Well, I'd heard the Elizabethan English still spoken in the Appalachian mountains factoid, but not the Revolutionary War one. I don't buy either. Orthography is just one dangerous swamp into which I try not to go. That having been said: our spelling totters between the phonological and the etymological. Spelling influences pronunciation and vice versa. What bothers you about out? Is it the 'u'? Stressed vowels becoming diphthongs is pretty normal in language change.