West Virginia...Southern or Northern? (Huntington, Parkersburg: areas, place, accent)

[harborlady]

"KY, it ain't just jelly" isn't popular?

[Bobilee]

harborlady, maybe Kentucky can adapt Virginia's motto to "KY is for Lovers".

[mlammons]

Originally Posted by David Kennedy

Our people enjoyed a second home in Hardy County begining in 1925...we kept that property until 1986. The old neighboring people used many ancient words that I never hear anymore...fetch, ketched, hain't, gittin', I always thought those words were Elizabethian and English...Ulster-Scots and that really makes sense...they were the people, who fled the English and settled those mountain areas of early Hampshire County..
Robert E. Lee's people lived on Lost River...been some great ones...mais oui...

I took an Appalachian History class last summer at Concord. I was delighted to find that the language of my family from Boone county isn't just some ignorant hillbilly way of speaking (as the rest of the world would have us believe) but a combination of Old English and the language of the Scots-Irish that immigrated to Appalachia. I don't hear those words (h'it, cain't, fer) from the younger generations though...it appears to be a way of speaking that is dying. I have been taping my grandmother tell famiy stories...I want my grandchildren to be able to hear the speech of their ancestors one day.

[David Kennedy]

In a hundred years, you children/ grand-children not yet born will thank you for the gift you are giving them now...

If we know who we were in the past...we can direct a course towards whom we will become in the future...

My Uncle Harry's picture still hangs in the hallway at Concord...one of our favorites colleges.

[harborlady]

LOL bobilee, that ones taken already, even if spousal/relationship murder rate is oddly higher in va.

mlammons I wish my grandmother from parkersburg would have taken the time to write down her recipes. They went to waste right along with her when alzhiemers kicked in. My memories of how she cooked with love are all that's left.

My other granny is a shutterbug and has a million pictures of people none of us recognize. We've tried to get her to put names and dates on them, but she's rather lazy about it. It's only going to mean family history gets lost, but hard to argue with an 85 yr old about 'owing it to the family'. She'd rather be at bingo with the seniors.

[01va571]

Im from Virginia, West Virginia is the south...The Upland south. My family is from Webster Springs, yall southern.

Honestly the eastern panhandle is a whole lot more southern in culture than Northern Virginia hands down. Everyone is mixing up more terms for what regions states belong in anymore, I have heard people in southern Missouri refer to the state as the south, and people in Saint Louis and above say they're the Midwest. Same thing in Virginia, more and more I am hearing Mid-Atlantic vs. upper south, mainly due to the diversity of Northern Virginia and the Hampton Roads area. These kinds of things happen in every state to some extent.

The United Census Bureau says.
\[/SIZE]

The Upland South/Upper South = Kentucky, Virginia,West Virginia,Tennessee, and North Carolina

WV is the south.

look at the West Virginia counties approving Virginia's secession from the U.S.

[Jamie40829]

We have had this discussion on the Kentucky forum. I really think West Virginia, and Virginia for that matter are on that weird line where they could be classified as either region. The area around Ashland and Hunnington is very Midwest, That area reminds me more of Southeastern Michigan than anywhere in Ohio! And the area up in the northern part of the state is very much like Pittsburgh and southwestern PA. I think its all relative as to where you are talking about.

[mas23]

Originally Posted by billscamaros

personally, i think that the whole "northern vs southern" thing is similiar to the "the "hilly-billy/redneck" thing" ........ long over and more legend than reality. we're americans, like everybody else.

Whoa! Whats the dfference between a hillbilly and a redneck

[01va571]

Originally Posted by Jamie40829

We have had this discussion on the Kentucky forum. I really think West Virginia, and Virginia for that matter are on that weird line where they could be classified as either region. The area around Ashland and Hunnington is very Midwest, That area reminds me more of Southeastern Michigan than anywhere in Ohio! And the area up in the northern part of the state is very much like Pittsburgh and southwestern PA. I think its all relative as to where you are talking about.

Allot of eastern, eastern central,and southern WV are all on the same page really (southern IMHO). Yeah up by morgantown and over west a bit it gets strange.

[tallydude02]

There's something similar on the General US Forum regarding this topic.

Again, I think alot of this has to do with where in WV one grew up. Being from north central WV, I don't feel like it's southern. Appalachian yes, southern no. There's a difference.

But to call north central West Virginia northern makes little sense too. I think it's own region. A mixture of both regions if you will. A nice mixture at that.