Queen's English or a Language o 



NORTH SHORE 

 SETTLEMENT 



Until the mid- 1600s, few 

 pioneers ventured to the desolate 

 strip of sand called the Outer Banks. 



English settlers first followed 

 the lead of Sir Walter Raleigh to the 

 Albemarle region and Virginia in 

 the 1640s. The king's lord's propri- 

 etors deeded huge tracts of land 

 there in the hopes that settlement 

 would take place. 



Celts, Turks, Moors, Italians, 

 Dutchmen, Africans and others 

 came, too, Dough wrote in a 1982 

 essay. But the English and Celts 

 came in the greatest numbers. 



They migrated first into Vir- 

 ginia, says historian R.D. Connor in 

 North Carolina: Rebuilding an 

 Ancient Commonwealth. 



i 



PADDYBASS 



to walk back and forth 



"The sand reefs, the shifting 

 inlets, the ocean currents and the 

 breakers off Cape Fear, Cape 

 Lookout and Cape Hatteras deter- 

 mined the fact that North Carolina 



should not be settled by colonists 

 coming directly from Europe, but by 

 overflows from her neighbors," he 

 wrote. 



By the 1660s, settlers began 

 filtering down from the Albemarle 

 to the North Shore of the Outer 

 Banks in search of fertile farmland 

 and navigable waterways. Primarily 

 natives of west and southwest 

 England, they raised cattle, grew 

 tobacco, fished and piloted ships on 

 the Potomac, James, Meherrin and 

 Chowan rivers. 



And they stayed. Many of the 

 surnames recorded on the Outer 

 Banks in the 1790 U.S. Census 

 remain the same today, Dough says. 

 Only wars and hurricanes uprooted 

 Outer Bankers from their land 

 beside the sea. 



With the people remained 

 traces, or relics, of their dialects. 



OUTER BANKS 

 BROGUE 



Along the Outer Banks lingered 

 Old English words such as "couthy" 

 for kindly, "yallow" for yellow and 

 "a" before participles, such as "a' 

 goin'" and "a' huntin'." 



So did pronouncing the final "r" 

 in words distinctly, instead of 

 slurring over it, a trait more South- 

 ern than English. 



Bankers speak in rhythms, too, 

 emphasizing different syllables in 

 certain words. They say "ax" instead 

 of "ask" and often use a "v" instead 

 of "th," as in "mover" and "brover" 

 for "mother" and "brother," Dough 

 explains. 



More noticeably, they exagger- 

 ate the letter "o" in words like 

 "house," "out" and "about." Called a 



diphthong, two sounds blended into 

 one, the letter combines the sound of 

 "e" as in "bed" or "let," and "u" as 

 in "put" for an ever-so-English ring. 



Visitors may hear bits and 

 pieces of the Outer Banks brogue 



* 



PIZZER 



porch 

















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f 0) 

 V 





















repeated around Cape Lookout and 

 especially in Ocracoke. Many of the 

 dialect's traits remain distinct, but 

 others are shared between towns like 

 dandelion seeds scattered down the 

 coast. Age-old myths cloud the true 

 picture of the dialects of Ocracoke 

 and the Outer Banks. 



ISLAND SOUNDS 



To help clear the fog, socio- 

 linguist Walt Wolfram of N.C. State 

 University has identified characteris- 

 tics of Ocockers' speech in a current 

 study on the island. 



Ocockers keep a "t" on the end 

 of words such as "oncet," he found. 

 They say "h'it's" for "it's" and 

 "weren't" for "wasn't" just as 



Continued 



COASTWATCH 13 



