High Tider

High Tider or "Hoi Toider" is a dialect of American English spoken in very limited communities of the South Atlantic United States—particularly, several small island and coastal townships of the rural North Carolina "Down East" seaside region that encompasses the Outer Banks and Pamlico Sound (specifically including Atlantic, Sea Level, and Harkers Island in eastern Carteret County, and also from Ocracoke) as well as of the Chesapeake Bay (such as Tangier and Smith Island). The term is also a nickname for any local resident of these regions.

This dialect does not have one name uniformly used in the academic literature, but is referenced by a variety of names, including Hoi Toider, or, more restrictively, Down East, Ocracoke (Vernacular), Harkers Island, and Outer Banks English, dialect, brogue, or accent. The Atlas of North American English does not consider High Tider English to be a subset of Southern English (due to not participating in the first stage of the Southern Vowel Shift), but it may share some commonalities as a dialectal member, at least partially, of the Southeastern super-dialect region.

History

The term originates from a local colloquial jargon phrase that reflects the story told by an old fisherman: "High tide... can't fish." As a marker of pronunciation, the term "high tider" (sometimes phonetically spelled "hoi toider") began as a shibboleth to sharply differentiate speakers of this dialect from speakers of other Southern U.S. dialects.

With a long history of geographical and economic isolation from mainland North Carolina, residents of Harkers Island and other Outer Banks islands, such as Ocracoke, and also extending to the town of Atlantic have developed a distinct dialect of English, commonly referred to as High tider, that can be traced back to influences directly of the Elizabethan period. The dialect of these island communities developed in almost complete isolation for over 250 years. High Tider English shares features with other regional dialects of the US Atlantic coast. Pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammatical constructions can be traced to eastern and southwestern England. The dialect has survived because the community continues to depend on traditional trades, like fishing, boat building, and decoy carving, and the coastal tourism trade developed on High Tider English much later than islands like Ocracoke.

As many as 500 islanders on Harkers Island are directly descended from the Harkers Island and Outer Banks settlers that developed this distinct dialect. Linguists from North Carolina State University, East Carolina University, and other academic institutions continue to conduct research on the island dialect.

Phonological features

The phonology, or pronunciation system, of High Tider English is highly different from the English spoken in the rest of the United States. The high tide dialect is marked with numerous unique phonological features and sound changes:

• The /aɪ/ diphthong begins far in the back of the mouth and retains its glide [ɑe], unlike most other Southern dialects, and it may also begin with a round-lipped quality [ɒe] or even have a triphthongal quality [ɐɑe]. (This is commonly interpreted by outsiders as sounding like [ɔɪ].)
• The /aʊ/ diphthong ends with a lowered quality, commonly realized as a shorter off-glide with little or no rounding [aɵ~aø~aɛ~aː~ɐ̟ɤ]. The diphthong's start, or on-glide, may be slightly raised toward [ɛ].
• Merger of /ɪ/ and /i/, as in the characteristic realization of fish as feesh /fiːʃ/. This may be represented as [iː(ə)] or [ɪ̝(ː)].
• Realization of /aɪəɹ/ as [äːɻ], so that "fire" may begin to merge with "far."
• The r-colored vowel /ɛər/ has an opener vowel sound: [æɚ].
• The /ɔː/ vowel is largely intact without change: [ɔ~ɔ̝].
• The /oʊ/ vowel is largely fronted, as in much of the rest of the modern-day South: [ɜʉ~ɜy].
• Elision of some medial stops as in "cape"~"ca'e"
• Strong, bunched-tongue rhoticity

Lexical features

The island dialect has also retained anachronistic vocabulary in regular usage. Some examples include "mommuck," meaning to frustrate or bother, "yethy," describing stale or unpleasant odor, and "nicket," meaning a pinch of something used as in cooking. The islanders have also developed unique local words used in regular conversation, including "dingbatter" to refer to a visitor or recent arrival to the island, and "dit-dot," a term developed from a joke about Morse code, and used to describe any visitor to the island who has difficulty understanding the local dialect.

Further reading

• Thomas, Erik R. (2006), "Rural White Southern Accents" (PDF), Atlas of North American English (online) (Walter de Gruyter) 
• Wolfram, Walt; Natalie Schilling-Estes (1997). Hoi Toide on the Outer Banks: The Story of the Ocracoke Brogue. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-4626-0.