Missouri...Southern or Midwestern? (Kansas City, St. Louis: sales, to buy, to live in)

[ajf131]

If people absolutely must insist on the entire Southern half of Missouri being Southern, I guess I might be willing to let them have it. But St. Louis, Jeff. City, Columbia, KC and are definitely Midwestern by any definition. Personally I disagree with it but whatever Southern Missouri is changes nothing about me. I personally think that Southern Missouri isn't truly Southern until you are around Cape Girardeau, Sikeston, etc. Most of Southern Missouri I'd argue is a hodgepodge of Midwest, Ozark, and the South. To me it feels something in between Ozark, Southern, and Midwestern. But to me it certainly doesn't feel anything like Arkansas, Kentucky, or Tennessee unless you are in either the Mississippi Delta counties or the southern quarter of the state. I have family in the South and if I thought the facts were there to prove the entire Southern half of Missouri should be part of the South, I'd agree. But I don't agree. I'm tired of debating...I'll leave it up to others on here to debate about Southern Missouri and sit back and watch.

[da jammer]

Originally Posted by ajf131

Be assured, lol, it's nothing like California, though sometimes I wish it were

Trust me you don't. I have lived it for over 40 years, you have not. Try it if you wish though...could be a heck of an adventure for ya!

[mrsgenealogy]

Originally Posted by JohnKing67

You're right, my dad was born and raised in Macon in the northern part of the state and he always says Missoura.

My mother and several generations of ancestors lived in Boone County, in the country just above Columbia. As a matter of fact, some of it is now considered as being IN Columbia these days. Anyway, when my Mom (who has now been in CA since 1954) learned that I was moving to Missour"ee", she said I was going to have to learn to start saying it "right", i.e. Missour"ah".

I think she wanted to protect me from letting everyone know I was an outsider. Hahaha! As if my CA accent wouldn't be noticable, I thought! But guess what? Not one person has mentioned MY accent and I don't hear that many people with a strong accent, either. I live east of Ozark and only 20 minutes from Springfield (BELOW Hwy. 60 for the record).

Originally Posted by daisymae19

that often happens with foreign words...another Missouri example of this is Rolla...it was supposed to be Raleigh...and of couse the pronunciations of the Missouri towns of Versailles, Milan, Haiti, Cairo, Nevada, Lebanon...and don't forget Maries County...

I still laugh every time I hear "SpoKANE" (long o and a) and "El Door-AYE-do". I can never quite remember how they pronounce Desloge and some of those other French names around the state, especially over on the south eastern side. I wonder how the French feel about these southern pronunciations of their words!

Originally Posted by ajf131

I'm presenting what I believe to be the facts from both my experience and my father's experience growing up in Missouri. Most of Southern Missouri is more of a transition area between the Midwest and Dixie than it is one or the other.

You make a good point here, AJF. First of all, I think statistics mean less to people whose personal experience has been different. I think we do well to remember that most things are not absolutes, they are only generically or often true. Also, your original question covers such a wide area of things and it is so hard to lump everything together and find one definitive answer to them all, whether we're talking trees, weather, accents, mindsets or Civil War stance.

Originally Posted by da jammer

Frankly I don't care if it's considered midwestern, eastern, southern, northern or frikkin Martian...as long as it isn't considered Californian! Heck I just love it here!! PEACE!

I'm with you, da jammer! But you've got to admit...this thread has been one of the more active ones I've seen which is usually true when there are a lot of different views and opinions. From what I've seen here in my short time at this forum, I think the vast majority of people at this site are in agreement in the "lovin' MO department", by the way. With the one glaring exception of poor rollagirl whose experience has given her plenty of reasons to want to pack her bags. Sadly, her issues are not things we can help here in this forum...or I'm betting a whole lot of us would try!

Originally Posted by ajf131

I have a grandmother who was originally from Mexico, Missouri. She had that twang of which you speak. "Missouri Twang" is exactly the right word for it, but it's not anything even close to what I'd describe as a southern draw. In fact I've noticed it only among the older folks. They may twang a few words here or there, but it's still a pretty flat accent, not even close to the Deep South or even the Upper South. From my experience you don't hear true Southern dialect until you are around the southern quarter of the state (Cape Girardeau, Springfield, Sikeston, etc.)

I've got ancestors who lived in Mexico, too...and it's not too far from Boone County, where I still have relatives. They've lived there their whole life and have such a strong accent, too! I wonder if being born here...or if staying in the same area where family and tradition has a stronger influence...makes a difference. I do feel that theirs is a true southern accent, though. I lived in and around Little Rock for 10 years so feel that I can say that. Thay have a ree-all strawng ac-say-ent down thay-er! Okay, okay, not EVERYBODY...but a LOT of them do...or did...back in the 70s when I was there. I'm very susceptible to picking up an accent and revert back to my old Arkansas one whenever I'm around someone that has one.

As much as I hate to disagree with you, I'm afraid that I have no choice...I haven't found that the majority of people here in the Springfield area have an accent. There are some, of course, but they are in the minority.

I guess I keep going back to personal experience. I can only share mine...and I realize you may have had a different experience here. I only know that I don't feel qualified to offer anything more and I guess it's not important enough to me for me to search around trying to find an authority or website to quote. Like DaJammer, I'm just glad to be here!

[JohnKing67]

Originally Posted by ajf131

I have a grandmother who was originally from Mexico, Missouri. She had that twang of which you speak. "Missouri Twang" is exactly the right word for it, but it's not anything even close to what I'd describe as a southern draw. In fact I've noticed it only among the older folks. They may twang a few words here or there, but it's still a pretty flat accent, not even close to the Deep South or even the Upper South. From my experience you don't hear true Southern dialect until you are around the southern quarter of the state (Cape Girardeau, Springfield, Sikeston, etc.)

Generally I would agree with you. I must admit I don't have very much experience with Southern Missouri. I've been in the central and northern parts of the state. I have noticed that the accents are flatter in a town like Columbia as compared to small towns in the north like Paris, Macon, Bevier, etc. But I think that has more to do with being in a larger town vs. being in a very small town/rural area.

[mrsgenealogy]

Good point, JohnKing!

I agree that a big town vs a small town can make a big difference in accents. I went to Atlanta, GA for the Comdex convention back in '93 and was amazed at how few of the people that visited our booth had an accent! That was before the Olympics were there but I learned Atlanta is quite a big business mecca and people have moved there from all over the country.

Besides that, the convention was the largest computer convention in the U.S. at the time and probably drew people from all over the east and south since the second largest at the time was the Comdex Convention in Las Vegas.

You know since St. Louis truly was the gateway to the west back when the west was new, I have found that most people I've met through genealogy have MO ancestors in their family roots.

[JohnKing67]

Originally Posted by mrsgenealogy

Good point, JohnKing!

I agree that a big town vs a small town can make a big difference in accents. I went to Atlanta, GA for the Comdex convention back in '93 and was amazed at how few of the people that visited our booth had an accent! That was before the Olympics were there but I learned Atlanta is quite a big business mecca and people have moved there from all over the country.

Besides that, the convention was the largest computer convention in the U.S. at the time and probably drew people from all over the east and south since the second largest at the time was the Comdex Convention in Las Vegas.

You know since St. Louis truly was the gateway to the west back when the west was new, I have found that most people I've met through genealogy have MO ancestors in their family roots.

You're probably right. I've lived in Ohio all my life but have a lot of relatives and ancestors in MO.

[ozarksboy]

Originally Posted by ajf131

Could you please clarify what you're trying to say? I'd say my accent is right for my region...I've met plenty of people from Rolla and honestly I'd have to say while they do speak with an accent it's not the same accent as say, Sikeston, Missouri. I've heard just as many Midwestern accents in Rolla as Southern ones. I just don't think Rolla meets the definition of solidly Dixie. It certainly has Southern tendencies but I always thought it was something more in between, not quite Southern or Midwestern.... My dad lived in Rolla for several years and he thought of it as a hybrid-type city. ...

In an earlier posting you said you had absolutely no accent, which perhaps was a tongue-in-cheek comment, and that prompted my "sympathy" for a man with no accent.

If you're from St. Louis, you have an accent. Most St. Louisans (and there are a bunch of them rascals down here in Rolla) have an accent that I can generally discern.

I like accents, and the more distinct they are the better I like it. Accents add richness to life. TV, movies and a mobile society are diminishing our accents, homogenizing our speech, which is a shame but is another price of progress.

Your daddy was right about Rolla; it is a hybrid city because of the University. It has Southern influences (like the rest of the Ozarks), but it also has many other influences from around the globe, enriching life here. Rolla isn't a Southern town; you've got to go to the Bootheel to find Southern towns in Missouri.

[ajf131]

Originally Posted by mrsgenealogy

My mother and several generations of ancestors lived in Boone County, in the country just above Columbia. As a matter of fact, some of it is now considered as being IN Columbia these days. Anyway, when my Mom (who has now been in CA since 1954) learned that I was moving to Missour"ee", she said I was going to have to learn to start saying it "right", i.e. Missour"ah".

I think she wanted to protect me from letting everyone know I was an outsider. Hahaha! As if my CA accent wouldn't be noticable, I thought! But guess what? Not one person has mentioned MY accent and I don't hear that many people with a strong accent, either. I live east of Ozark and only 20 minutes from Springfield (BELOW Hwy. 60 for the record).



I still laugh every time I hear "SpoKANE" (long o and a) and "El Door-AYE-do". I can never quite remember how they pronounce Desloge and some of those other French names around the state, especially over on the south eastern side. I wonder how the French feel about these southern pronunciations of their words!



You make a good point here, AJF. First of all, I think statistics mean less to people whose personal experience has been different. I think we do well to remember that most things are not absolutes, they are only generically or often true. Also, your original question covers such a wide area of things and it is so hard to lump everything together and find one definitive answer to them all, whether we're talking trees, weather, accents, mindsets or Civil War stance.



I'm with you, da jammer! But you've got to admit...this thread has been one of the more active ones I've seen which is usually true when there are a lot of different views and opinions. From what I've seen here in my short time at this forum, I think the vast majority of people at this site are in agreement in the "lovin' MO department", by the way. With the one glaring exception of poor rollagirl whose experience has given her plenty of reasons to want to pack her bags. Sadly, her issues are not things we can help here in this forum...or I'm betting a whole lot of us would try!



I've got ancestors who lived in Mexico, too...and it's not too far from Boone County, where I still have relatives. They've lived there their whole life and have such a strong accent, too! I wonder if being born here...or if staying in the same area where family and tradition has a stronger influence...makes a difference. I do feel that theirs is a true southern accent, though. I lived in and around Little Rock for 10 years so feel that I can say that. Thay have a ree-all strawng ac-say-ent down thay-er! Okay, okay, not EVERYBODY...but a LOT of them do...or did...back in the 70s when I was there. I'm very susceptible to picking up an accent and revert back to my old Arkansas one whenever I'm around someone that has one.

As much as I hate to disagree with you, I'm afraid that I have no choice...I haven't found that the majority of people here in the Springfield area have an accent. There are some, of course, but they are in the minority.

I guess I keep going back to personal experience. I can only share mine...and I realize you may have had a different experience here. I only know that I don't feel qualified to offer anything more and I guess it's not important enough to me for me to search around trying to find an authority or website to quote. Like DaJammer, I'm just glad to be here!

I disagree about the people of Mexico, Missouri, having extremely strong Southern accents. Little Rock has extremely strong Southern dialect....my grandmother, from what I heard from her speech the 16 years of my life she was alive, and her family, according to my father, had accents but they were nowhere remotely close to the Southern speech patterns of Little Rock or anywhere in the South for that matter. I even visited Mexico....in most of Northern Missouri I would still argue that the dialect is far more Midwestern than Southern. I'm gonna be honest about this...the areas of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio which are at the same latitude as all of Northern Missouri have a bit of an accent, but still sound Midwestern to me and fairly similar to Northern Missouri. Maybe your family does sound like it but to say most of that area sounds like Arkansas or any part of the south to me is really stretching it in my opinion. I don't hear any dialects comparable to that of Arkansas in any part of the state except really for Southeast Missouri, in Sikeston and the counties near to it. that dialect does not exist anywhere in Northern Missouri. If it did, Southern dialect would be found in over 50 percent of Illinois and portions of Iowa. plus if you google Missouri dialect you will hear a recording of two different men....one native to Hannibal, and one native to Mexico....that is what Northern Missouri dialect sounds like. If you ask me, these dialects are pretty typical of rural Lower Midwestern dialect. It must be noted that this dialect is not flat...it does twang a bit but is mostly pretty flat and very distinct from Southern dialect to me. I was in Boone County actually several months ago. I didn't hear any Southern speech patterns, not even among the old folks. Little Dixie may once have featured Southern dialect due to the fact the area was settled by Southerners, but you'd never guess that visiting the region today at least if you'd been there when I was there. And actually, my opinions about Springfield I mostly said just not to start up an argument. I actually do agree with you about Springfield. Look at Matt Blunt....I've heard his accent...it actually sounds pretty midwestern to me! Even when i was in joplin, I did not hear any Southern dialect, and my father grew up there and he sounds by all accounts very Midwestern. The only parts where I've heard true Southern dialect spoken from everyone are in the Mississippi Delta region of Missouri. Those people sound exactly the same as people from Arkansas. Most of Missouri from what I've found in general does not have a true Southern accent. I could be wrong about some areas, but my experience and people i've talked with personally suggest nothing but that. That's not to say I haven't heard some Southern speech patterns from individual people, but never have I been to an area in Missouri in which the general population spoke with a true Southern accent other than again, the Mississippi Delta counties of far Southeast Missouri. This was the only place in Missouri where I've heard an accent among the general population which really sounded comparable to that of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas. It's just my opinion and my experience and the general consensus I've gotten from many people I know personally, both from Missouri and not from Missouri. If my personal experience told any different, I'd be whistling a whole different tune on here. Also just to clarify Ozarksboy, we are on the same page now. I don't think people from Rolla have no accent at all, the speech patterns I heard there were mixed...i've heard flat accents, Southern accents...I'm just not sure people from Rolla sound the same as Sikeston, Missouri...if you get what i'm saying. You live there though, so you probably know that answer better than me.

[ajf131]

Originally Posted by ozarksboy

In an earlier posting you said you had absolutely no accent, which perhaps was a tongue-in-cheek comment, and that prompted my "sympathy" for a man with no accent.

If you're from St. Louis, you have an accent. Most St. Louisans (and there are a bunch of them rascals down here in Rolla) have an accent that I can generally discern.

I like accents, and the more distinct they are the better I like it. Accents add richness to life. TV, movies and a mobile society are diminishing our accents, homogenizing our speech, which is a shame but is another price of progress.

Your daddy was right about Rolla; it is a hybrid city because of the University. It has Southern influences (like the rest of the Ozarks), but it also has many other influences from around the globe, enriching life here. Rolla isn't a Southern town; you've got to go to the Bootheel to find Southern towns in Missouri.

Maybe the reason I don't have an accent, or to be more specific about what I mean by an accent, a twang, is because I'm from a younger generation. I am a native of St. Louis but most white, caucasion natives like me that are my age (I'm in my twenties) here do not speak the stereotypical St. Louis accent. We don't say "farty", we say "Forty." At least from what I've heard, I speak about as stereotypical American as it gets. Older folks talk differently than the younger ones. In fact, from what I've observed in cities everywhere, younger natives tend not to speak the stereotypical speech pattern of their cities anymore. Example...in Louisville, the younger population speaks the more stereotypical American dialect, while the older folks speak with the traditional "Louisville accent". I agree that St. Louis is not "accent-less",we pronounce certain words uniquely, but it still sounds very much like a derivative of Midwestern dialect. every city in the East, Midwest, and South has some type of accent....Minneapolis has a distinctive accent, Chicago has a distinctive accent, in fact the only places in the U.S. that i've heard which are truly "accentless" are in the Western United States. But while each region does not have a uniform accent, there are enough similarities between the derivatives of the generalized speech patterns in a certain region to conclude that the derivatives should be grouped together. St. Louis without a doubt has more than enough similarities to other Midwestern cities in terms of speech patterns to be considered Midwestern in dialect.

[ajf131]

Originally Posted by ozarksboy

In an earlier posting you said you had absolutely no accent, which perhaps was a tongue-in-cheek comment, and that prompted my "sympathy" for a man with no accent.

If you're from St. Louis, you have an accent. Most St. Louisans (and there are a bunch of them rascals down here in Rolla) have an accent that I can generally discern.

I like accents, and the more distinct they are the better I like it. Accents add richness to life. TV, movies and a mobile society are diminishing our accents, homogenizing our speech, which is a shame but is another price of progress.

Your daddy was right about Rolla; it is a hybrid city because of the University. It has Southern influences (like the rest of the Ozarks), but it also has many other influences from around the globe, enriching life here. Rolla isn't a Southern town; you've got to go to the Bootheel to find Southern towns in Missouri.

I agree 100% about having to go to the Bootheel or places near it (like Sikeston, MO) to find true Southern towns in Missouri.