The United States used to be a British colony, which means our cultures are very similar, and the UK certainly left its mark on one part of the country in particular. When listening to people speak on the island of Ocracoke, North Carolina, one hears a strange combination of Elizabethan English and a Scottish accent from the 1700s. There are also some sounds from Ireland, topped off by some pirate slang. The combination is known as the Ocracoke Brogue, or “Hoi Toider” dialect.
But this is also a distinct culture, and one that is reportedly at risk of disappearing within the next half a century at that. The accent and vocabulary is thought of as “unique”, with experts believing it derived from Irish and Scottish colonists. Over the centuries, it then evolved into its own dialect because of the region’s “extreme isolation”.
Visit Ocracoke NC notes that visitors often mistake the accent as British or Australian.
But locals also point out that, with its origins dating back to the 1600s, Ocracoke Brogue is “about as American as it gets”.
The area’s tourism board adds: “A small number of Ocracoke Island residents still speak in the brogue. However, as they’ve married mainlanders (known in the brogue as ‘dingbatters’), and their children have not been raised speaking the brogue, this is a dialect facing demise.
“Walt Wolfram, a distinguished linguistics professor at N.C. State University who has studied the Ocracoke Brogue for decades estimates that this unique dialect will disappear completely within the next 50 years.”
One person shared an amusing anecdote on Reddit recalling how the accent and phrases one left them bemused.
They wrote: “In 1968, I dated a woman that lived on Harkers Island. She had a distinct accent but was fully intelligible for this southern redneck.
“Then one evening when a group of her friends on the island walked into the restaurant where we were dining, they began chatting and dropped into a language I had never heard in my life.
“The next day I told Mom what happened and she laughed. Told me the islanders were Hoi Toiders and it was the local dialect spoken on the island.”