High Tider

High Tider
High Tider
Hoi Toider
Native to	North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland
Region	Outer Banks, Pamlico Sound, Chesapeake Bay
Ethnicity	Americans
Native speakers	Unreported
Language family	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic Ingvaeonic Anglo–Frisian English North American English American English Older Southern American English High Tider; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Early forms	Old English Middle English 17th century Modern English ; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
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High Tider, Hoi Toider, or Hoi Toide English is a family or continuum of American English dialects spoken in very limited communities of the South Atlantic United States,^[1] particularly several small islands and coastal townships. The exact areas include the rural "Down East" region of North Carolina, which encompasses the Outer Banks and Pamlico Sound—specifically Ocracoke, Atlantic, Davis, Sea Level, and Harkers Island in eastern Carteret County, and the village of Wanchese—plus the Chesapeake Bay, such as Smith Island in Maryland, as well as Guinea Neck and Tangier Island in Virginia.^[2] The High Tider sound has been observed as far west as Bertie County, North Carolina; the term is also a local nickname for any native-speaking resident of the relevant North Carolina region.

These dialects do not have a name that is uniformly used in the academic literature, with "Hoi Toider" used for the Outer Banks and mainly Ocracoke; rather, a variety of names exist based on location, such as Down East, Outer Banks, or Chesapeake Bay English, dialect, brogue, or accent.^[3] Most speakers in the Outer Banks themselves refer to their dialect as "the brogue".^[4] Ocracoke English and Smith Island English are the two best-studied varieties, with the linguists Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling researching them in detail since the 1990s onwards.^[5]

The 2006 Atlas of North American English does not consider these dialects to fall under the Southern U.S. regional dialect since they do not participate in the first stage of the Southern Vowel Shift, but they share commonalities as full members of the larger Southeastern regional super-dialect in fronting the /oʊ/ and /aʊ/ vowels, exhibiting the pin–pen merger, resisting the cot–caught merger, and being strongly rhotic with a retroflex /r/.

^ Wolfram & Schilling-Estes 1997, pp. 1, 69
^ Wolfram & Schilling-Estes 1997, p. 78: "The verb usages that we have found on Ocracoke help strengthen the connections we've already established between the brogue and other dialects that developed in isolated areas like Appalachia and Tangier and Smith Islands".
^ Subtitles of articles by Walt Wolfram et al. commonly include such a range of terms, such as in "The Story of the Ocracoke Brogue" (1995), "The Invisible Outer Banks Dialect" (1996), "The Distinct Sounds of the 'Hoi Toide' Brogue" (2001), etc.
^ Wolfram & Reaser (2014:101)
^ Wolfram & Schilling-Estes 1997

[1] Wolfram & Schilling-Estes 1997, pp. 1, 69

[2] Wolfram & Schilling-Estes 1997, p. 78: "The verb usages that we have found on Ocracoke help strengthen the connections we've already established between the brogue and other dialects that developed in isolated areas like Appalachia and Tangier and Smith Islands".

[3] Subtitles of articles by Walt Wolfram et al. commonly include such a range of terms, such as in "The Story of the Ocracoke Brogue" (1995), "The Invisible Outer Banks Dialect" (1996), "The Distinct Sounds of the 'Hoi Toide' Brogue" (2001), etc.

[4] Wolfram & Reaser (2014:101)

[5] Wolfram & Schilling-Estes 1997

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