Researchers have long been puzzled by the strong rural drawl spoken by the inhabitants of Palmerston Atoll, one of the smallest and most remote of the Cook Islands with a land mass of less than one square mile.

The island is home to 63 people, who are all descended from William Marsters, an English carpenter and barrelmaker who settled there in 1863.

Now linguists have matched their accent to that of their very distant cousins 12,000 miles away in Gloucestershire.