I'm a former land surveyor (now DevOps guy) who spent a lot of summers during childhood on the eastern shore of Maryland, where we have relatives. I also did a

I'm a former land surveyor (now DevOps guy) who spent a lot of summers during childhood on the eastern shore of Maryland, where we have relatives. I also did a lot of land surveys in the DelMarVa peninsula near the eastern shore of Virginia, as well as a lot of sonar work from boats on the Chesapeake Bay. And when I was a teen we used to sail boats out of Deal Island, MD and we'd often dock the boat on Smith Island, Tangier Island, and Ocracoke Island. Anyway, starting as a teen I'd often hear these stories that there were "lost islands" on the Chesapeake Bay where the locals spoke "Elizabethan English." I suppose that might be the closest thing the dialect resembles, but I doubt it's much like what authentic Elizabethan English was. It's more like a mix of Old English, colonial-era American English, Scottish, and Irish with some old American Indian words mixed in. Basically, the guys who started "Talk Like a Pirate Day" should visit these islands to learn the dialect. And of course a lot of times we'd come back from those trips with a Smith Island Cake for Mom. A couple of years ago there were some guys from the power company in my backyard up in the Philly metro area cutting down tree limbs to make room for the electrical cables. They were up on a cherry picker and I went out in my backyard and I overheard them talking, and I recognized the accent in a second. I said, "Hey, are you guys from Salisbury?" They were very surprised and said "Princess Anne, how did you know?" and I said "I know a Somerset County accent anywhere" because it's how my relatives spoke.