Harkers
Island, which is part of a string of islands known as the Outer
Banks, is a Core Banks island community located off the coast
of North Carolina. Harkers Island was isolated for a couple
of centuries before an access bridge in the 1940s connected it
with the mainland coastal South. Thus, the dialect of the islanders
existed in almost complete isolation for two and a half centuries
prior to World War II. Today, Harker's Island is home to approximately
500 ancestral islanders, residents whose parents are from either
Harker's Island or the neighboring Shackleford Banks and who have
lived on the island most of their lives.
This island community differs from the rest of the Outer Banks
in two major respects. One, unlike the other islands, the bridge,
built in 1941, provides driving accessibility to the island. Secondly,
the community is fairly conservative in comparison to the other
islands, such as Ocracoke,
both in terms of its socio-political ideology and its reaction
to the tourist industry that has become the staple economy of
the other Outer Banks islands. Unlike Ocracoke, whose economy
is centered around the service-related tourism industry, Harkers
Island maintains a number of small indigenous island trades including
fishing, boat-building, and, more recently, decoy carving.
When outsiders visit Harkers Island, they are immediately struck
by the language of the islanders. Many islanders, in turn, are
very proud of the dialect they speak. Some visitors may even feel
like they have entered a time warp in terms of the language spoken
on Harkers Island. Harkers Island English, like other Outer Banks
dialects and some Appalachian dialects in the western part of
the state, retains some attributes of an older form of English
as in the pronunciation of high tide as "hoi toide", along with
its own unique developments. The retention of some of these older
language features, coupled with the many years islanders were
isolated from outsiders, come together to form a very unique dialect.
The NCLLP dialect research continues on Harkers Island. To date
we have interviewed over 40 Harkers Island residents.
