Bermudian English is a regional accent of English found in Bermuda

Bermuda

Bermuda is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. It is about south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and northeast of Miami, Florida...

, a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic. "Standard English

Standard English

Standard English refers to whatever form of the English language is accepted as a national norm in an Anglophone country...

 is used in professional settings and in writing, while vernacular

Vernacular

A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...

 Bermudian English is spoken on more casual occasions". The Bermudian accent began to develop following settlement in the early 17th century, and retains traits of Elizabethan English

Early Modern English

Early Modern English is the stage of the English language used from about the end of the Middle English period to 1650. Thus, the first edition of the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare both belong to the late phase of Early Modern English...

.

Casual observers tend to have difficulty in placing the Bermudian accent, as it differs from those that are clearly British

British English

British English, or English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...

, American

American English

American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....

 or Caribbean

Caribbean English

Caribbean English is a broad term for the dialects of the English language spoken in the Caribbean, most countries on the Caribbean coast of Central America, and Guyana. Caribbean English is influenced by the English-based Creole varieties spoken in the region, but they are not the same. In the...

; they also note that the accent tends to vary between individuals. To Americans, it sounds slightly British, while the British find it more American.

Categorisation

Bermudian English has been called "one of the most severely underresearched varieties of English". It primarily shows a mixture of traits typical of British English and American English, and is generally classified as a form of American (rather than Caribbean) English. The most detailed scholarly study of Bermudian English, in 1933, stated that this type of speech "would create least remark, if indeed any, between, say, Norfolk, Virginia, and Charleston, South Carolina"; British-Bermudian actor Earl Cameron

Earl Cameron (actor)

Earl Cameron, CBE is a Bermudian actor. He is known as one of the first black actors to break the "colour bar" in the United Kingdom, along with Cy Grant...

 noted that because the Bermudian accent sounded American, he was able to land a speaking role in 1942. In certain aspects of vocalization, however, Bermudian English is close to some versions of Caribbean English, and some would bracket all these varieties to the broad region of the "English-speaking West Indies".

Characteristics

The accent's most evident characteristic is a variation in letter/sound assignment. The switching of [v] and [w], characteristic of many dialects in Southern England during the 18th and 19th centuries, and of [d] and [dʒ], when combined with a front vowel

Front vowel

A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...

, can both be seen in the title of a humorous glossary, "Bermewjan Vurds" (Bermudian Words). The use of [æ] and [ɛ] is interchangeable and vowels are often elongated.