Southern or Midwestern? (St. Louis: high school, suburbs, backyard)

[STLCardsBlues1989]

I think typically St. Louis and Kansas City are typically more liberal and the rest of Missouri is mostly conservative.

What I've heard anyway.

[oscottscotto]

How is this really a debate?

I moved to STL 2 weeks ago. I am from Mobile, Alabama ... so I know the "South".

St. Louis is not "Southern". It's Midwestern. I'd be very interested to see someone's argument for how it is Southern.

[STLCardsBlues1989]

I don't think that St. Louis is really southern. The accent may be a mix of both. Missouri seems southern in some parts, but I do think St. Louis is mostly midwestern.

By the way, congrats on moving to Mound City, The Gateway City, Brick City, or whatever you want to call it!

[kshe95girl]

just wanted to point out that the "southern" dividing line seems to be Crowleys Ridge in SE Mo...... being a 6th gen STL on my dads side and 10th gen SE missourian on my moms....... I have observed this particular thing from both sides..... any southern influence is emigration, no more, no less.

[Yac]

Calm down everybody, please.
Yac.

[anduarto]

I'd say St. Louis is midwestern with a dash of the south. Missouri is truly a bi-polar place - both demographically and geographically.

Half urban / half rural. Half republican / half democratic. Dividing it diagonally, the southeastern half is eastern forest. The northwest half is midwestern plain. Dividing it horizontally, the southern half is, well, the south. The northern half mid-western.

And St. Louis (more than Kansas City, I think) seems to carry aspects of all these different qualities. Still, growing up, I never thought of St. Louis as the south. (It was only after I had spent some time in the Northeast that I began to hear that hint of southern twang in an otherwise mid-western accent). I always felt St. Louis had more in common with Chicago or even New York than it did with Nashville or Atlanta. It's more ethnically mixed than a lot of mid-western cities.

I do think there was a slight shift to the south over the years. I remember my dad complaining in the 70's that the city was being overrun by hoosiers from southern Missouri.

Even as a kid I decided that St. Louis was the last eastern city and Kansas City was the first western one. From other posts on this site I'm finding I wasn't the only one who felt that way. Being southern never even occurred to me.

[anduarto]

Of course, everything is relative. I've heard people from the upper mid-west (Chicago, Minneapolis) scoff at the idea that St. Louis is midwestern. To these folks it is definitely the south.

At the same time, people like Oscott from the deep south scoff at the idea of it being southern.

When I went to school in Lawrence, KS. the locals used to refer to me as being from "back east" (I think this had something to do with the fact that I said "soda" rather than "pop").

And, of course, here on the east coast anything west of Philadelphia is the midwest.

And that's St. Louis in a nutshell - impossible to put into a box.

[aragx6]

All the Chicagoans I've met consider St. Louis to be Midwestern (they think it's a hell hole though...)

[ajf131]

Perspectives from other regions are one thing. Facts, however, are completely different. There is no conceivable way that I can think of to support an argument for St. Louis being Southern or impossible to classify. It is not part of the Upper Midwest, but is indeed part of the lower Midwest. The Midwest, like the South, can be further subdivided into two separate regions. Everyone I've met from indianapolis, columbus, or kansas city essentially considers St. Louis to be very much like their cities. In fact, some people that I know from Chicago and Minneapolis think that the cities I just mentioned are all borderline cases, which I know is not true. And of the Chicagoans I do know, very few that I have met Chicagoans myself that think St. Louis is not Midwestern. And I honestly am curious about this Southern twang people talk about...St. Louis, like Chicago and pretty much every city, has a distinct nasal accent that if you listen you can distinguish it as belonging to that city. it does not sound Southern to me...sounds like just another form of Midwestern dialect to me. I have heard the Southern dialect and rarely ever hear it around here. I have not really heard noticably Southern dialect in Missouri come to think of it except in extreme southeast and south central Missouri and the bootheel.

[kshe95girl]

Originally Posted by ajf131

Perspectives from other regions are one thing. Facts, however, are completely different. There is no conceivable way that I can think of to support an argument for St. Louis being Southern or impossible to classify. It is not part of the Upper Midwest, but is indeed part of the lower Midwest. The Midwest, like the South, can be further subdivided into two separate regions. Everyone I've met from indianapolis, columbus, or kansas city essentially considers St. Louis to be very much like their cities. In fact, some people that I know from Chicago and Minneapolis think that the cities I just mentioned are all borderline cases, which I know is not true. And of the Chicagoans I do know, very few that I have met Chicagoans myself that think St. Louis is not Midwestern. And I honestly am curious about this Southern twang people talk about...St. Louis, like Chicago and pretty much every city, has a distinct nasal accent that if you listen you can distinguish it as belonging to that city. it does not sound Southern to me...sounds like just another form of Midwestern dialect to me. I have heard the Southern dialect and rarely ever hear it around here. I have not really heard noticably Southern dialect in Missouri come to think of it except in extreme southeast and south central Missouri and the bootheel.

Since leaving Mo, I have always been able to pick out fellow STL folks. To my ear, they are the only ones with no accent whatsoever!
My moms family is from SE Mo, and they do have very noticable drawls, very different from the STL accent.