High Tider,Hoi Toider, orHoi Toide English is a family or continuum ofAmerican English dialects spoken in very limited communities of theSouth Atlantic United States,^[1] particularly several small islands and coastal townships. The exact areas include the rural "Down East" region ofNorth Carolina, which encompasses theOuter Banks andPamlico Sound—specificallyOcracoke,Atlantic,Davis,Sea Level, andHarkers Island in easternCarteret County, and thevillage of Wanchese—plus theChesapeake Bay, such asSmith Island inMaryland, as well asGuinea Neck andTangier Island inVirginia.^[2] The High Tider sound has been observed as far west asBertie 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 asDown East,Outer Banks, orChesapeake Bay English,dialect,brogue, oraccent.^[3] Most speakers in the Outer Banks themselves refer to their dialect as "thebrogue".^[4] Ocracoke English and Smith Island English are the two best-studied varieties, with the linguistsWalt Wolfram andNatalie Schilling researching them in detail since the 1990s onwards.^[5]

The 2006Atlas of North American English does not consider these dialects to fall under theSouthern 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 largerSoutheastern regional super-dialect in fronting the/oʊ/ and/aʊ/ vowels, exhibiting thepin–pen merger, resisting thecot–caught merger, and being stronglyrhotic with aretroflex/r/.

The term "hoi toide" appears in a local colloquial rhyme, "It's high tide on thesound side", oftenphonetically spelled "hoi toide on the saind soide"[hɒɪˈtɒɪdɑnðəˈsaɪndsɒɪd],^[6] as amarker of pronunciation to sharply differentiate speakers of the Outer Banks brogue from speakers of themainland Southern dialects. The phrase was first recorded as a significant identifier of the dialect in 1993, and has since been used frequently for "performative" purposes by native speakers to demonstrate the dialect to outsiders.^[7]

With a long history of geographical and economic isolation from mainland North Carolina, Outer Banks areas such as Ocracoke Island, Harkers Island, and Atlantic developed a distinct dialect of English. Linguists who have studied this dialect note that it has "roots ... in a number ofEarly Modern English dialects",^[8] spoken in different parts of Britain between about 1650 and 1750. Following settlement, the dialect of these island communities developed in relative isolation for more than 250 years.

High Tider shares features with other dialects of the Atlantic coast of the U.S. Certainpronunciation,vocabulary, andgrammatical constructions can be traced back to a mixture of the colonial English dialects of Ireland (includingScots-Irish dialects), eastern England, and southwestern England (compare theWest Country dialects).^[9] The distinctness of the High Tider dialects has survived because of the inherent isolation of islands and these communities continuing to depend on traditional trades, like fishing, boat building, and decoy carving. Indeed, the coastal tourism trade is relatively recent, beginning only in the 2000s, on islands like Ocracoke,^[10][11] and still minimal on Smith Island.

As many as 500 islanders on Harkers Island are directly descended from the Harkers Island and Outer Banks original settlers that first developed this distinct dialect. Linguists fromNorth Carolina State University,East Carolina University, and other academic institutions continue to conduct research on the island dialect.^[10] It has been in slow decline in the 21st century.^[12]

The chart below lists the vowel sounds in two High Tider accents: one of Smith Island (Maryland) in the Chesapeake Bay and the other of Ocracoke (North Carolina) in the Outer Banks. The symbol "~" is used here to indicate that pronunciations on either side of it form a spectrum of possibilities. The symbol ">" indicates that the pronunciations to its left are more widespread and pronunciations to its right are more marginal. Phonologically, these two example accents are united under the High Tider dialect primarily by their similar/aɪ/ and/aʊ/ vowels; both also show a greater or lesser degree of "vowel breaking" (ordrawling) of thefront vowels especially when positioned before the⟨sh⟩ consonant/ʃ/.

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

• The/aɪ/ diphthong is[ɑe~ɑɪ], starting very far back in the mouth and retaining its glide, unlike its neighboring Southern dialects. It may also begin with around-lipped quality, thus[ɒe], or may even have atriphthongal quality as[ɐɑe]. Thus, a word likehigh may sound like something betweenHAW-ee andHUH-ee, similar to its sound inCockney or broadAustralian accents.^[16] (This is sometimes mischaracterized by outsiders as soundingvery close, like[ɔɪ] (theCHOICE vowel, leading to the spelling "Hoi Toider" for "High Tider.")^[17] On Smith Island, the on-glide is not backed but centralized—thus,[əɪ]—and is not as commonly identified by its residents as a marker of local identity.^[18]
  • Realization of/aɪəɹ/ as[äːɻ], so thatfire may begin to merge with the sound offar, as well astire withtar.^[19]
• The/aʊ/ diphthong ends with a more fronted quality, commonly realized as a shorter off-glide with little or no rounding[æɵ~æø~æɛ~æː~ɐ̟ɤ].^[16] The sound has also been described as[ɛɪ~ɜɪ], with a very raised beginning (or on-glide) to the diphthong; for example, makingtown sound liketeh-een.^[20]
• Front vowel raising in certain environments, though most noticeably before/ʃ/ and/tʃ/:
  • Merger of/ɪ/ and/i/, as in the characteristic pronunciation offish asfeesh/fiːʃ/ orkitchen askeetchen/ˈkiːtʃən/.^[21] This may be represented as[iː(ə)] or[ɪ̝(ː)].
  • Raising of/ɛ/ in this environment, causingmesh to sound almost likemaysh.^[22]
• Ther-colored vowel/ɛər/ may have an opener vowel sound:[æɚ~aɚ], making the sound offair almost merge withfire andfar.^[16][21][23]
• There is nocot–caught merger.
• The/oʊ/ vowel is largely fronted, as in much of the rest of the modern-day South:[ɜʉ~ɜy~œʊ].^[24]
  • Unstressed, word-final/oʊ/ may be pronounced[ɚ], causingyellow to sound likeyeller,fellow likefeller,potato like(po)tater, andmosquito like(mo)skeeter.
• Elision of some medial or final stops, as incape sounding more likecay.^{[citation needed]}
• Strong, bunched-tonguerhoticity, similar toWest Country English,Scottish English, orIrish English
• Pin–pen merger.^[22]

These island dialects exhibit unique vocabulary in regular usage. Some examples includemommick, meaning "to frustrate" or "bother",yethy, describing stale or unpleasant odor, andnicket, meaning a pinch of something used as in cooking. The islanders have also developed unique local words used in regular conversation, includingdingbatter to refer to a visitor or recent arrival to the island, anddit-dot, a term developed from a joke aboutMorse code, and used to describe any visitor to the island who has difficulty understanding the local dialect.^[25]

In the 1991 filmThe Butcher's Wife, the main character Marina is fromOcracoke, North Carolina, and exhibits features of Hoi Toider dialect.

• Thomas, Erik R. (2006),"Rural White Southern Accents"(PDF),Atlas of North American English (online),Walter de Gruyter, archived fromthe original(PDF) on 2014-12-22, retrieved2015-10-03
• Wolfram, Walt; Schilling-Estes, Natalie (1997),Hoi Toide on the Outer Banks: The Story of the Ocracoke Brogue, University of North Carolina Press,ISBN 0-8078-4626-0
• Wolfram, Walt; Reaser, Jeffrey (2014).Talkin' Tar Heel : How Our Voices Tell the Story of North Carolina. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.ISBN 978-1-4696-1437-3.

• Languages attested from the 17th century
• North Carolina culture
• Virginia culture
• Dialects of English
• Carteret County, North Carolina
• English-American culture in North Carolina

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