Posted on 03/11/2025 2:30:37 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Native Americans, English sailors and pirates all came together on Ocracoke Island in North Carolina to create the only American dialect that is not identified as American.
I'd never been called a "dingbatter" until I went to Ocracoke, North Carolina for the first time. I've spent a good part of my life in the state, but I'm still learning how to speak the Hoi Toider brogue. The people here just have their own way of speaking: it's like someone took Elizabethan English, sprinkled in some Irish tones and 1700s Scottish accents, then mixed it all up with pirate slang. But the Hoi Toider dialect is more than a dialect. It's also a culture, one that's slowly fading away. With each generation, fewer people play meehonkey, cook the traditional foods or know what it is to be "mommucked".
In an effort to put his "America first" stamp on the nation's speech, US President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order making English the country's official language. It marks the first time in the US's nearly 250-year history that the nation has had an official language. Yet, on this small 9.6-square-mile island surrounded by the swirling waters of the Atlantic, residents still speak what is arguably the most English version of English in the country – and many Americans don't understand it.
As the island's official website proudly proclaims: "With origins dating back to the 1600s, Ocracoke brogue is about as American as it gets."
Located 20 miles from the North Carolina mainland, Ocracoke Island is fairly isolated. You can't drive there as there are no bridges, and most people can’t fly either as there are no commercial flights. If you want to go there, it has to be by boat.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Thanks for the tip. I did pretty well with that section from Romans.
Nice video of a good lady. Thanks for posting.
Interesting. I don’t know much about the place, just that my father trained there during WWII.
It reminds me of other traditions, which celebrate the new day, and suggest a new start - like Psalm 118:24; or the Hindu ‘Surya namaskar’, the Yogic ‘Salutation to the Sun’, about which many poems have been written.
Humans aren’t much different the world over in their appreciation and understanding of the messages in Nature.
My Great Grandfather sold a large parcel of Ocean City property he owned in 1933 because it was becoming too crowded. A lot of my family still lives around Easton. My 88 year old Mother on the water in a 100 year old farmhouse on a 300 acre farm.
I had good friends who lived close to Tilghman Island; we often went to Easton to shop and eat, when I visited.
I don’t know what it’s like now; the last time I was there, they still had a couple of skipjacks working out of Tilghman, dredging oysters. I guess they’re gone now...
Things are more crowded, loads of retired government drones there. Easton and St. Michaels are now best described as towns that have learned to “dress up as themselves”, but not as bad a Santa Fe here in New Mexico.
My family has been there 6 generations now, so they’re part of the local network.
I know that rich people from the DC area have bought up a lot of places there.
Back in the day, I knew people who lived in small places like Sherwood who would work in DC five days a week, renting an efficiency, and drive home for the weekend. And I’ve even known people who would drive over the bridge every day to work here, and go back home in the evening. It seems like a lot of time and work for a commute, but if you knew what it was like on the Shore back then, you may have found it to be worth the trouble :-)
Yes, I have been reading some traditional Native American stories, and some works by more contemporary writers, and I see it there too. The examples from nature show their intimacy with the earth, and have begun to make a lot of sense to me. Outside of the revelations of Christianity, my appreciation of nature has made a large impact on my consciousness of the presence of God. The days, the seasons, the forces of nature, life in all of its forms, all bear witness to their Creator.
I’ve come to believe that there isn’t anything other than God, in the Universe, manifesting Himself in myriad ways.
Thanks for the conversation :-)
My memories of Easton came from spending summers there on my Grandparent’s land (a 300 plus acre nursery business that will be 100 year old in 2029) and their house (most of it built in 1815) in the 60’s and 70’s. It was a wonderful time. There was also fishing and sailing. My family also vacationed in Ocean City at a time when it was slower and didn’t seem to change.
It was like Robert Ruark’s “The Old Man and the Boy” in a lot of ways.
I’ve found land patent records for ancestors in Dorchester County Md as early as 1740. 50 acres for one, 68 acres for another. Some miles south of Easton although I’ve never tried to determine the exact sites.
My Mom’s side of the family was Eastern Shore, my Father Western Maryland, notably Hagerstown. Earliest documents from his side were mid 1700’s. Usually his side made bad financial choices, such as one purchasing a substitute in the Civil War for $300 in early 1865, when there was no chance he’d end up in battle.
Very true. I was thinking something similar.
That is so cool. A connection to the past.
Like parts of SW Louisiana where they speak a language made up of Cajun French and English.
No...after Ocracoke the barrier islands south are not populated. You can get to them by Ferry and there is a lighthouse or two along the way...but no towns.
You can at least understand what they're saying, but if they were to go back another 500 years it would be more difficult:
Opening Lines of Beowulf In Old English
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH-_GwoO4xI
2 min video
Sounds like the north central main dialects from 50 years ago
Shakespeare would be shocked!..................
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