Delaware and the Mason-Dixon Line (Wilmington, Dover: sales, schools, sales tax)

[StuckPA]

Delaware isn't the 'south'...it may be geographically but in my experience the people seem a little sterile and not as friendly as VA,NC,etc.

[MD_IS_NORTH]

The Mason Dixon line never had any real establishment.Most people do not even know what the hell a Mason Dixon Line is.Let me put it to you like this.You would reach the northernmost tip of Maine from Maryland and Delaware far before you would reach the southernmost tip of Florida.They are northern,yet have some southern influences.Geographically most maps show the states today as being Northern,heck even major transportations group DC as being one of the 5 Bos-wash megapolis cities in the northeast.Climate wise they are northern,politically,culturally,the swagger and trend.The states today are overwhelmingly northern.

[doctorjef]

I wonder about this mentality that seems to insist on assigning states into neat, categorical boxes as "northern", "southern", etc. How, I wonder, is that helpful in the face of cultural and geographical ambiguity? Culturally I don't see that DE is Southern in any meaningful way. Yet, how Northern is it culturally? The state's cultural distinctiveness is pretty slim on the ground. Perhaps it is quintessentially Mid-Atlantic, a regional designation that is surely more useful than northern or southern. Geographically, the state is certainly on the very border between northeast and southern eastern seaboard regions of the country. Again, a middle Mid-Atlantic designation seems to make the most sense.

[Orwelleaut]

NOrth of the C+D canal, Delaware is completely Northern. I live in Northeast Ohio, and my father was born and raised in Northern Delaware. He has never used the phrase "Y'all". He does have a speech pattern similar to folks from Southeastern PA, though, and South Jersey. In the midwest, folks always say my Dad either has no accent at all, or that he has a little bit of an Eastern twang, whatever they mean by that. My wife, born and raised near Pittsburgh, found my Dad, the first time She spoke to him, to sound a little like Jimmy Durante.

When I visit my Northern DE/South Jersey relatives, I don't hear any difference in their speech patterns. I can hear a little bit of a Southern sound South of the canal, though, but only slight. You don't hear the thick draw of Kentucky, where one makes a "raht turn after fahv mahls", but more of a mixture of Southern and Eastern speech.

[doctorjef]

Yes, northern DE and South Jersey speakers do seem to have essentially the same speech pattern, entirely different from the patently Upper Northeast Coastal accent typical of North Jersey. Whilst SE PA natives likewise seem to share the same regional accent heard in northern DE and South Jersey, many Philadelphia speakers have an entirely different accent that has more in common with North Jersey and the NYC metropolitan area. I agree that the native northern DE accent is quite a neutral standard American one and is even less affected by Southern speech patterns than many contemporary Midwestern accents (not including the Upper Midwest, which has extremely well-defined speech patterns).

Apologies for the pedantry!

[RehobothBeachDela_where]

Originally Posted by Tom Lennox 70

I learned 2 years ago Rehoboth was a gay beach and it has felt different to me ever since......I really hope they don't start using that stage by the Boardwalk to do reenactments of Bareback Mountain

Don't worry Tom they won't be looking at you or try to recruit you either!

Please don't come to Rehoboth anymore, we don't need your kind!

[Orwelleaut]

Originally Posted by doctorjef

Yes, northern DE and South Jersey speakers do seem to have essentially the same speech pattern, entirely different from the patently Upper Northeast Coastal accent typical of North Jersey. Whilst SE PA natives likewise seem to share the same regional accent heard in northern DE and South Jersey, many Philadelphia speakers have an entirely different accent that has more in common with North Jersey and the NYC metropolitan area. I agree that the native northern DE accent is quite a neutral standard American one and is even less affected by Southern speech patterns than many contemporary Midwestern accents (not including the Upper Midwest, which has extremely well-defined speech patterns).

Apologies for the pedantry!

I definitely agree that Midwestern speech, at least in Ohio and Michigan, is a lot more affected by Southern speech patterns. Southern Ohio has a somewhat Southern sound with fairly drawn vowels, especially around Dayton and Cincy. In Northern Ohio, many Southerners settled here in the first half of the 20'th century to take the high paying factory jobs. In fact, one is more likely to hear Southernisms like "Y'all", "fixin' to", and pronouncing words like tiger as "tagger" around here than in Northern DE.

Even up in Buffalo, NY, the locals pronounce the name of their minor league AAA baseball team, the Buffalo Bisons, "buy-zins". When I took my parents to Niagara Falls on a day trip, in fact, my Dad was chuckling about how Southern the locals sounded saying "buy-zins" when he heard them pronounce this. The rest of their speech pattern is very Northern, so we were laughing about them making a quick trip down to Alabama or Mississippi when they get ready to say "buy-zin". We wondered if, when traveling in the Western States, Western New Yorkers use this Southern sounding pronunciation when they see a herd of buffalo, and if Westerners would notice their pronunciation of this word.

[doctorjef]

Orwelleaut, you seem to have quite a good ear for accents -- love your phonetic transliterations of them! I don't know how old you are. I am 54 and over the course of my life I believe that Southern speech patterns have spread outward from the states traditionally identified as Southern. My perception is that in watching national news, for example, one hears more Southern features of speech characterising the overall American population than I recall from my childhood, adolescence or early adulthood. I've also heard that military personnel and families tend to pick up these speech patterns as a way of fitting in while stationed at the many military bases in the South and in the quasi-Southern states of Texas and Oklahoma. It seems to me that the standard American dialect is becoming more Southern rather than more "neutral" in the classically Midwestern and California styles. I really think the northern DE accent - the speech of the natives, not transplants - is among the most neutral American accents I've heard.

[Orwelleaut]

I agree, doctorjef. I'm 37, so I just barely remember when Jimmy Carter was president. I'm a musician, so I've always had a good ear for the nuances of speech. Though I was a little boy when he was president, I can still hear the way he would say "Cawh-duh". It surely didn't sound anything like the way most folks I was around said Carter. I also remember noticing that, when Bill Clinton was first in office, his Southern speechways weren't mocked as symbolic of a lack of mental acuity, as they were with Carter. Bill Clinton also managed to milk that ability to sound more emotional by using his Arkansas draw just right. All he had to do was stick his lower lip out, say "Ah fueel yore paine...", and it really seemed like he was everyone's good buddy.

I think you're right about speech becoming more Southern. One has heard accents far more Southern than anything heard in Delmarva on shows like King of the Hill, My Name is Earl, etc. As a kid, I don't remember hearing too much Southern on T.V. other than on The Dukes of Hazzard.

[irishmafia]

If you pay attention to the general definition of the Mason-Dixon Line, DE is East of it.

However, I believe Mason and Dixon did perform the survey which created the Northern Arc boundary of Delaware at PA.