Your front page particle (BDN Aug. 18) about Professor Ikemiya’s report linking our Down East accent to Shakespeare delighted me!

Some 52 years ago, when studying Shakespeare play at Tufts College, I discovered that my better educated classmates didn’t understand phrases that, to me, were everyday language.

My father, fifth generation in mid-coast Maine from Scotland and England, used many of the old English phrases and pronunciations including, “How be ye?” and “Don’t be such a gaum!” I had to concentrate on learning to say, “yes,” instead of “Ayuh,” and to include the “r” in words such as “car.”

Sixty years ago, the announcers at the Bangor radio stations were local men who talked like the rest of us. Now, of course, teachers and media people speak a standard form of American English and much of the local colloquial speech has disappeared. F. Eleanor Warner Belfast