Our Eastern Virginia Dialect

By
Frank Green

While the study of dates, people and events are important, if one really wants to know about a certain area is to learn its cultural history. In other words find out what made us what we are.
For us natives and residents of York County and Poquoson, one of these historical cultural icons would be our Tidewater dialect. This is sometimes referred to as Elizabethan English or even Shakespearean English.
In a recent interview with Robert McNeil was asked if the dialect of Senator John Warner was Elizabethan English, he said that is probably was not. McNeil had just written a book on "speaking American" The Virginia dialect may not be Elizabethan or Shakespean but it certainly is a direct derivative of it.
What is the Tidewater dialect? It is the way of speaking that goes from Eastern Maryland down the east coast to the islands of Georgia. It is very easy to pick out. The word "out" is pronounced "oat" The word "about" is pronounced "aboat"
A "house" is a "hoose" The "r" at the end of most words in not even pronounced. In fact some one syllable words are stretched to two syllables. The word "there" is pronounce "they-ya"
This dialect is rapidly dying out. This is very unfortunate. Our dialect had a particular character that made us stand apart from other regional dialects.
In our area, there are even dialects of our dialect. One example is the almost Cockney sounding speech that is found in the Guinea area of Gloucester County and the unusual speech patterns on Tangier and Smith Islands in the Chesapeake Bay. The dropped "r" is still found in the speech of Poquoson natives and older York County natives.
Where did the Tidewater dialect originate? It came to our country with our earliest ancestors when they came over from England. The Eastern Virginia area was mainly settled my people from the Southwest area of England. According to Dr. David Hackett Fischer's book "Albion's Seed", the Eastern part of our country was settled by people who came from four distinct areas of Great Britain to four areas of this country. These areas included Virginia, the Delaware Valley, New England and the Back Country. These different settlers brought their culture and language with them. This ended p up being one country made on many cultures.
In fact Virginia can be found under the "Virginia" chapter for her settlement form Southwest England and under the "Back Country" chapter, which covers Scotch-Irish settlement in Virginia's western counties. I found both of these chapters very interesting and informative as I have a parent from both Eastern Virginia and the Back Country Scots-Irish.
Dr. Bennett W. Green (no relation) did meticulous study of Eastern Virginia speech patterns and colloquialisms. He put these together is his book "Word Book of Virginia Folk Speech" (Richmond 1899). Dr. Green was able to trace many well known local words and terms back to their British origin. One example is many local people use the term "chimley" for chimney. This pronunciation can be traced back to Hampshire County England. Wiltshire County gave us "preserve" for "preserve". Cornwall County gave us "half" pronounced as "haalf", "care" is pronounced "keer". Words ending is "g" have that letter being silent. An example of this is: "goin'" for the word going. Some of our word pronunciations come from Middle English. An example of this is the letter "L" is charged to "R" The word walnut is pronounced "warnut"
There are almost no foreign words in Tidewater English. The only exception to this is the inclusion of many local Indian words into our language. Some examples of Indian words in every day Virginia language are: persimmon, skunk, Accomack and Poquoson.
One interesting quality of the Tidewater dialect is that some proper names are pronounced differently than they were spelled. The name "Chisman" is pronounced "Cheeseman". "Botetourt" is "Bote-tot". "DeNeuville" was "Donevill" "Hayward" is pronounced "How'ard" "James" is "Jeames". "Fourteen" is Fo' teen". "Salett" are any greens such as collards, it should not be confused with salad.
Some local pronunciations that I have personally noted is that some people change the "N" at the end of a word to "M". An example would be "seem" for "seven". Another example when someone says "are-ra" for the letter "R".
It is truly a shame that our local dialect seems to be disappearing with each on going generation. It still shows up in the media every so often. The movie "Gods and Generals" give Robert E. Lee and other Virginians a Tidewater accent as opposed to a Deep South dialect that most movies and television shows give them.
Sadly, our local dialect is being replaced with replaced with the colorless language that is seen in the movies and television. It seems that people whose parents speak with the "Virginia accent" grow up to have no accent at all.