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Where this mythical Southern accent of Cincinnati to be heard? Every prominent Cincinnatian has practically either a)a General American accent or b)some diluted East Coast type sound. Cincinnati people who sound Southern STAND OUT just like some skinny short person would stand out in Cincinnati lol
Are we to take the Interior Mountain West as Southern now as well? I think you really have a hard time separating culture from pace of life. Rural country people from all over the world are what you describe as Southern whether they are people in Cincinnati or Western Michigan. None of that is exclusive to the South and therefore it cannot rightly become Southern at all.
All this is is just goal post shifting to make the round peg of Cincinnati fit into the square hole of Southern culture. You just described the attitude and lifestyle of people in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Using your definition, a lot of the country is "Southern". Southern culture is independent of all those things. Southern culture is called such because it is unique to the South. Everything you listed is not.
All good points above. I don't disagree, and apologize for indeed moving the goal-posts. Going further, to some extent the mainstream American culture, or the sort of blue-collar culture extolled by champions of traditionalism, is Southern culture. Culturally, the South won the Civil War. It’s not Jim Crow, plantations, Caribbean-style aristocrats, Confederate flags or grits. No, it’s NASCAR, football, Bud Lite, country “music”, pickup trucks, guns. It holds in Montana, and even Alberta, just as much as in Alabama. Actually, it probably holds more in rural Alberta, than it does in Birmingham or Mobile or New Orleans.
The question then becomes, to what extant is Cincinnati such an enormously influential city (or the derivative of such a city), that it partakes of its own culture, an urbane (note the “e”) culture? Cleveland, as others have noted, is an outpost of the Northeast. Cleveland differs markedly from the rural counties surrounding its suburbs. Cincinnati does not. There really are two Americas: the principal cities, with their satellites; and everything else.
Here’s an amusing thought-experiment. Cincinnati may be of German origin, but it would be decidedly weird and unorthodox even for parents with surnames like Schmidt or Braun to raise their kids to be bilingual, fluent in German. Imagine, that this were not the case. Kids would grow up speaking German at home, and get introduced to English in school. Spoken German would be as prevalent in Cincinnati, as Spanish is in Miami. Storefronts would have signs in German – not as whimsical exoticism to amuse the tourists, but as a practical way to maximize means of communication. What if say the prevalence of German cooking in Cincinnati, were analogous to the prevalence of sushi in the SF Bay area? Then I’d say, that Cincinnati truly differs from its surrounding rural expanses.
All good points above. I don't disagree, and apologize for indeed moving the goal-posts. Going further, to some extent the mainstream American culture, or the sort of blue-collar culture extolled by champions of traditionalism, is Southern culture. Culturally, the South won the Civil War. It’s not Jim Crow, plantations, Caribbean-style aristocrats, Confederate flags or grits. No, it’s NASCAR, football, Bud Lite, country “music”, pickup trucks, guns. It holds in Montana, and even Alberta, just as much as in Alabama. Actually, it probably holds more in rural Alberta, than it does in Birmingham or Mobile or New Orleans.
The question then becomes, to what extant is Cincinnati such an enormously influential city (or the derivative of such a city), that it partakes of its own culture, an urbane (note the “e”) culture? Cleveland, as others have noted, is an outpost of the Northeast. Cleveland differs markedly from the rural counties surrounding its suburbs. Cincinnati does not. There really are two Americas: the principal cities, with their satellites; and everything else.
Here’s an amusing thought-experiment. Cincinnati may be of German origin, but it would be decidedly weird and unorthodox even for parents with surnames like Schmidt or Braun to raise their kids to be bilingual, fluent in German. Imagine, that this were not the case. Kids would grow up speaking German at home, and get introduced to English in school. Spoken German would be as prevalent in Cincinnati, as Spanish is in Miami. Storefronts would have signs in German – not as whimsical exoticism to amuse the tourists, but as a practical way to maximize means of communication. What if say the prevalence of German cooking in Cincinnati, were analogous to the prevalence of sushi in the SF Bay area? Then I’d say, that Cincinnati truly differs from its surrounding rural expanses.
Cincinnati Germans have largely been absorbed into mainstream American culture the way the non Bavarians did elsewhere in the Midwest. For the longest time Cincinnati had a German language newspaper though. I think culturally Germans had a stronger influence on Cincinnati as a city compared to other Midwest cities. St. Louis is another example of this.
Anyway that rural right leaning counter culture sure is seen in many Northern locales. I don't know how or why it got associated with the South. It isn't specifically Southern. People seem to forget Southern is a culture, not just acting like a bumpkin.
A city like Grand Rapids which is at equal latitudes with New Hampshire and Vermont has aspects of culture that if unchecked would be taken as Southern. There is a conservative undertone to the local culture and church is big. Love of the outdoorsman is big there. There is a big Protestant population whose hand has gotten involved in local and national politics as well. In all of this Grand Rapids is very much a Northern city. I think the similar elements seen in Cincinnati would have been present even without Appalachian settlers. Let's also consider that German Catholics are always mostly conservative Republicans regardless of where they are based out of. So the conservative element of Cincinnati would have been there anyway.
Cincinnati has politics and culture in common with towns at similar latitudes. The Lower Midwest just is the way it is and so is much of the country which is evidenced by 2016 county voting maps. It's always someone from Cleveland or the Great Lakes making these claims. Many of them haven't actually been to the South.
Clermont County is recognized as part of the Appalachian region by the federal government and receives supplementary funding for roads and special programs:
Clermont County is recognized as part of the Appalachian region by the federal government and receives supplementary funding for roads and special programs:
Going by this standard then most of Pennsylvania is Southern. So people associating Cincy with the South because of Appalachia don't realize that by doing so, Pittsburgh also becomes Southern. That and Cincinnati itself isn't in the ARC as Hamilton county sits outside of the boundaries.
So if Cincinnati is Southern because Southern = Appalachian then Pittsburgh must be even more Southern and for that matter so should Erie, PA be and suburbs of Cleveland (ha!) and about one third of Ohio itself.
This is the problem when we use Appalachian undertones to define something as Southern. Cincinnati could be called Greater Appalachia. I always called the residents "hill people" as opposed to hillbillies.
Anyway. . .
Does Cincinnati feel country? Yes. It essentially is a city built into the countryside. Even when you're in downtown you look around the surrounding towns at higher elevation and it looks country. Drive West on 74 and it feels like you're driving through the backwoods. Well that's just the West Side of Cincinnati. Really most points around 275 look country when you see your surroundings. Cincinnati (like Pittsburgh and Louisville) had that "urban in the rural" type of feel. This is why Cincinnati has the culture that it does. But in none of this do we find the unique culture of the South. Cincinnati is foremost a Midwest city with a Northeast backbone and Appalachian undertones when you break it down by history and migration patterns. I admit it appears quite country and that is probably what people mistake as Southern. But even if we concede to the Appalachian argument then we must be aware that some of this Appalachian heritage was by way of the Northeast (Pennsylvania) as well. Why do people always ignore the Northeastern influences for Cincinnati?
Appalachians are not southern. There were no plantations in appalachia. Therefore there was not a concentration of wealth around an elite class seeking to replicate the english aristocracy.
West virginia did not have plantations. That's how it was able to secede from virginia.
Totally different economic system means a completely different culture.
End this stupid thread.
The South is a big area. It stretches from El Paso to the most Northern point in North Virginia and from Northwest Kentucky to Key West, Florida. El Paso looks nothing at all like Key West or Virginia. In fact, El Paso doesn't look anything at all like Austin, the Capital of Texas. EL Paso looks more like Tucson, Las Vegas and San Bernadino than it looks like Austin, Savannah, or Paducah, Kentucky.
The Smokey Mountains are as much a part of the South as the Mississippi River Delta region in the States of Mississippi and Arkansas. Historically and according to US Government.
The Midwest it stretches from the most Northwestern point in North Dakota to most Southeast point of Ohio.
To say the Southern Appalachians are not part of the South, then you'll have to say the Badlands in South Dakota are not part of the Midwest and neither are the treeless Great Plains of Western sections of Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakota's, compared to the Midwestern Breadbasket States of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois. Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri, and the Eastern parts of Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas.
I understand what you're saying but historically and according to the US Government, that's how the region's are divided up.
You can break the region's up into sub regions where each state is in a sub region with states that physically look like each other. Such as a subregion of say, for example, the Great Plains you can group the Western treeless Great Plains states of the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle, with the Eastern treeless Great Plains States of New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana.
The Apalachian states that stretch from Northeast Alabama to New England could be a sub region.
The Midwest, The South, The West, they all cover huge areas of land and differences in the look of the landscape are quite different from the furthest points of each region.
The Northeast is small enough in land area, you won't have the vast differences of land formations from one end of the NE to the opposite end like in the other 3 regions of the Lower 48.
Hope I made sense. I found this post very difficult to explain and took alot of time to type out, and now I have a headache.
Where this mythical Southern accent of Cincinnati to be heard?
I bet you'll find more than a few in the bowling alleys, the country music bars and clubs, and the blue collar/white working class areas/neighborhoods of the metro area that stretches from Cincinnati to Dayton.
Actually, I've heard quite a few people in Cincinnati area who sound similar to Bobby Bare. I looked him up in Wikipedia and, sure enough, he is from Ohio.
Also, you don't want to forget the black section because you'll hear quite a few Southern accents.
There are country bars in Manhattan. There are country bars in LA. That doesn't make them "southern".
Again, this is an idiotic thread. No way is even 5% of Cincinnati's metro population from the actual plantation south.
Again, Kentucky did not secede because it did not have a plantation economy to preserve. Same story with West Virginia -- it seceded from Virginia because it did not have a plantation-owning upper class tricking low-class whites into keeping the system going.
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