North Carolina State University
News Services
Campus Box 7504
Raleigh, NC 27695
(919) 515-3470
Media Contacts:
Dr. Walt Wolfram and Dr. Natalie Schilling-Estes, 919/515-4151
Pam Smith, News Services, 919/515-3470, [email protected]
NC State Linguists Publish Book About Ocracoke Dialect
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
A book by North Carolina State University linguists Dr. Walt Wolfram and Dr. Natalie Schilling-Estes, tracing the history of the Ocracoke dialect, has just been released by The University of North Carolina Press. Hoi Toide on the Outer Banks: The Story of the Ocracoke Brogue provides a glossary and quiz of Ocracoke speech (What does "fladget" mean?*) and records syntax, spelling and vocabulary unique to the tiny island.
Since 1992, with funding from NC State, the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the linguists have been visiting Ocracoke Island on North Carolina's Outer Banks, interviewing, recording, and making friends with the islanders in an effort to preserve some of the rich dialects' heritage.
"We're studying dialects as they recede," said Wolfram, NC State's William C. Friday Professor of English. "The Ocracoke brogue is gravely endangered. It probably will die out in the next few generations."
Their research has been more than an opportunity to study theoretical questions about what happens to a dialect as it fades or how language variations work. Wolfram and Schilling-Estes, who is the coordinator of the North Carolina Language and Life Project, also view their work as a way to increase public awareness of endangered dialects and languages.
More than half of the world's languages are endangered or threatened, said Wolfram. In California alone, during the last century, 25 to 50 Native American languages have died.
"To lose a language is to lose a culture," said Wolfram. "To lose a dialect is to lose a subculture."
Fifty percent of the proceeds from the book will go to the Ocracoke Preservation Society.
*(Fladget means a small piece of something.) --stock-windsor--
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