Yeah would've been great to hear more of the actual islanders, rather than ppl talking about them.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This report would be informative if it had more examples of natives speaking their dialects , rather than 99% framing.

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

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!

she says “own” exactly like we do in new zealand :)

Why are there so few samples!!! We don’t need a history lesson. We came here for examples!!!!

big comuniteh

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.

Sounds like a mix of a southern accent and a Scottish 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?

When she said community i was like OH FUCK!

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.

Uhhhhh ya gonna let us hear the accent??

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.

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.

People speak backwards in smith/tangier island, but there are differences in speech per person

Like the Outer Banks. Love it

Calling something ugly is pretty? I though we invented the backwards thing with "Damn, she bad" or whatever. The More You Know!

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.

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).

Its sound abit like a Donigal/Galway lrish accent.

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.

"No pets or feet on the seat"

0:44 born in 1895…is Essie still alive?

"So where did this accent come from?" 0:55 From motorboating?

has Jenny Kay Paulson ever done any adult videos?

This could have been much more informative.

Water is slick cam

If we all sounded the same it would be boring

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

Was that Captain Terry in the beginning?

ayyee tylerton represent

Reporter smoking hot.

also like the OBX of nc .

I've always been ugly, so it would be nice to finally be called pretty. 🙃

This accent, or at least aspects of it, I have heard with someone like Adele.

Could have been interesting, but few examples were shown in the video.

Down town or dine tine 😂

they call it irony; did they mean sarcasm?

She sounded American to me and I’m English

America managed to keep the older accent while Britian tried hard to erase it 😅 i hope the accent stays

WHAT. THE. FUCK.

"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"!

Cash me outside how bout dah

Neither sounded anything but Americans to me

She didn't go too deep there...great subject though

That reporter is out of focus

Still not massively sure what the accent sounds like...

No, they sound American, with a wierd accent

Why do they sound Southern in Maryland. The people in Cape Hatteras, North Carolina talk just like this.

they sound like that Muslamic Ray Guns guy

What a failure of a story.

There is a lot of inbreeding going on there.