In high school we had a mid-year transfer student, a real hillbilly from mountains of SW Virginia. He was butt of jokes for his raggedy clothes, bowl haircut and notable accent and quaint expressions. It wasn't til, in English Lit class, when the teacher asked him to give the meaning of a particularly difficult Shakespearean sonnet that we realized he had a gift.....He was able to perfectly reckon the meaning of the (quite foreign to us) antiquated passage. His isolated mountain home carried on the linguist tradition of early 1700 English settlers without impact from outsiders. He told us his area hadn't received electricity until after he was born, in 1952.

He quickly became accepted as 'the kid who talked like Shakespeare' and he 'learned' us Yanee kids lots of useful words like 'ken' (know), 'kith and kin' (family and relatives) and other obtuse turns of phrases. Still remember many, to this day.