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- There are only about 150 speakers
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of the Ocracoke brogue now,
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and they all live on one end of this barrier island
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on the coast of North Carolina,
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which is basically an enlarged sand bar.
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Within the next 50 years, the brogue will disappear.
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- Hoi toi to the sound side so laugh like water
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far night moonshine no fish.
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(boat engine bubbling)
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- [Man] The dialect on this island is sometimes referred to
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as hoi toiters which is their pronunciation of high tide.
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- Hoi toid on the sound sides high tide on the sound side.
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- In the United States the Ocracoke brogue is probably
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the only dialect that is not identified
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as being from America.
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- I do, I have a lot of people that think I'm from Australia
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or Ireland, yeah.
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- [Man] You can look in this boat and see crabs.
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- You know, the first people that came here
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from England and Ireland and Scotland just stayed isolated.
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I'm from Ocracoke, I am the 10th generation
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in my family from Ocracoke.
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That goes back to the mid-1600s.
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- The reason this dialect was perpetuated
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for a couple of centuries was because the people were
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very isolated.
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They didn't have much contact with people from the mainland.
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Ocracoke is an island that has always
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lived around the water.
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- Got it!
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- Many of the unique items,
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particularly the vocabulary items,
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are built around the water
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and the sand and the weather.
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- The wind's blowin' really hard, he says,
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it's blowin harder then a pop car right there.
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You know.
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- So you're takin' a ride around the island.
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You're just taking a little scud.
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- When we come out here and the wind's blowin' really hard
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and we take a bad beatin'.
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Then you could say we be a mommuck.
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- You also find here lots of terms for outsiders.
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- Ya'll are dingbatters.
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(laughing)
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- My wife is from Maryland.
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We've been married 43 years.
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She's still a dingbatter.
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(laughing)
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- That's not a bad thing, OK?
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(laughing)
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- It was basically the dingbatters who changed the dialect
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because so many people came in.
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Even today there are more off-islanders who live here
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than on-landers.
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- Now it's changing, within time we're all gonna lose it,
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ya' know?
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- Because of so many people coming in.
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It's a part of heritage that I'm proud of.
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- Some people think we talk funny.
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I think that's the way we talk.
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(laughs)
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It ain't funny to us, but it doesn't matter,
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I mean, that's fine, you know?
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(plucked string music)
