An excerpt from the 1994 documentary The Ocracoke Brogue, included as a bonus feature on the 2008 documentary DVD, The Carolina Brogue. www.carolinabrogue.com
I was born in Belhaven (Beaufort County, NC) and raised on the Hyde County mainland until I was about 7 or 8. Every year my family would hop the ferry from Swan Quarter to Ocracoke and spend as much as half the summer there. All I can say about this video is that it sounds like home to me, and reminds me of listening to my uncle and his friends telling stories about each other. Visiting this part of the country is like stepping back in time.
I love linguistic relics like this. I'm from North Carolina, born and raised, and they just sound like rural North Carolinians to me, except for the i and a vowel sounds shifting to "oy" and "aye". And yet, I can only understand every other sentence!
this is wild. it's like the missing link between old English and modern-day English. it's pretty cool to think that my relatives - who all speak with thick, southern accents - are in a way a tie to their (and my) English and Irish roots through their speech.
@@GF-nm1cl I'm not sure anybody really knows. English as spoken in England has evolved. There has been some interesting research deriving from Shakespeare because a lot of his works should rhyme, but they don't rhyme when spoken by modern Brits. It is therefore very obvious that the English accent in many parts of England has shifted over the centuries. However, they DO rhyme when spoken with an accent not dissimilar to the American Ocracoke or British South-Western accent. From this, it has been deduced what an English accent would have sounded like in the 1600s/1700s and this would have included London (so no 'Cockney accent' back then).
@@GF-nm1clno it didn’t. It probably sounded more like Hibernian English, since Irish English has a lot of similarities in pronunciation to English spoken during the Great Vowel Shift. Someone else mentioned West Country English, and that also is closer to late 16th century and 17th century English than most other dialects of English spoken today as well. The retarded stereotypical statement Americans often like to make about ‘Old English’ (meaning late Early Modern English, but they don’t know the difference so they call it ‘Old English’) sounding closer to American English is not true at all, but is the origin of that belief might come from the rhoticity of most forms of American English today and the fact that Early Modern English was likewise rhotic (I don’t believe non-rhoticity developed in English until the mid-late 18th century and it appeared first in southeastern England). In reality, I’d say West Country dialects and Irish (Hibernian) English are the closest modern dialects to Early Modern English. The West Country (mostly Cornwall and Devon) dialects are basically moribund now though and likely will cease to exist in the near future.
As a lover of language..dialects..idioms and inflection..i love this channel. In the UK..you can go five miles and have a different accent..dialects etc..fascinating..
Man… this accent brings back memories. Growing up I lived in Fayetteville NC (sandhills, not far from the coast) but grew up spending my summers and holidays in a tiny place called Harkers Island, it was little 5 mile long strip of heaven. The residents were mostly natives with an average age of something like 45 (not even exaggerating) so everyone there had this accent to varying degrees from a lot to a WHOLE LOT. I swear I could count the amount of kids on my road on one hand, but since the place was so small it was easy for everyone around to just meet up on bikes or get dropped off by our parents/ older cousins. But as a kid I didn’t even realize they spoke with such a heavy accent until I came back one summer when I was 16ish after being gone about 4 years and I realized I had to REALLY pay attention to some of the older natives to understand what they were saying lol. My uncle Ronnie ran a shrimp boat with my cousins and when they got to drinking you would think they weren’t even speaking English for half the conversion, especially if you weren’t from the south / south east. Sadly we sold the house not long ago, still got a lot of family that lives there but we aren’t as close anymore. I just wish I would’ve appreciated that place more when I was growing up. Guess you just never realize the moment until it’s passed.
Some of it sounds a little odd but I have zero problem understanding them. Much of it sounds very familiar to the real thick "country" accents I hear in my state of Kentucky. Given, I hear them less and less as the years go by but I still hear it every now and then.
The bloke outside has retained some of the Norfolk/Suffolk accent (it's not a brogue) but he sounds mostly like other Carolinians. The bloke I heard on "How the States Got Their Shapes" sounded like he'd just come over from King's Lynn, Swaffham or Norwich. For a really good illustration of the East Anglian accent, listen to the song: "'ave you got a light, boy." The accent sounds nothing like Australia or SW England.
So true..the UK dialects etc fascinated me when I lived there..the way the Welsh speak..the sing song cadence is lovely..i also love the Yorkshire accents.. Twas a guy at hospital yesterday who was from the Midlands but I could not pin doen his way of speaking.Tirns out he was fromDerbyshire which I'm entirely unfamiliar with
Absolutely hilarious and fun, even if you can't follow the whole story! They are laughing so hard trying to tell it, I found myself grinning ear to ear anyway! Thanks for the video and story!!
The guy standing outside sounds like someone from the south west of England - Plymouth or Bristol - TRYING to do a Southern Accent but not quite nailing it! It's really interesting...
@germany121374 im australian, that doesnt sound australian at all. it sounds. like the english accents spoken in the south west of england. like in bristol and cornwall and devon
iam from east anglia , england north herts essex borders these guys sound like the old guys from my area people from the land farmers etc , they have a very close match to east anglian accent i say ? coments please
Probably have the same place of orgin. Many of the hillbillies of Australia are the descendents of HIghlanders pushed out by the land Clearances in the 1890s (Land clearances were done to take age old common land which people had farmed on and turn it into "productive" sheep farming land for a few Landowners. In America most of the hill billies are desceneded from the highlanders who were exiled for the 1745 rebellion 100 years earlier. Or settled there after the Indian wars.
I live about an hour and a half from Ocracoke, and even where I am we have the same sort of dialect. Not as bad, but still the same type. I went to New York a few years ago and people would stop and tell me to talk. Weirdest thing, but funny to all of us!
Oh man I grew up in the area and had that same experience in upstate New York when I was about 11. Women in fast food restaurants asking me to talk because they thought my accent was so pretty.......is a damn strange thing to an 11 year old that thinks they sound like everybody else.
I'm from the UK and can understand what these guys are saying, actually laughed at the story 🤣. I grew up in a dialect speaking area, not the same as their ancestors but there's some similarities. They sound like folk from Devon or Somerset but with a southern American twang, it's mad. Can other Americans understand them or do they find themselves listening really hard and trying to piece it together?
I can only tell you my experience. I grew up across the water from this area and I understand them perfectly but my ex who grew up in Texas couldn't understand a word and I had translate almost all of it.
I used to work with a guy from Ocracoke many years ago. One time he was talking to me and I could barely understand what he was saying. I said Lyle, are you even speaking English?! He just laughed at me and rolled his eyes. 😅
Same kind of isolation from the rest of the world found in both Ocracoke and the Eastern Shore. The brogue is disappearing in Ocracoke as more and more tourist come and go on the island and more non natives move there.
they dont roll the r in there words like the tangiers folks whomes ancestors came from the south west of england ,the ocracoke guys have east anglia roots from the puritans that first went there who came from towns like lincoln and bedford and cambridge where iam from also from we dont use the pronounce the R in words
I don´t get how anyone can, in any way shape or form, say that this sounds like the English accent. I caught mebbe two words that sounded a little like, but that´s all.
It's like if the American South and England had a baby who was partially raised by its Australian nanny.
Its more like a bunch of slackjawed imbeciles decided to speak.
I was born in Belhaven (Beaufort County, NC) and raised on the Hyde County mainland until I was about 7 or 8. Every year my family would hop the ferry from Swan Quarter to Ocracoke and spend as much as half the summer there. All I can say about this video is that it sounds like home to me, and reminds me of listening to my uncle and his friends telling stories about each other. Visiting this part of the country is like stepping back in time.
It is!
I love linguistic relics like this. I'm from North Carolina, born and raised, and they just sound like rural North Carolinians to me, except for the i and a vowel sounds shifting to "oy" and "aye". And yet, I can only understand every other sentence!
this is wild. it's like the missing link between old English and modern-day English. it's pretty cool to think that my relatives - who all speak with thick, southern accents - are in a way a tie to their (and my) English and Irish roots through their speech.
When the founding fathers came to the Americas, English in England sounded like the Boston accent today
@@GF-nm1cl I'm not sure anybody really knows. English as spoken in England has evolved. There has been some interesting research deriving from Shakespeare because a lot of his works should rhyme, but they don't rhyme when spoken by modern Brits. It is therefore very obvious that the English accent in many parts of England has shifted over the centuries.
However, they DO rhyme when spoken with an accent not dissimilar to the American Ocracoke or British South-Western accent. From this, it has been deduced what an English accent would have sounded like in the 1600s/1700s and this would have included London (so no 'Cockney accent' back then).
@@GF-nm1cl This is untrue. If you have any sort of source I would like to see it, but I highly doubt you do
@@GF-nm1clno it didn’t. It probably sounded more like Hibernian English, since Irish English has a lot of similarities in pronunciation to English spoken during the Great Vowel Shift. Someone else mentioned West Country English, and that also is closer to late 16th century and 17th century English than most other dialects of English spoken today as well. The retarded stereotypical statement Americans often like to make about ‘Old English’ (meaning late Early Modern English, but they don’t know the difference so they call it ‘Old English’) sounding closer to American English is not true at all, but is the origin of that belief might come from the rhoticity of most forms of American English today and the fact that Early Modern English was likewise rhotic (I don’t believe non-rhoticity developed in English until the mid-late 18th century and it appeared first in southeastern England). In reality, I’d say West Country dialects and Irish (Hibernian) English are the closest modern dialects to Early Modern English. The West Country (mostly Cornwall and Devon) dialects are basically moribund now though and likely will cease to exist in the near future.
I made this video!!! Haven't seen it in years!!!
The documentary this is from?
As a lover of language..dialects..idioms and inflection..i love this channel.
In the UK..you can go five miles and have a different accent..dialects etc..fascinating..
My girlfriends family speaks this hoi toider dialect. It's so amazing to hear them speak.
My great-grandparents lived near Columbia, NC next to the Alligator Rive and they spoke like this. Good memories.
Man… this accent brings back memories. Growing up I lived in Fayetteville NC (sandhills, not far from the coast) but grew up spending my summers and holidays in a tiny place called Harkers Island, it was little 5 mile long strip of heaven.
The residents were mostly natives with an average age of something like 45 (not even exaggerating) so everyone there had this accent to varying degrees from a lot to a WHOLE LOT. I swear I could count the amount of kids on my road on one hand, but since the place was so small it was easy for everyone around to just meet up on bikes or get dropped off by our parents/ older cousins.
But as a kid I didn’t even realize they spoke with such a heavy accent until I came back one summer when I was 16ish after being gone about 4 years and I realized I had to REALLY pay attention to some of the older natives to understand what they were saying lol.
My uncle Ronnie ran a shrimp boat with my cousins and when they got to drinking you would think they weren’t even speaking English for half the conversion, especially if you weren’t from the south / south east.
Sadly we sold the house not long ago, still got a lot of family that lives there but we aren’t as close anymore.
I just wish I would’ve appreciated that place more when I was growing up. Guess you just never realize the moment until it’s passed.
Some of it sounds a little odd but I have zero problem understanding them. Much of it sounds very familiar to the real thick "country" accents I hear in my state of Kentucky. Given, I hear them less and less as the years go by but I still hear it every now and then.
The bloke outside has retained some of the Norfolk/Suffolk accent (it's not a brogue) but he sounds mostly like other Carolinians. The bloke I heard on "How the States Got Their Shapes" sounded like he'd just come over from King's Lynn, Swaffham or Norwich. For a really good illustration of the East Anglian accent, listen to the song: "'ave you got a light, boy." The accent sounds nothing like Australia or SW England.
So true..the UK dialects etc fascinated me when I lived there..the way the Welsh speak..the sing song cadence is lovely..i also love the Yorkshire accents..
Twas a guy at hospital yesterday who was from the Midlands but I could not pin doen his way of speaking.Tirns out he was fromDerbyshire which I'm entirely unfamiliar with
Interesting. Sounds almost like a west country or norfolk British accent with a bit of the southern US mixed in to my scottish ears.
Love the "Hoigh Toider" accent, gew up on the sound side of the Outer Banks. But mostly laughed myself silly at their story! :-)
Absolutely hilarious and fun, even if you can't follow the whole story! They are laughing so hard trying to tell it, I found myself grinning ear to ear anyway! Thanks for the video and story!!
Great story; great accents and nice guys altogether. Proud to be a "Banker!"
The guy standing outside sounds like someone from the south west of England - Plymouth or Bristol - TRYING to do a Southern Accent but not quite nailing it! It's really interesting...
I hear more irish influence in his accent
@germany121374 im australian, that doesnt sound australian at all. it sounds. like the english accents spoken in the south west of england. like in bristol and cornwall and devon
Fantastic video!!!! It's the truth and it is a great place to live with the greatest community in the world!!!!!!
I love that place
AHRport! I love it
iam from east anglia , england north herts essex borders these guys sound like the old guys from my area people from the land farmers etc , they have a very close match to east anglian accent i say ? coments please
First know about the Ocracoker accent/dialect from a BBC Radio 5 Live feature segment in the autumn/fall of 1996.
not anymore but did for a long time
This sounds like a regular southern accent but some of the words sound british, like instead of 'ah' they say 'oi'
Rex never met a stranger!
Probably have the same place of orgin. Many of the hillbillies of Australia are the descendents of HIghlanders pushed out by the land Clearances in the 1890s (Land clearances were done to take age old common land which people had farmed on and turn it into "productive" sheep farming land for a few Landowners. In America most of the hill billies are desceneded from the highlanders who were exiled for the 1745 rebellion 100 years earlier. Or settled there after the Indian wars.
@mykeljon82 When the guy in the blue hat says "catch that", he sounds just like Steve Irwin.
@germany121374 na not hearing it. check out the english accent from bristol. sound like that and a southern accent
Sounds like it has a healthy dose of West Country in it.
I live about an hour and a half from Ocracoke, and even where I am we have the same sort of dialect. Not as bad, but still the same type. I went to New York a few years ago and people would stop and tell me to talk. Weirdest thing, but funny to all of us!
Oh man I grew up in the area and had that same experience in upstate New York when I was about 11. Women in fast food restaurants asking me to talk because they thought my accent was so pretty.......is a damn strange thing to an 11 year old that thinks they sound like everybody else.
hey do you live on ocracoke???
I'm from the UK and can understand what these guys are saying, actually laughed at the story 🤣. I grew up in a dialect speaking area, not the same as their ancestors but there's some similarities. They sound like folk from Devon or Somerset but with a southern American twang, it's mad.
Can other Americans understand them or do they find themselves listening really hard and trying to piece it together?
I can only tell you my experience. I grew up across the water from this area and I understand them perfectly but my ex who grew up in Texas couldn't understand a word and I had translate almost all of it.
I used to work with a guy from Ocracoke many years ago. One time he was talking to me and I could barely understand what he was saying. I said Lyle, are you even speaking English?! He just laughed at me and rolled his eyes. 😅
Well, I'm from the Midwest United States. I understood about 30%, I was straining to try and understand.
Nah I can't understand them.
Lmao I've been to the Ocracoke Islands and yeah it's pretty hard to understand even in person (I'm from the Mid-West tho)
It reminds me a little of a Maryland Eastern Shore accent.
Same kind of isolation from the rest of the world found in both Ocracoke and the Eastern Shore. The brogue is disappearing in Ocracoke as more and more tourist come and go on the island and more non natives move there.
I from Western KY and there was maybe one or two words that sounded off key. This is how most people ( that I know ) speak.
@boggedmaffus yeah agreed
they dont roll the r in there words like the tangiers folks whomes ancestors came from the south west of england ,the ocracoke guys have east anglia roots from the puritans that first went there who came from towns like lincoln and bedford and cambridge where iam from also from we dont use the pronounce the R in words
I don´t get how anyone can, in any way shape or form, say that this sounds like the English accent. I caught mebbe two words that sounded a little like, but that´s all.
It’s more the twang than the accent to me…. If it does sound like any accent, you could say it sounds Australian like.
Barleyman Butterbur
baaaahahaahaa
I hear less u.k and more Pittsburg/Philly