Should CT be considered part of New England? (Boston, Cambridge: elementary school, live)

[john_starks]

south of hartford county & east of new haven co should be considered ny state imo.

[willdufauve]

Ct people dress as frumpy as New Englanders but with a much more "New York City" attitude. You know, arrogance.

Enfield might be more like Massachusetts, I've met a lot of them and liked them,but that's why I said it depends what exit.

If you line up ten similar people, five from Ct., and five from New England, I'll sort them out with 100% accuracy.

[HowGoesIt]

I've always thought CT was part of New England. It has a New England-y feel and shares a lot of the same architecture as Boston.

[Mark_CT]

More of the population of CT is connected to NY and NY's culture than not. More than half the people in CT live in the very heavily NY dominated counties of Fairfield and New Haven. I say western CT and most of southern CT identifies more with New York than Boston or New England. People in my town are preppy, but in a more cosmopolitan way. It's hard to describe. We're not nearly as conservative in dress as Bostonians, but dress more in dark clothes and more to New York Area, which CT is part of, trends. I made a quick graphical representation of what I think the culturally New York area in CT is. Dark gray is a least slightly leaning towards New York culture, light gray, more towards conservative, parochial, Bostonian culture:

http://img107.mytextgraphics.com/pho...-499itq0eb.gif

[Mark_CT]

And the way people talk around here is much more like NY than Boston. For instance, many of my wife's friends meet each other for cawfee.

[Mark_CT]

Originally Posted by willdufauve

Ct people dress as frumpy as New Englanders but with a much more "New York City" attitude. You know, arrogance.

Enfield might be more like Massachusetts, I've met a lot of them and liked them,but that's why I said it depends what exit.

If you line up ten similar people, five from Ct., and five from New England, I'll sort them out with 100% accuracy.

People in Enfield basically live in MA anyway, most of them work in Springfield so I can see why they lean towards Boston. I included Enfield in the Boston part of my map.

[john_starks]

Originally Posted by john_starks

south of hartford county & east of new haven co should be considered ny state imo.

i meant west of new haven county. ahh, lets just give it all to NY and call it a day.

[Mark_CT]

Originally Posted by john_starks

i meant west of new haven county. ahh, lets just give it all to NY and call it a day.

As New York grows and grows, that's certainly not out of the question.

[missionhill]

CT and MA are two peas in a pod. What's the difference? Not much. Founded by the same group of Puritans who supplanted the same eastern Algonquian native peoples, similar history including the mill towns and spacious country towns (think Amherst, Litchfield, Concord), literary history, early colleges (Yale and Harvard), seafaring history (New London, New Bedford; or Mystic-Nantucket), lack of county govt, town meetings; saltboxes, Cape Cods, and three-deckers. Sure people move into Conn. from New York: they become New Englanders. The NE culture acts on them; it isn't just the other way around. Maybe they root for the Yankees but they vote in town meeting too and are glad not to pay taxes to five levels of government as they might have back in New York. MA is full of people who have been objected to historically as invading, diluting the culture, blah blah blah. Would you rather have MA as it was before the Irish, Portugese, Italians, African Americans, Jews, Puerto Ricans, Brazilians, etc.? Just Yankees? I don't think so. Interestingly, eastern Long Island was settled by people from the Mass Bay Colony and was part of Connecticut for awhile, thus the English names--East Hampton, Southampton, etc., and the New England look of some of those towns, vs. the Dutch settlements in the west end (Brooklyn, Flatbush, New Utrecht, Flushing, etc.) But despite its NE roots, Long Is really does belong now to New York!

[willdufauve]

That's interesting history but let's be honest. In New England we don't like New Yorkers. It's because of the way they say "cawfee" and maybe something to do with being a little pushy.

Ct is just a little too close for comfort for me. I'm glad to have it there as a buffer between us and NYC but I'm not going so far as to say Ct is actually part of New England.