Like most tourist sites, Ocracoke is well known for its T-shirts. The pictures and slogans on these shirts run the creative gamut--from the traditional, historic Ocracoke lighthouse inscribed with the simple place name, "Ocracoke, NC," to a sketch of an enormous island "skeeter" proclaiming, "Send more tourists, the last batch was delicious." Several years ago, we introduced yet another T-shirt with the slogan "Save the Brogue." On the back of the shirt, we listed some distinctive Ocracoke words and sayings--mommuck, dingbatter, buck, call the mail over, miserable in the wind, and so forth. The shirt was our way of calling attention to the fact that the traditional brogue has been eroding rapidly and that this should be a matter of concern. In fact, we consider the brogue an endangered dialect.

In the biological sciences, the classification of species as endangered is a widely recognized and often politically charged fact of modern life. Legislative action now protects a wide range of animals and plants on the brink of extinction, thanks to the combined efforts of concerned scientists and citizens. At the same time, the dramatic decline of the world's languages goes largely unnoticed, except for the affected speakers and a small group of linguists and anthropologists.

Compare the state of the world's languages with the state of earth's mammals and birds. There are an estimated 6,000 languages in the world, but the majority of these are rapidly heading toward extinction. At the current rate of language loss, from 50 to 90 percent of these languages will be extinct within the next century. In California alone, approximately 25 different Native American languages have lost their last speaker in the past century. And these were distinct languages, not mere dialects of the same language. By contrast, biologists estimate that less than eight percent of all mammals and less than three percent of birds are endangered or threatened. Furthermore, most of these species are only threatened and not endangered. Clearly, there is an endangered language epidemic.

Is language death really comparable to the extinction of a biological species? Should we worry about language death like we worry about endangered species? A language may die, but people certainly don't give up talking when it dies. They just use another language. In fact, the potential reduction of the world's languages to a few exclusive survivors may even be praised in some circles. From the standpoint of efficiency, international communication certainly would be easier if we all spoke the same language. This may be true, but there are other considerations. It is also true that it would be more efficient and economical if we all wore the same kind and size of clothing, but such lack of diversity wouldn't leave much room for the expression of individual or cultural identity.

A window of scientific opportunity closes when a language dies. The more languages there are, the more information we have about how language in general works, just as we learn more about the general nature of life from biological diversity. For example, we can learn a lot more about the aerodynamics of flight by observing many different kinds of birds flying than we can from observing a single species confined to one size, weight, and skeletal structure. In a similar way, we can learn a lot more about the general nature of language by observing a host of languages than we can by observing only one or a few languages.

But there's more. When a language dies, an essential and unique part of a human culture dies with it. To imagine the personal impact of language death, consider what it would be like to be the last speaker of a language with no one to talk to in your native language--the language of your childhood experience and your most fundamental emotional, artistic, and spiritual expression. That scenario might seem unimaginable for English as this point, but it wasn't always. English was, in fact, once a minority language in danger of being overwhelmed by other languages, just like so many languages that are now threatened with extinction.

It is understandable that linguists and anthropologists show a deep sense of urgency about the threatened and endangered state of so many of the world's languages. But what about the varied dialects of one particular language? Linguists worry about the plight of the world's minority languages, but even the most conscientious linguists tend to overlook the threat to endangered dialects of "safe" languages. An endangered dialect is a unique variety of a language, spoken by a small number of people, which is threatened by encroaching dialects of the same language, much as the Ocracoke brogue is threatened by encroaching mainland dialects such as Southern American English.

People may think that dialect death is not nearly as significant as the death of an entire language, but this is not necessarily the case. For certain kinds of scientific purposes, it is just as important to study different dialects as it is to study different languages since dialect study shows us how much variation languages can contain within themselves. And even if we're not interested in the scientific study of language, we should consider the toll dialect death takes on the humans who lose their language varieties. To say that dialect loss is not as important as language loss is like saying that we should be vitally concerned with the preservation of the general species canis familiaris, or dogs, but not worried about particular breeds of dogs. After all, dogs come in so many breeds and may be mixed in so many different ways that the preservation of a particular breed of dog is not very important. But suppose your options for dogs were reduced to Great Danes when your favorite dog--and the only kind of dog you had ever known in your home--was a miniature Pekinese? Ironically, at the same time that English is expanding as a world language and new dialects of English, such as certain kinds of Asian and African English, are being created, some of the most distinct dialects of English have been quietly vanishing. We consider the traditional Ocracoke brogue to be one of these threatened dialects.

THE ENDANGERED OCRACOKE BROGUE

A classic set of circumstances typically surround endangered languages, and most of these are found in Ocracoke. Usually, social and historical conditions arise to threaten the established stability of a community and, along with it, the traditional language. For two and a half centuries, Ocracoke was isolated geographically, economically and socially. The coming of a state-run ferry service in the 1940s and the state highway in the 1950s allowed far greater access to Ocracoke than had been available before World War II, when boat transportation was sporadic and land travel was over bare sand. Ocracoke then began to host ever-increasing numbers of tourists and new residents from the mainland. The traditional Ocracoke brogue became a minority dialect on the very island that had nurtured and protected it for so long. Today, less than half of the year-round population of 600 are native O'cockers, and even less regularly speak the brogue. On some days during the summer tourist season, less than one-tenth of the people on the island are O'cockers. Due to the large number of tourists, the island economy has changed from one largely independent of mainlanders to one almost wholly dependent on outside money. The breakdown of economic and geographic barriers separating Ocracoke from the mainland has led to a corresponding breakdown in social barriers. Marriage outside the island community is becoming increasingly common. And the youngest islanders now interact on a daily basis with classmates, friends, and teachers whose families are transplanted mainlanders--all of whom speak dingbatter dialects.

When social and historical circumstances dramatically change a community and an isolated language or dialect becomes a minority language in its native habitat, it becomes highly vulnerable. The very tourists and new residents who bring much-needed money to the island also pose a real threat to the traditional Ocracoke way of life. Ocracokers have lost the privacy of their own homes as tourists wander through their backyards on a daily basis. Furthermore, tourism dollars have brought with them increased property taxes for all Ocracoke residents, whether or not they directly benefit from the tourist trade. Residents who could afford to pay the property taxes of the 1970s may no longer be able to afford them--especially some of the older people living on fixed incomes who have been the stalwarts of the traditional culture. Values have changed, traditions have vanished, and outsiders have become more and more prevalent.

The threat to the Ocracoke brogue is very real. Once-common dialect features are vanishing rapidly. If we compare just three generations of speakers within the same family, we can see how quickly a unique language can die. Within some families, grandparents may retain many of the traditional dialect features, including the hoi toide vowel and the pronunciation of the vowel in sound as saind. Grandparents within a family may also use sentences that include the use of a- before -ing verbs, as in She was a-fishing, and the absence of -s after pound in phrases like twenty pound. Middle-aged speakers may or may not use these traditional pronunciations and sentences, and younger speakers will most likely avoid them.

Within the same family, we may find older members who use traditional dialect words such as token of death for 'sign of impending death' and fladget for 'piece' side by side with adolescents who have never heard these words at all. Young O'cockers in the schools are surprised when they ask their grandparents about older words and discover that many terms they are hearing for the first time were once in common use. Certainly, some of the traditional dialect items are disappearing a lot faster than the eroding Carolina beaches.

A language can completely die within just three generations, once the process gets started. The first generation speaks the language fluently, the next generation speaks it haltingly, and the third generation barely speaks it, if at all. Ocracokers born before World War II may be fairly immune to losing their brogue, but young speakers who learned their dialect in the 1980s are a different story. Within 40 years, the traditional brogue has fallen from its position as the majority dialect on the island to what we call moribund status. The term moribund refers to any language that is no longer learned by children as their first language. Two generations ago, an Ocracoker who didn't use the brogue was an oddity; today, the youngster who speaks the brogue is the exception. When a language or dialect is moribund, its death is imminent--unless a dramatic reversal takes place.

As a dialect erodes, speakers use the dialect in fewer and fewer settings. Further, when speakers do use a dying dialect, they tend to focus on how their dialect sounds rather than on what they're talking about. They may also start performing their dialect for people who want to hear their "quaint" or "old-fashioned" language variety instead of using their dialect for real-life, everyday communication.

In Ocracoke, younger speakers may use some features of the brogue when talking informally with their friends, but they tend to use a different dialect in the classroom. Even among middle-aged speakers, the brogue gets a lot thicker when a group of islanders gets together for some traditional activity, such as playing poker or shucking oysters, than in other situations, such as conducting business with tourists in local stores. Some poker players even claim that fellow islanders have trouble understanding them during especially heated games, even though they are quite understandable at other times.

Some younger and middle-age speakers in Ocracoke, particularly some of the men, are particularly aware of the dialect and its diminishing role. These men grew up during the first wave of increased outside influence on the island. They are proud of the traditional Ocracoke brogue, and they lament its passing, often remarking that the brogue is fading among younger speakers. They are also quite aware of their speech as an object of curiosity and intrigue to outsiders, and they tend to exaggerate noticeable features of the brogue, especially the well-known hoi toide pronunciation. It's hard not to focus on the brogue when dingbatters impose their stereotypical expectations of island speech on people. For example, we heard the following story from Candy Gaskill, a well-known O'cocker whose father co-owns Albert Styron's General Store, in which she works:

I had a lady in here last week I had a battle with. You might as well say a battle with, because she come up to the counter, and she said, "Speak!"

I said, "Excuse me?"

She said, "I wanna hear you talk."

I was like, "I'm talking to you, ma'am."

And she was like, "No you're not, you're not talking right."

I said, "I've lived here, soon-to-be 29 years in May," and I said, "I've talked this way all my life as far as I know." And I said, "I can't change it."

She's like, "Well, you're not talking the way you should be talking."

And I was like, "How should I be talking?" She said, "Well, you just don't have that accent."

And I said, "Well, I'm sorry."

Candy Gaskill's speech shows an interesting combination of things traditionally Ocracoke and importations from the mainland. For example, at the same time that she pronounces there as thar and fire as far and uses many of the vocabulary items of Ocracoke, she has imported the mainland use of like to introduce a quote, as in "I was like, 'I'm talking to you.'" The use of like to introduce a quote is a relatively recent innovation on the mainland; it has spread across the mainland remarkably quickly--in just about two decades. So when Candy Gaskill uses this form along with some traditional island forms, she is showing how her particular version of the brogue is a mixture of old and new elements. Thus, Candy Gaskill is a good example of a second-generation speaker in the three-generation dialect death process we talked about earlier.

Besides talking about their dialect with outsiders, islanders also perform the brogue, often using set phrases that are designed to highlight lots of the dialect features they're so proud of. We have heard Rex O'Neal, a likeable fisherman, carpenter, and local personality who "never met a stranger" repeat the phrase "It's hoi toide on the sound soide" countless times in the few years we have known him. He is well aware of its effect on people--ordinary dingbatters, reporters, and dialect researchers who love to talk to him because he can sure "say a word." For example, one of the first things he said when he met Walt Wolfram was his performance phrase. He later told the story of this meeting to one of our dialect fieldworkers:

Rex: I got him [Walt Wolfram] going with that "hoi toide on the sound soide."

Fieldworker: What did he say to that? Did he get all excited?

Rex: Oh my God, yeah. Came out there, said, "I'm studying speech."

And I said, "Well, it's hoi toide on the saind [sound] soide. Last night the water far [fire]; tonight the moon shine. No feesh [fish]. What do you suppose the matter, Uncle Woods?"

Well, he got a laugh out of that.

Rex O'Neal's classic saying is filled with the most marked pronunciation features of the brogue, including the oy sound in hoi and toide, the ee in feesh, the ar sound in far for fire and the pronunciation of the ow in sound as more of an ay, as in say.

And Rex O'Neal is not the only one who performs the brogue--maybe more often than he really speaks it. Some middle-aged and younger speakers now use the traditional Ocracoke dialect chiefly for performance, whether for telling humorous stories about fishermen or other island characters, or for showing off the unique language itself. For the younger generations, the traditional brogue has almost become too "quaint," too much of an object of curiosity, to be used in many situations in which the focus is not on language itself. The fact that the dialect is changing from the language of everyday use into a faintly remembered dialect that is rarely used at all--except for display--warns us that the brogue is endangered.

WHY SAVE THE BROGUE?

So what if the brogue dies? Some critics, including teachers, would breathe a sigh of relief if they never heard another Ocracoke verb or an island vowel pronunciation, especially if they thought that it was simply bad English to begin with. Those who have bought into the stereotypes that associate the traditional dialect with "country bumpkins" and folks "lost in time" would be happy to free islanders from these stereotypes by getting rid of the object of ridicule--their dialect. When it comes to dialects, there are still plenty of people who consider anything other than standard broadcast English uncivilized and uncouth. We certainly know lots of islanders whose unfortunate encounters with language prejudice have made them wary of how outsiders view their language. And we have even encountered some islanders who accept this stereotype. If enough people tell you something negative about your way of life, including your language, it's hard to avoid feeling that way about yourself. So why not let the death of the brogue run its course and get on with life in the twenty-first century?

There are a couple of reasons why it would be a pity if the brogue simply washed away in the flood of outsiders. For people who study dialects, it represents a chance to study certain features of the English language they can't find anywhere else in the mainland U.S., at least not nowadays. Where else in the United States can you hear a couple of vowels that sound more British than American? Where else can you find a mosaic of old language items blended so artistically with new ones? The dialect gives us a picture of the way the language once was at the same time that it shows us how languages change over time. When we study the brogue, we learn not only about a modern day English dialect but also about the history of the ever-changing English language. Linguists who study language change don't have the luxury of capturing speakers and taking them to their isolated laboratories and monitoring them and their descendants for several generations. That would be cruel and unusual punishment, although a researcher once proposed a study in which he would take a group of volunteers who spoke different languages to an uninhabited island to see how one common language is created from a number of different languages. Not surprisingly, he never got any funding to conduct his study, and linguists continue to rely on the real world of language as their laboratory. So when linguists find special situations of isolation and change, they try to take advantage of them. Islanders may take their dialect for granted, but it offers a unique window into the extraordinary world of language diversity for those of us who study language for a living. Such situations can't be replicated once they are gone. We admit that this is a selfish reason that serves linguists better than it benefits the people of the island, but it certainly is a good scientific reason for preserving the brogue.

There is also a cultural reason for preserving the brogue. As we said before, language is culture, and to lose a language is to lose a culture. This fact is often recognized when it comes to entire languages, but not generally acknowledged when it comes to dialects. Even islanders don't immediately think about dialect when they think of the Ocracoke way of life. Just about everyone we talked to in Ocracoke said that islanders are first and foremost identified by being island born and bred, not by being speakers of the brogue. As one islander put it, "An O'cocker, a native, is somebody that's lived here; born here, their family's born here." Most people don't point to the brogue as the ultimate mark of an islander. Candy Gaskill, who seems to be a good barometer for the feelings of islanders, said it well.

It's not the brogue that's home; it's the people and the warmth, you know, the love and the community, the togetherness and stuff. I mean, I don't really think it's the brogue or the dialect, I think it's more the people that makes it.

Most islanders agree with Candy. But people also recognize that the dialect has been a traditional symbol of their heritage. James Barrie Gaskill, Candy's father and a local merchant, fisherman, and active leader in the preservation efforts on the island, put it succinctly as he mused about the future of his young son, Morton, on the island:

I got a little kid, see, he's four weeks old; by the time he gets grown, his accent will be what they call "dingbattish." But I would like for him to keep the same accent and heritage that we've had for years and years; but all this is gone now. The only way we can preserve it is for you fellers to put it on tape.

The link between dialect and culture is even reflected in some of the comments by younger members of the community. One of the youngest Ocracokers we interviewed told us that the Ocracoke dialect was "sacred, really, the way we talk; it's something the island is special for." So islanders do have some awareness of the social meaning of the dialect even though they don't use the brogue as the basis for defining themselves as O'cockers. We can virtually guarantee that a sense of cultural loss will be felt as the brogue vanishes. A part of Ocracoke will surely wash away with the erosion of the dialect. The connection between dialect and culture may not be uppermost in Ocracokers' minds, but the brogue is as much a part of the island landscape as the Creek, the lighthouse, and the Atlantic Ocean. After all, language is one of the most significant and enduring emblems of human culture and humanity itself.

CELEBRATING THE BROGUE

Can the brogue be revived? From time to time, languages and dialects are revitalized just when they seem to be on the brink of extinction. In a couple of cases, they have even been resurrected after they died. For example, spoken Hebrew was revived in Israel, and Irish, which is a separate language unrelated to Irish English, is being revived in particular neighborhoods of Ireland. There are also some cases where dialects rose from their deathbed to become more alive than ever. According to some linguists, African-American English is now more distinct from other dialects than it was a half century ago.

On Martha's Vineyard, an island off of the coast of Massachusetts which is well-known as an upscale tourist spot, the traditional dialect is marked by two pronunciations which remind us of the Ocracoke dialect--the pronunciation of words like ride as something like ruh-eed and the pronunciation of loud as luh-ood. At one point several decades ago, these traditional pronunciations began fading from use, in the face of increasing tourism from the mainland. But the trend reversed itself and the older, original pronunciation returned with a vengeance. Interestingly, this reversal was led by a group of middle-aged island men who had left the island for a college education. When these men returned, they actually increased their use of the local pronunciation as a way of reasserting their original island identity. This return to the more traditional pronunciation seems to be a kind of dialect reaction to tourism, as mainlanders threatened to submerge the island's local identity.

We witnessed something similar to the Martha's Vineyard scenario among some of the middle-aged men in Ocracoke. Dave Esham, the owner of the Pony Island Motel and a local poker player of some renown--at least according to his own pronouncements--left the island after high school for college and graduate school. After earning an M.B.A., he took a job as an accountant with a prestigious accounting firm in Raleigh. But he hated land-locked life in Raleigh and returned home. When he came back to the island, he became more of an islander than ever. His magnified brogue signalled that he was home for good.

The same story could be told for other island men. James Barrie Gaskill is one of the first college graduates from the island. He is also one of the strongest users of the brogue. In fact, locals often mention James Barrie Gaskill when people ask about good examples of brogue speakers, and he was one of the first speakers we went to when we arrived on the island. He too claims to be an exceptional poker player, a trait that seems to unite some of these strong brogue-speaking men.

Although some of these middle-aged men have reverted to a strong version of the brogue, the Ocracoke dialect is not really regaining its former vitality. The reversal has not been carried forward by the younger generation. It seems to be a temporary shift, a kind of last gasp of dialect life before the brogue is drowned in the sound of outside dialects. Dialects can come back from the brink of extinction, but this is the exception rather than the rule. The social forces surrounding revival attempts have to be very strong for a true reversal to take place when a language or dialect is dying.

One thing is for sure. If the brogue rises from its deathbed, its resurrection will come from a movement within the community, an inner healing. It will not come from dingbatter dialect revivalists like us. People who study dialects for a living have their own romantic notions--and their own biases about preservation. Dialects, like biological species, are torn by the tension of inevitable change, on the one hand, and our desire to preserve them, on the other. Preserving a dialect involves balancing the demands of the present with the reality of the past and prospects for the future.

What we as linguists can do in the face of imminent dialect death in Ocracoke is work with the community to promote an understanding of and appreciation for the dialect. Sometimes people aren't aware of the treasures and resources within their own community until strangers come in and reveal the richness of what seems to be commonplace to longtime residents. We have tried to promote awareness of the dialect in several ways. First, we have documented the dialect--as it existed in the speech of its oldest residents and as it is changing among the current and youngest residents. This is a fascinating project in itself, regardless of what happens in the future. That is why we have interviewed and recorded over 70 O'cockers who range in age from 10 to 91. With the permission of the people we interviewed, we have also put together excerpts of these speakers for the historical record. The tape and typescript are available through the North Carolina Language and Life Project at North Carolina State University. They are also available at the Ocracoke School, the Ocracoke Preservation Society, and various museums in the Outer Banks area, such as the Outer Banks Museum in Manteo.

One of our most concentrated efforts to help Ocracokers celebrate their dialect focuses on the educational curriculum in the school--the smallest K-12 school in the state, even with its ranks now swelling to nearly 100 students. For the past several years, we have been teaching a week-long curriculum on the dialect as a part of the social studies curriculum. This experimental curriculum on the Ocracoke brogue is part of the study of North Carolina history. Certainly, the patchwork of North Carolina dialects, including dialects from the Outer Banks, is as important to North Carolina history as any other part of its heritage.

One objective of our curriculum is to raise consciousness about language and language diversity. There are many stereotypes about language and language diversity that need to be confronted honestly. The myths about dialects and language that have been perpetuated in our society are probably akin to a modern science teacher claiming that the planet earth is flat. Students, residents, and tourists have a right to know the truth about dialects, just as they do about other facts of life. We need to raise consciousness about the dialect to fight some of the prejudices islanders have faced about their dialect. Ocracoker Joan O'Neal Johnson discussed the dilemma often faced by islanders when they move off island. In a recent electronic mail message sent to our office, she observed:

I recently graduated from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington with a degree in English. Currently, I am teaching at North Brunswick High School in Leland, NC. I have a great interest in the unique dialect of my people. Family members and friends have told me of your study. I have encountered both prejudice and delight at my way of speaking. During my freshman year at East Carolina University, I had a professor tell me not to write like I speak. She proceeded to tell me how ignorant I was for using a "Southern" dialect. She obviously didn't know the difference in an "Ocracoke" and a "Southern" dialect. Anyhow, I take pride in writing poetry about my island. When I write poems, I use the grammar and phrases that I was raised with and people like it. I believe you have helped to raise the consciousness of Ocracokers. And, I think you have given hope to my generation and to the generations to follow--letting us know that it is truly alright to be different.

To linguists who study dialects, such responses make all the difference.

Students also study dialects as a type of scientific inquiry. They gather data, make hypotheses about dialect patterning and check out their hypotheses. They learn how to figure out for themselves the dialect patterns in data we present to them. It's a unique discovery process, one which opens up a window into the regular and predictable nature of language in general and dialect patterning in particular. Students learn to think about language in new ways and to appreciate the distinct patterning of their own dialect. In other words, they develop the very "higher order thinking skills" that are so much in demand in our educational system today.

Students become involved not simply as passive observers of language variation but as collectors and researchers of the Ocracoke brogue. For example, in one exercise, students are sent out into the community to ask older relatives and neighbors about dialect words. They figure out which age groups use which words; and information they gather allows them to see for themselves how the language is changing. In another exercise, students investigate the patterns that govern the special use of weren't in sentences like I weren't there yesterday. In this process of gathering their own dialect data, they start experiencing the truth about dialect patterning and the brogue. As one eighth-grader put it after a week of studying dialects and the Ocracoke brogue:

Studying dialect is a lot more involved than what I realized. It has a lot of grammar rules in it. I do think dialect is important here. I'm glad I get to study more on the subject with the class. I feel like our dialect is dying out and with you coming here, you will hopefully make us realize that our dialect is unique. I'm very interested in dialects.

Students aren't the only ones who confront their stereotypical notions about dialects and the Ocracoke brogue. As Gail Hamilton, the eighth grade teacher, said about our dialect curriculum:

I appreciate it personally, not just from the children's aspect of learning about their own language, but I didn't realize there was a pattern. As an English teacher, when they would talk to me I would cringe at what I considered "bad grammar." Showing me that there is a specific pattern, a method of speech, is something that now I'm really proud that they know.

Students are starting to realize that their dialect is an important symbol of their island heritage. As one eighth-grader noted, "It is good to know why our dialect is so special and why we should be proud of it."

The school as a whole has caught some of the dialect fever these eighth-graders feel. In fact, an entire issue of the school newspaper, the Ocracoke Island News (Volume 11, Number 3, 1995), was dedicated to the brogue. Student journalists turned the tables on us--they interviewed our research team and wrote a feature article about the dialect project from their perspective. The sixth-grade class wrote poems and essays about the brogue. Most of these writings included some dialect words. As Ashley Garrish wrote:

Ocracoke Brogue is the way

O-cockers say what they say.

If they say "I feel quamished"

It means they feel mommucked.

People make fun of how we speak

Both of these words just mean 'weak'.

Instead of saying "It's not straight"

"It's catawampus" is how we abbreviate

Some of our words are weird to say

And some can be hard to state.

Such as a wampus cat is the island rogue,

Well that is my poem on the Ocracoke Brogue.

[Published in Ocracoke Island News, Volume 11, Number 3, 1995, p. 18]

In addition to our work in the school, we also produced a 25-minute documentary video titled "The Ocracoke Brogue" so that local residents and tourists could be informed about the brogue. It aims to be both entertaining and informative and is designed for public, popular viewing as well as for educational purposes. We have shown our documentary in the school and at a meeting of the Ocracoke Preservation Society. We also showed it several times at Howard's Pub, the popular bar and grill where community members and tourists often congregate to socialize. These showings resulted in animated, positive discussions about the dialect by both ancestral islanders and tourists.

Not only students but teachers and community members have become engaged in collecting and documenting the dialect. For example, Candy Gaskill and Chester Lynn patiently tolerated all manner of dingbatter questions as we sat around the table at Albert Styron's General Store, collecting examples and taking notes on dialect words--words which are now included in the dialect dictionary in Chapter Two. The eighth-grade classroom teacher, Gail Hamilton, returned the day after we discussed vocabulary in class with over two pages of lexical items and phrases elicited from her elderly relatives. On another occasion, she wrote the following poem composed of many unique Outer Banks lexical items in celebration of the dialect. Dialect lexical items are italicized in the poem.

The Ocracoke Brogue

Ocracoke Tradition, Heritage and Such-

For some dingbatters is really too much

What is a first cousin once-removed?

Does a trip down below have to be approved?

Mommuck, doset, and miserable 'n in wind

Is this O'cock brogue meant to offend?

When I see wampus cat, what do I see?

Hoi toid on the seund soid is Greek to me!

Hey, puck isn't used in the game of hockey.

Do O'Cockers "hoid" when playing meehonkey?

While on your pizer, do you sit for a spell?

If you go down below, do you go to ... well?

Been a whit since I took a scud across the beach.

Things get catawampus if they're hard to reach.

Every whipstitch the creek gets slick cam

If you're not confused, well pucker dog, I am!

If I'm Down Point or Up Trent, Where'll I be?

Well, Bucky, it's still good-some to me!

Some may get quamish from the attention,

but this Brogue's too unique not to mention.

[Gail Hamilton, March, 1995]

The way Gail Hamilton incorporated so many dialect words into her poem is inspiring to those who are concerned about the fate of the Ocracoke brogue, but maybe even more important than this teacher's newfound appreciation for the brogue is the change in student attitudes toward the traditional Ocracoke dialect. When Gail Hamilton was asked about the effect of the dialect curriculum on her students, she remarked:

The pride that has been established is phenomenal--the rate of the self-esteem increasing, pride in the uniqueness of the way they speak. It has been such a positive experience for them. Before, when foreigners, tourists, would come down, it was something they were ashamed of, because they talked differently. And so now, with pride, they say, "Hoi toide on the sound soide."

Despite signs of a new awareness of and a heightened respect for the brogue, its fate is still undecided. Circumstances beyond the community's direct control will probably determine its ultimate fortune. But the community is becoming aware of its rich dialect tradition and the linguistic and cultural stakes involved in the death of the brogue. We as linguists may not be able to save the brogue any more than can its speakers, but, if nothing else, we have chronicled for the historical record, for curious outsiders, and for concerned community members the nature of the once-vibrant brogue. If the dialect dies, it will be an irrecoverable loss. But, as one of world's leading authorities on language death, Nancy Dorian, noted, if a language or dialect dies, then the least we can do is give it a celebrated funeral. It may be ebb tide for the hoi toide dialect, but its legacy deserves to be indelibly preserved--for O'cockers, new Ocracoke residents, and tourists who wish to understand.

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