" to rhyme with "ant," not "not," and we all say "gaige" when it's spelled "gauge." In Appalachian mountain country, people say "haint" instead of "haunt," and that can mean a ghost as well as a haunted place or to haunt. All those have short A like in cat, apple, ash, or long A/AI/AY, but they're all spelled AU/AW, except for calm, AL. -- So this means there was a more widespread dialectal trend back in history, on both sides of the Atlantic, to say Ă or Ā, short or long A, for AU/AW, and sometimes even AL. Really interesting, and I wonder why or how that got started.
before the late 18th century most brits spokr rhoticaly with strong rs. we know this from books and a proffessor thinks shakespeare spoke like it. rhotic rs are still found in parts of england like the west country so its likely brits and americans sounded like hagrid
sorry for grammar on phone
she says “own” exactly like we do in new zealand :)
big comuniteh
Communiteh!
Yeah, that sounds Manc (Manchester UK)...maybe they have a common ancestor.
Yes. Very Lancashire or Sheffield. Amazing.
I believe that many of the traits of the Smith Island and Tangier Island dialects are found in the Crisfield area on the mainland. It's from Crisfield, where you take the ferry that goes to Smith Island. My late paternal grandparents were from Crisfield, and I remember how words that ended in a -y that are usually pronounced "ee" - they pronounced with an "-ih" sound. For example - "Salisbury" pronounced "Salizburih". And those "o's" - ... " - "out" pronounced like "ö-et", etc. etc.
Actually, I rmb reading somewhere that the meaning of "ugly" changed from meaning "pretty" to "not pretty". It's cool this dialect's retained that!
Sounds like a mix of a southern accent and a Scottish accent
I’m dying inside Rn yes
Why are there so few samples!!! We don’t need a history lesson. We came here for examples!!!!
Uhhhhh ya gonna let us hear the accent??
so im french canadian and i live close to Crisfield Md and I was asked once by an old man if I was from Smith Island lol
So are we to believe that Essie Evans @ 0:44 was still alive circa 2012-13?
This is really interesting.
In Texas there are some German and Czech communities where they speak English with distinctive accents from those languages...but it's dying out fast.
When she said community i was like OH FUCK!
This reminds me of people on in Newfoundland in Canada. They were isolated on an island for so long that they kept the old speech ways.
Five hundred years....they sound Irish to me, like the Irish from County Cork
You can check if the accent is Elizabethan because in Shakespeare's verse, he often rhymes words that no longer rhyme in a modern English accent. The Virginian accent is a little closer, which makes sense as Virginia is named after Elizabeth I and was settled at that time.
For example, Shakespeare rhymes Love and Jove and there are various other weird rhymes.
Having said that the English accent changed every 30 miles, sometimes in the extreme. You have to remember that back in those days most people never left their village or town in their entire lives. There was no media to get an accent from and so you spoke the same as the people who lived near you.
So people might settle in the USA from England but everyone in England spoke differently. There wasn't one "Elizabethan" accent. One assumes Shakespeare wrote in a posh London accent.
Shakespeare would not have had a posh London accent. First of all, it didn't exist until late Georgian early Victorian times, and secondly William Shakespeare came from Stratford-upon-Avon, which is in the West Midlands, specifically Warwickshire
@@dnr2089 - I didn't say he had a posh London accent. I'm well aware he came from Stratford.
I said, "wrote in" not "had a".
And I already established in the rest of my comment that whatever the Elizabethan court accent was it wasn't the same as the posh London accent of today.
I stated there were different accents all over the UK.
As he was creating upper-class characters including historic English Kings etc. I assume he wrote how the upper classes around the London court spoke. i.e. a posh London accent of the day.
Why would I mean a posh London accent of today after already saying they probably sounded like Virginians?
The lady in the pink top has a real southern English twang going on there!
Very similar to parts of Newfoundland. Not surprising as both groups hail in large part from Devon and Dorsetshire.My wife was a Poole and can trace her roots to England (Devon).
I thought so too...Even some parts of New Brunswick (smaller communities near the ocean
I’m from Devon! I find this stuff fascinating 😮
0:44 born in 1895…is Essie still alive?
Like the Outer Banks. Love it
People speak backwards in smith/tangier island, but there are differences in speech per person
Was that Captain Terry in the beginning?
Yes
This reminds me a lot of the Down East Brogue that is spoken in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. If the water is glassy, it’s “dead slick cam” back home.
"So where did this accent come from?" 0:55 From motorboating?
+Blake Barney or as Americans would pronounce it 'modorboading' or 'We're gonna need a bigger boad''
"No pets or feet on the seat"
This report would be informative if it had more examples of natives speaking their dialects , rather than 99% framing.
Calling something ugly is pretty? I though we invented the backwards thing with "Damn, she bad" or whatever.
The More You Know!
That is typical British/English/Irish humor...saying something is the opposite of what it is.
Saying "not bad" means extremely good in Brit Eng.
In Canada on the east coast there are smaller communities that have very strong accents....these people remind of newfies...who sound like the Irish of Cork
If we all sounded the same it would be boring
Its sound abit like a Donigal/Galway lrish accent.
This could have been much more informative.
Water is slick cam
My ancestor was the original owner of Smith Island. No joke.
He lost it when he was run out of town for being "The Meanest Man on Eastern Shore."
My grandfather was born and raised on Eastern Shore. His accent was like this, but much more pronounced.
has Jenny Kay Paulson ever done any adult videos?
This accent, or at least aspects of it, I have heard with someone like Adele.
ayyee tylerton represent
also like the OBX of nc .
Down town or dine tine 😂
I've always been ugly, so it would be nice to finally be called pretty. 🙃
Reporter smoking hot.
Could have been interesting, but few examples were shown in the video.
Cash me outside how bout dah
they call it irony; did they mean sarcasm?
America managed to keep the older accent while Britian tried hard to erase it 😅 i hope the accent stays
WHAT. THE. FUCK.
She sounded American to me and I’m English
She didn't go too deep there...great subject though
"You can't find places like this anywhere else"..."or find languages quite this special". Sorry, Jenny Kay Paulson, but you've obviously never heard of Newfoundland English, the umbrella term for the several historic dialects of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, the first English language of North America originating from the speech of fishermen-settlers from England's West Country in the 1500s. She should check out the Facebook site "TNT - Traditional Newfy Talk"!
Neither sounded anything but Americans to me
Yea not much but a few words. Now the Tangier island accent mile south of there holy shit, sounds like you in Cornwall.
Actually here's another video of Smith island. Just locals talking
ua-cam.com/video/su_wmFZ66l0/v-deo.html
Still not massively sure what the accent sounds like...
That reporter is out of focus
Why do they sound Southern in Maryland. The people in Cape Hatteras, North Carolina talk just like this.
Cause it's pretty much in the south
Maryland is below the mason-dixon line. It's south, esp. if you go to Dorchester.
Maryland is southern. Go to southern Maryland and the accent sounds different than in the northern part of the state.
If the news reader would have just shut up so I could hear this beautiful accent so much the better. Bad job. Try to shut up more.
Both Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman were born as slaves on Maryland plantations, but managed to escape. MD is definitely a Southern state, except around D.C. where most people are from somewhere else, and moved there for government jobs. D.C. actually sits on land that was taken from MD to form the Federal City, so if D.C. wants to be a state, they should return the land to MD and join with them, but I doubt that MD people would want D.C. back, considering it’s current inhabitants, lol.
No, they sound American, with a wierd accent
they sound like that Muslamic Ray Guns guy
What a failure of a story.
There is a lot of inbreeding going on there.