There was a television documentary in America a few years back on the English language. It was run in a series of shows and followed the history of English as it traveled around the world. One point of interest it brought up was that the English of Appalachia (the dialect of the hillbillies) was probably closest to that of Shakespeare.

On another theme: (the H) Those in the Jamiaca pronounce an "H" at the beginning of words that start with a vowel and don't pronounce an "H" when it's written at the beginning of a word. Thus "and" is pronounced "Hand" and "Hand" is pronounced "And".