There's only one place in the United States that doesn't speak English with an American dialect: Ocracoke Island. The little spot of land 34 miles (55 km) off the coast of North Carolina is home to the Hoi Toider (High Tider) dialect, which contains numerous words derived from Elizabethan English, pirate slang, Scottish, and Irish. While much of it sounds rather Shakespearean, it's not quite the same as Elizabeth English – or anything else.
Professor Walt Wolfram of North Carolina State University, who has studied the dialect for decades, says it's unique. "It’s the only American dialect that is not identified as American," he said. "That’s fascinating to me. You can find pronunciation, grammar structures and vocabulary on Ocracoke that are not found anywhere else in North America."
Unfortunately, the dialect is fading, as the members of older generations, who casually tossed out words like "mommuck" ("to bother") and "quamish" ("queasy"), have given way to a younger populace that prefers a more standard version of English.
Everybody's talkin':
- While English is the dominant language in the United States, 20 percent of Americans over 5 years of age speak another language at home.
- The language with the fastest growth in America since 1980 is Vietnamese, which has exploded by 510 percent to include 1.2 million people today.
- Estimates suggest that America will have the most Spanish-speaking people in the world by the year 2050.
