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Again my son was taught in school a couple of weeks ago that KY, VA, WV, NC, SC, MD, TN, AL, MS, GA and FL are all the SE and that is good enough for me!
Yikes, MD and WV? I've never heard them called southern before. My aunt lived in WV, and much of the state associates with Pittsburgh. That's certainly not south...
I don't think you are quite correct that MOST of the state associates with Pittsburgh, only the northern panhandle area. People are always trying to define WV by the northern panhandle, which is like defining a submarine by its periscope.
Yikes, MD and WV? I've never heard them called southern before. My aunt lived in WV, and much of the state associates with Pittsburgh. That's certainly not south...
The northern panhandle obviously would have ties to Pittsburgh since it's close by. I grew up about an hour and a half from the southern part of West Virginia and that part of West Virginia is very southern Appalachian. It should be pointed out that Appalachia is different from the deep south too. Although I am from northeastern Tennessee, south Alabama and Georgia felt like a different world to me.
But West Virginia is kind of hard to define wholly because it shares characteristics from the regions it surrounds... kind of like southern Illinois. Although Illinois is clearly in the midwest, southern portions along the Ohio River have a southern feel.
I worked with alot of West Virginians while living in Florida and Johnson City, TN. I have also visited the state extensively from top to bottom. My concensus is that people from Clarksburg northward tend to identify with southwestern PA and Ohio and people south of Charleston identify more with places like Kentucky and eastern Tennessee. That area between Clarksburg and Charleston is kind where you'll find both identites. Eastern West Virginia is probably the "least West Virginian" because its now full of Washington, DC transplants.
But generally the stereotypes associated with West Virginia are the southern stereotypes regardless if the person lives in Wheeling or Welch or Martinsburg.
Kentucky is more rural than Virginia is, with less large cities, so it may be easy for some mapmakers to lump it in with the megalopolis extending from nyc, but its flora and fauna are vastly southern, with live oaks growing in the southeast. The Usda plant database website shows spanish moss is even native to this area
so this means kentucky touches a state w/ live oaks and spanish moss, kind of like tennessees borders. Also you can drive two hours south of my home in bg and be in northern alabama, if i lived 100 miles further east or west i'd get to mississippi or georgia respectively in that same amount of time, or n. carolina or arkansas even quicker. On the other hand i'd be maybe an eighth of the way through illinois, idiana, or ohio.... even for kentuckians along the borders with the midwest its a much longer journey to get a ways into any of those states. both Kentucky and Viriginia should be on southern maps due to dialect, culture, climate and native species of plants and animals.
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