[5] The 2006 Atlas of North American English does not consider these dialects to fall under the Southern U.S. regional dialect since they do not participate in the first stage of the Southern Vowel Shift, but they share commonalities as full members of the larger Southeastern regional super-dialect in fronting the /oʊ/ and /aʊ/ vowels, exhibiting the pin–pen merger, resisting the cot–caught merger, and being strongly rhotic with a retroflex /r/.
The term "hoi toide" appears in a local colloquial rhyme, "It's high tide on the sound side", often phonetically spelled "hoi toide on the saind soide" [hɒɪ ˈtɒɪd ɑn ðə ˈsaɪnd sɒɪd],[6] as a marker of pronunciation to sharply differentiate speakers of the Outer Banks brogue from speakers of the mainland Southern dialects.
[9] The distinctness of the High Tider dialects has survived because of the inherent isolation of islands and these communities continuing to depend on traditional trades, like fishing, boat building, and decoy carving.
[12] The chart below lists the vowel sounds in two High Tider accents: one of Smith Island (Maryland) in the Chesapeake Bay and the other of Ocracoke (North Carolina) in the Outer Banks.
[25] In the 1991 film The Butcher's Wife, the main character Marina is from Ocracoke, North Carolina, and exhibits features of Hoi Toider dialect.