Ken Koester wrote: >> What candidates do you have that you think is closer and why? >> > The first question would be, which Robin Hood do you mean? There must > have been more than a dozen, from 1066 to 1300 or so--but none of them > would have been speaking anything but a dialect of Middle English or > Old English, and not necessarily a dialect that survived into > Elizabethan or Jacobean times. The next observation would be that > much of Appalachia was settled after Culloden, ie, after 1745, when a > lot of Scots took off for the New World. Not much of Robin Hood > there, I'm afraid, and little more of Elizabeth. > > But there is a group of speakers who settled in the early 17th century > & remained pretty isolated ever after: Chesapeake Bay islanders. > Their accents are pretty distinct from the surrounding mainland & the > stereotypical southern drawl. From what I read and hear, what you > hear today on Smith or Tangiers Island is probably fairly close to > what you might have heard in England around 1600-ish or so. How > close, I don't know. But no matter how you slice it, it aint Robin Hood. > > Snarkhunter > Lots of people were upset with Kevin Costner's accent - they probably would have been quite happy with most modern English or even Tasmanian accents. I lived a couple of years on the East side of the Chesapeake - where are these islanders? I've also read that some barrier reef residents have older accents than most residents of England. Which doesn't make them closer to various Robin Hood stories - but makes them candidates. If you wanted to be as accurate as you can, where would you look for Robin Hood accents?