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Originally Posted by JMatl
This is a great post, and it made me reconsider my initial thought on Pittsburgh's Southern equivalent.
It's much smaller of course, but I'm going with Chattanooga now. There are a lot of similarities - river city's that were formerly very industrial, reinvented economies & Downtowns, a shared geography and culture, etc.
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It's more of a Knoxville/Chattanooga hybrid. Its industrial heritage and economic resurgence are similar to Chattanooga, but its legacy institutions and regional importance are similar to Knoxville, which is basically the cultural and economic hub of the southern Appalachians.
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Originally Posted by 80s_kid
This is very true. I've always knew about the Burgh's use of Yinz but I heard some East TN natives use Yuns and that just made me think Pittsburgh influences Appalachia (maybe they used to say Yinz in Southern Appalachia but it gradually morphed into yuns ).
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It was actually "yunz" in Pittsburgh too. "Yinz" is more of a mockery than anything, considering the term "yinzer" was first used by students at Carnegie Mellon University back in the 1980s to differentiate themselves from the rest of the local population, which they mostly regarded as dumb hicks. Thankfully, relations between the city and its major universities have improved dramatically in the last 30 years.