On Ocracoke Island, the only American dialect that is not identified as American | Hacker News Reader

On Ocracoke Island, the only American dialect that is not identified as American

bbc.com

130 pointsMiriamWeiner73 comments

The linguistic diversity in NC is really fun if you're into that sort of thing. Hoi toider is quite unique, but after having traveled and met folks from more parts of the state, it's obvious that there is no single "southern" or "north carolina" accent in general. Appalachian, piedmont, and eastern accents all have noticeable differences - and hoi toider is very unique, but I don't meet many people with that one. Now that so much of the state revolves around cities with high influxes of out-of-staters (Charlotte and Raleigh), accents are less noticeable even for people born and raised there. But differences are definitely still there, just far more subtle.

One thing I noticed from looking at the data for the accent quiz, is that North Carolinians are far more likely to NOT say soda/pop/coke in actual conversation. We just use "drink" for everything. I attribute that to the fact that sweet tea still seems to be the most popular beverage. It was the only place on the map where I saw that particular quirk.

I enjoy it too. It's always interesting and surprising to encounter these people, though I can never place the accents geographically. I once worked with a woman from Oxford, NC, who pronounced it "awksfud."

I am an out of stater that moved to Raleigh. I saw a lecture about the language diversity within the state here at one time on our public access channel by a professor from North Carolina State University. One thing I remember from this was that in various parts across the state these three words can all end up with the same pronunciation:

pin, pen, pan

all sounding a bit like "pe~an"

https://english.chass.ncsu.edu/faculty_staff/wolfram https://linguistics.chass.ncsu.edu/thinkanddo/dialecteducati... https://linguistics.chass.ncsu.edu/thinkanddo/vonc.php#video... https://www.ncfieldfamily.org/nc-living/different-dialects-n... https://languageandlife.org/ https://ocracokepreservation.org/

I lived in RTP for 9 years. Never could figure those people out. Anywhere outside the cities everyone talked like they had a mouthful of marbles. Nothing really cultured going on there, just hoi polloi.

I wonder if this could be connected to Colin Woodard's argument in his book American Nations (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670022969/) that there are eleven basic regional cultures in North America. According to his map (https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/55b273a2371d2211008b9...), North Carolina sits right at the intersection of three of them -- Tidewater in the north, Deep South in the south, and Greater Appalachia in the west. You'd expect to see lots of linguistic diversity in a place where different cultures are rubbing up against each other.

Interestingly, Woodard's book echoes an earlier work, Joel Garreau's 1981 The Nine Nations of North America (https://www.amazon.com/Nine-Nations-North-America/dp/0380578...). Garreau, however, put all of NC inside his "Dixie" nation, the analogue to Woodard's "Deep South." I wonder how much of this can be chalked up to differences in methodology, and how much to demographic shifts in the three decades separating Woodard's work from Garreau's.

Thanks for linking these - I'd seen them before, but hadn't caught the name of the book. I'll be picking it up :)

For what it's worth, my own experience says that the area for "Greater Appalachia" is pretty much 100% correct. The borders aren't quite sharp, and interesting things definitely happen where two or more "nations" meet.

I also know that West Virginia and middle Tennessee feel like "home" to me, and I'm from the Arkansas Ozarks.

I haven't read either of them, but from a glance I definitely agree with Woodard separating Appalachia into it's own region. Western NC has a very distinct culture and history. I don't think there's been any point in the last 100 years where natives of that region wouldn't view people from Raleigh as "outsiders".

Born and raised in Charlotte, wound up with no accent. Californians didn't know I was Southern until I said "Y'all".

Also the pen/pin thing sounding the same is definitely a thing.

When I was a boy, if I ever said 'pin' when I meant 'pen', my parents and teachers would 'correct' me. All entirely Yankee & California. I felt vindicated when I learned there was a whole accent that conflated the two words.

I'm from NC and it blew my mind to learn that some people pronounce those two differently. I've even specifically asked people from other places to say both and I can only barely hear a difference if I strain. I hear that the pin/pen merger pretty widespread though. I have friends from as far as New Mexico and Washington state that also merge them.

Woah, another native Charlottean! I hear we're like unicorns.

But that's similar to what I experienced in Seattle, except they say "y'all" too to be gender-inclusive now. You can spot a WA state accent by the way the say "bag" though (sounds like "beg"). My favorite give-aways for southern without accent though is saying "might could".

> by the way the say "bag" though (sounds like "beg")

The infamous "northwest vowel shift"! I do this too (grew up in the suburbs of Portland) and it's common from Oregon up into BC. Didn't realize it was different until I moved to the midwest for undergrad.

Is that really a thing? I’m as native as one gets (3rd generation, dad is from Walla Walla and grandpa is from Colville), and I’ve never noticed that bag/beg thing. If anything, it might just be a Seattle quirk, or maybe west of the mountains.

I did have a hard time in the Deep South, especially the way they would say things like ve-hi-cle and such.

I know someone from the Aberdeen area who says it that way, and I swear I've heard people in Spokane do it too, so it's not just Seattle at least. Though it's very possible the Spokane people weren't native to Spokane, I didn't ask.

My question for you, is do you notice it when eastern WA people say it? Does it stand out to your ear? If not it's possible that you're just used to hearing it either way and not attuned to the difference. I'm like that when people say "pen" and "pin" differently, I can't hear a difference at all. But the "bag" thing stands out a lot since it's different to me.

No, nothing stands out to me at all, it’s all just normal English. My mom is born/raised from Ketchikan, which is about PNW as one can get, and I swear she has no accent either. It’s all very Midwest neutral.

Heh, I couldn't figure out what my daughter meant when she was in kindergarten in RTP and said they go to different "sinners" throughout the day (she meant centers).

> One thing I noticed from looking at the data for the accent quiz, is that North Carolinians are far more likely to NOT say soda/pop/coke in actual conversation.

My family has been in NC for generations and my father's side of the family refers to any soft drink as a co-cola. Every soft drink is a co-cola.

Also, my grandfather always used to purposefully mispronounce Ocracoke as O-row-key-coke. Everytime I see Ocracoke I instinctively pronounce it in my grandfather's manner.

My family refers to all carbonated beverages as a "coke" despite pepsi being the state drink. lol

That's funny, I've heard of that being a thing but it really must be regional. My family goes back a long time in western NC, and the way my papa (gran-dad) called it it sounded like "sodey-pop". In Charlotte it was never pop or coke, and even though "soda" is understood, at restaurants people almost always said "drinks" or "soft drinks" b/c sweet tea was so preferred.

Can confirm... grew up there. A drink 75% of the time meant sweet tea.

Also, we said "Coke" for any type of soda. For example, you would say, "Do you want a Coke?" and someone would say "What do you have?" and we would answer "Pepsi, RC Cola, Dr. Pepper..."

I think I am not the only one who is missing some sound samples. Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7MvtQp2-UA

There are way more than 150 people who speak that dialect. I spend a lot of time down east - there are lots of similar dialects, etc. all around the area, not just on Ocracoke, but in Atlantic, Harkers Island, Beaufort, and other similar areas.

Nope, false. Ask a linguist. It's not Elizabethan. Walt Wolfram, the linguist they quote, is quite certainly irritated by the headline. All of his decades of work summed up by a stupidly incorrect headline.

I don't think the author thinks the headline is literally true. It's contradicted in the first paragraph:

"It's like someone took Elizabethan English, sprinkled in some Irish tones and 1700s Scottish accents, then mixed it all up with pirate slang."

I don't mind it because I don't think it's misleading. It's just a mildly inaccurate simplification to draw readers in. I don't think it would bother the linguist they quote, either.

"mildly inaccurate simplification" is a long way to say "clickbait."

You really think that simplifying to Elizabethan has a significant impact on how interesting the article sounds and to whom? As if there was an intentional decision to deceive people who are excited to hear about Elizabethan English only to find out it's not quite Elizabethan English. What sinister scheming!

In 1759 Elizabeth was dead for 150 years.

... so?

Truly, using Elizabethan English in headlines to draw unwitting readers in is the plague of the modern internet. I wish it would stop.

> I don't think the author thinks the headline is literally true.

Just a friendly reminder: authors do not typically create their headlines, headlines are created by an editor.

Ok, we've replaced that bit above with what Walt is quoted as saying in the article.

There are a few places in and near Tidewater where this dialect is at least as common as it is on Ocracoke. There are even many pockets of it (and very similar dialects) inland as far as the Blue Ridge if you visit the small towns, know where to look, and figure out where the older generation comes to drink coffee and jaw in the morning.

I lived in Charlottesville for five years, and the native dialects of Virginia fascinated me. I grew up in Arkansas and to my ears, residents of the Shenandoah Valley from West Virginia to Tennessee almost don't have an accent at all. Twenty miles east of there in the rural areas, and it's an entirely different sound - almost Bostonian in some ways. Further east, and you start hearing a hint of the aristocratic Southern accent (think "Rhett Butler"), especially between Goochland and the Rappahannock. Keep going and it fades into what the article calls "Hoi Toid".

Where did you find a hoi toider accent in the Blue Ridge?! I've never heard of such a thing. Though most of my reference is from family in the area of Watauga and Mitchell counties of NC.

While doing some digging after reading this I also found about Portsmouth Island, adjacent. No longer inhabited, but used to be a major point of entry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portsmouth,_North_Carolina

You can rent cabins there. Great place to fish and find awesome seashells, if you can dodge the aggressive flies.

To hear what it sounds like, you can listen to this series of Youtube videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjIOuWUuGGc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvfhUGblRAw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPM0X_8cO_U

There’s also Smith Island in Maryland that has a similarly isolated 16th century dialect.

That's what I was thinking as well. I stayed there for a week once and it was quite an odd place. Very empty, no police, few cars (but you could drive a golf cart around the island in not too much time).

Technically a "dry" island but the ferry guy has no problem bringing over alcohol for tourists or those who pay him. Met some interesting characters there.

"Dry" just means it can't be sold there. Doesn't mean you can't own it there. Buy it outside, bring it in.

That's what it always means in the lower 48, though notably in Alaska there are some communities that are true dry, in that they outlaw simple possession as well. In Alaska, they use the term "damp" to describe places where you can own but not buy alcohol and "dry" to describe places where ownership and sale are both prohibited.

As another nuance, some dry counties have had pretty strict enforcement of public intoxication laws as well (as in if you can't legally drive, don't try walking home from a friends house either), while others were no different than wet counties.

See also Tangier Island: https://youtu.be/AIZgw09CG9E

There have been HN threads about Tangier Island English in the past, but I can't find any. Perhaps someone will.

I also remember hearing about an antiquated dialect of English spoken somewhere in Northern California. Anyone know about that?

Boonville, CA

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/boontling-language-of-bo...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boontling

Thank you!

It sounds similar to the Cornish accent, interesting.

Yes, it does.

Shakespeare expert Ben Crystal once gave this presentation on 'proper' pronunciation of Shakespearian English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2QYGEwM1Sk

In terms of modern accents, West Country English probably is the one that comes closest to that.

? Err, not at all to me.

Sounds Bermudian to me. Especially in this one linked above: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvfhUGblRAw

I've always been fascinated by places that are a bit off the beaten track. Western Illinois (between the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers) and Michigan's Thumb are closer to home for me, and the Thumb especially has some of its own slang.

I do not know how to reconcile articles like this and ones about Tangier Island or similar with the claims I have read that American colonists probably sounded more like modern Americans than, say, some other non-RP English accent.

I suppose I’ll get downvoted, but I remember visiting the Outer Banks for the first time in the mid 70’s (also taking the ferry to Okrakoke). Interestingly (scientifically) there was a noticeable number of congenital defects in the population (southern Outer Banks). I suppose one of the downsides of having an isolated population.

Any endogamous population runs a risk. Isolated populations can be endogamous but not necessarily as some will have traditions which facilitate exogamy.

Presumably such as the Viking "Up Helly Aa" festival around Shetland - plenty of opportunity for drunken get-togethers and a little "genetic mixing".

It's worth a visit, although the North Sea is exceptionally rough at that time of year, (last Tuesday in January).

https://www.uphellyaa.org

Well, two new 'words of the day'. Thanks!

Interesting - what sorts of congenital defects?

I've been around a handful of isolated communities like that, and have definitely been to places where the people looked both very much alike and very "atypical" compared to the population at large, but I'm not sure I would describe what I've seen as "defects". Rather, my assumption is that in a smaller population like that is that some characteristics are exaggerated while others are suppressed.

As an example from my own family, my grandfather had nearly white hair and ears that were somewhat larger than normal. He was called "Cotton" when he was in the military (WW2/Korea) and later in life when he worked as a mechanic. The area he grew up is about two hours from me, and is a town of about 100 people. It's striking how many of them have big ears and very light hair, especially the older generation.

I wouldn't consider a high prevalence of light hair and big ears to be "defects", though. Is that the sort of thing you're talking about, or was it something more substantial?

We used to take our family vacations on Ocracoke. The first time we booked a fishing charter, my wife couldn't understand the man on the other end of the phone! We eventually got it all sorted out and we went fishing with the O'Neals several times over the next few years. Always a good time.

Founded in 1759, i.e. mid 18th century, not 16th.

Is everything in iambic pentameter?

The article mentions the fact that the dialect and culture are diminishing. In Louisiana, we have the same problem happening with the Cajun and Creole cultures, and it’s very sad to see. My wife’s grandmother spoke only Cajun French for all of her youth and still doesn’t speak English very comfortably, but that generation is dying off. Unfortunately, the more thoroughly Cajun areas of Louisiana are also the poorest, and so many of the new generations are leaving to bigger cities and more opportunities, myself and my wife included.

There are attempts to keep the language alive, but I’m betting it won’t be nearly enough, and it will likely only live on in an academic sense. The culture has of course also started to dissolve, but that’s no different from what’s experienced in areas all over the US what with ever increasing exposure to the ‘common identity’ via the internet/etc.

At the very least, however, our food culture has been so well-infused into our lives that I really doubt that aspect will die off anytime soon.

The reason these dialects (I am a speaker of this) are dying is that they are discouraged at a young age by the school systems and parents who are worried that dialects like these are seen as "unintelligent" and will cause everything from bullying by children at school, to being turned down for interviews, jobs and even college.

My mother was disciplined for it repeatedly. I had to take "speech therapy" until I was much older when there was a bit of backlash growing against it locally - That was as recent as the late 90s.

Thanks for that adding perspective to the conversation. If you don't mind my asking, what specific school system(s) was it that you were a part of?

As a kid in the Louisiana public school system of the 90s, I can attest that I was not exposed to the language itself, and opportunities to learn the language in the school setting were not provided, despite having grown up in an area that I know has a high number of Cajun descendants (I'm from a family of Fontenots in Allen Parish). But my wife (who grew up in the basin/Teche area) had a wealth of opportunity at her school, even taking French immersion classes for several years. I'm curious as to how consistent and spread-out the effect that you're referring to was.

> they are discouraged at a young age by the school systems and parents who are worried that dialects like these are seen as "unintelligent" and will cause everything from bullying by children at school, to being turned down for interviews, jobs and even college.

I have two girls, and struggle with this.

At home, our language us is very different from when we're in public. I make it a point to correct my girls' grammar when outside the home (or when it's particularly egregious, like subject/verb disagreement), but generally don't at home. "I ain't gonna" is acceptable at home, but "I'm not going to" is expected elsewhere.

This approach is based on my own experiences.

On one hand, as an adult, I feel like I fit in well with the people around me even though I seem to have little in common with them - I'm a remote developer, and most of the people I interact with on a daily basis are tradesmen or other blue-collar workers. I'm convinced this is because I look, act, and sound like they do.

When I'm interacting with my colleagues I enunciate much more clearly and my grammar is significantly better, to the point that I sometimes wonder if my sentence structure makes me sound like I'm trying too hard. It seems to be effective.

On the other, I have a close family member who has struggled throughout her education with both grammar and spelling. She's a high school teacher now, but had to take her certification test numerous times due to repeatedly failing the language portion. She never learned to switch between colloquial and formal language, and never really developed a feel for what is correct grammar and what's not. She also has issues spelling many words. This could be because she is younger than I am and was taught using a different method (she learned "sight words" first; I learned phonics), or it could be because I read a lot more in childhood than she did.

At the end of the day, I want my children to be able to speak at the same level as their professional peers, and I want their peers to be educated professionals. I also want them to be able to self-identify with the people they grew up with, and not to immediately associate a dialect of any sort with intelligence.

Actually, it might be better to be who you are, isn't that the moral of My Fair Lady?

Most of the people I work with in the Fortune 10 are educated idiots. Corporate communications, especially e-mails contain egregious spelling and grammatical errors. It's constant. I have very little respect for most of these people. They believe themselves smart but in reality are merely average or even slightly below that.

In the case of Louisiana, I'm guessing the Cajun and Creole areas were never wealthy compared to the cities. Young people from the country seeking jobs and money in urban centers has been a theme throughout the 20th century, and geographic mobility was actually higher in the past [1], so what's causing these cultures to evaporate so quickly now?

It seems like wherever you look in the US, regional cultures are vanishing at an accelerated pace. From Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine, and everywhere in between, shops and restaurants that not outright bland national chains have converged around a common contemporary hipster aesthetic optimized for Instagram. Is the Internet and social media that powerful that they are the real cause of this cultural compression, or are there other factors?

[1] https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/02/american-mobility-has...

A lot of us learned that repressing the dialect what we're comfortable with made people take us more seriously. Rather than any pidgin or trade language forming to communicate effectively, it was safer to just assimilate.

The true problem is, we're unintelligible to anyone that doesn't care enough to listen. Anything with different vowels and archaic grammar and pronunciation gets tuned out immediately, or the listener gets angry (which at least shows an attempt at listening).

I was having this very conversation a couple of months ago with a colleague.

She is of Mexican descent and grew up relatively poor in Stockton, CA. I'm of Scot descent and grew up in a relatively poor area of rural AR. We mentioned that I acquired most of my vocabulary in my teen years through reading, and as a result sometimes use words that I've never heard spoken and am therefore apt to mispronounce them. It was much more of an issue when I was younger, but it still happens occasionally. She said she had much the same experience, and called it "code switching". I had heard the term before and knew approximately what it meant, but until then had never considered that it applied to my own experience. It absolutely does: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching

I'd say that it applies to Cajun and Creole as well, only more so.

I wonder if telecommunication advances have sped up accent homogenization

Small languages are more likely to die than food.

Knowing a small language is a disadvantage: you have to put forth the effort to learn it and some other useful language. You are better off learning the language with a larger base of speakers and playing games (or finding food in poor areas). Language is about communication, if you can communicate it doesn't matter what language is used, if you can force the other person to use your language you don't have to put for the effort to learn a second.

Parents want their kids to have the best: that means they will make their kids learn the common language of their area. The grandkids generally are the last generation of this that speak the original language because it is no longer useful when everyone they know speaks something else as well.

Food doesn't have that pressure in general. Family recipes passed down for generations are a thing. Everybody needs to eat and what doesn't matter. Some people enjoy unique flavors so there is a slight advantage to knowing how to cook something "weird".

Language has a network effect!

Countless numbers of cultures have risen and then faded away during the course of history. The parts deemed by others as being worth keeping are assimilated into the cultures that survive. This has been going on long before there was an internet or large media to expose a "common identity".

> it’s very sad to see

It's really more bitter sweet. Some amount of this has been happening forever, though mass media probably accelerated it. Yes, there is the loss of a distinct culture, but now more people can communicate with each other.

The article is garbage for a few reasons:

1) Ocracoke barely has any native residents left. 2) Tangier Island, Virginia is a much, much better example of this, and has lots of residents who speak with this dialect.

"Elizabethian" is a gross oversimplification.

It's the perfect recipe for a clickbait headline (unusual, widest possible audience - everyone "gets" accents, a bit controversial). Not that it doesn't have any value.

To me it sounds like an Australian accent mixed with an American south: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7MvtQp2-UA

I'm sure the people from the UK are far more opinionated about the matter.

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