If you like the bubbler/spends/median word usage patterns, have a browse (check out/take a gander) at the
Dictionary of American Regional English. Lots of fun...
There are reports that when the TVA flooded some valleys, that there were some folks who emerged speaking Shakespearean english. Apparently, they had come across the Atlantic, gone up in the hills and hadn't really interacted with outsiders for 300 years.
All the best,
Peter
Decades ago, I was listening to the radio and there was a show on about NC accents. There are SOOO many accents in NC it is unreal. The show mentioned that the old time families on the Outer Banks in NC, and some in VA, were talking in Shakespearean English. I am sure that is changing as so many people move to the Outer Banks. I have read that people up in the mountains, deep in the hollers were also speaking old versions of English. So many of these accents and dialects are being lost as media influences how people speak and has people move into these areas.
I saw a TV show years ago talking about aging farmers. They were talking to a farmer in Eastern NC, who had no children but had hired decades prior, a man from Mexico to work on the farm. The guy from Mexico married and was living on the farm. What was funny was listening to the guy from Mexico talk. He had a PERFECT Eastern NC accent.
You could not tell he was from another country and English was a second language. Not sure how that happened because it is really hard to completely talk fluently in a second language AND nail the accent AND nail slang perfectly.
One of my first visits to NC, I was staying with some people who had a flat tire and called AAA. The guy that came out to fix the tire was from the rural Piedmont of NC and I really struggled to understand a word he said. And I have lived in the South all of my life.
I know a couple of people, who the only time they have left NC, is to go to Myrtle Beach, SC. Now, Myrtle Beach is a different place, but it is not far, geographically or culturally from NC.
I work with people from all of the world, many for whom English is not their native language, and many whom English IS their native tongue. The worst person I have struggled to understand was from England.
The guy was from Manchester. It took me a good four weeks or so to really start to parse his language but then I did not see him for a month or so, and I could not understand him again.
We have been to Ireland a few times and we watch Irish, UK and Australian TV shows. It amazes us the phrases we will hear. We thought a phrase is a Southern saying but it was from Ireland or the UK.
Later,
Dan
