Midwesterners: more like Northeasterners or Southerners? (living, area, cities)
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Midwesterners are more similar to Northeasterners in my opinion.
But, with all the midwest people moving to the south and the cultural changes occurring in the south over the passed few decades I think in time midwesterners and southerners will be more similar to each other.
Midwesterners are more similar to Northeasterners in my opinion.
But, with all the midwest people moving to the south and the cultural changes occurring in the south over the passed few decades I think in time midwesterners and southerners will be more similar to each other.
In the part of the Midwest where I grew up (Southeast MO), Midwesterners seemed a lot more like Southerners. Even down to the accent for a lot of people. Some people sounded so Southern you would think they grew up in South Arkansas or Louisiana while their neighbors may have had the typical flat Midwestern accent.
Now I live in South Florida along with a massive amount of Northeasterners and I'm positive Midwesterners are NOT at all like the Northeasterners that live here.
In the part of the Midwest where I grew up (Southeast MO), Midwesterners seemed a lot more like Southerners. Even down to the accent for a lot of people. Some people sounded so Southern you would think they grew up in South Arkansas or Louisiana while their neighbors may have had the typical flat Midwestern accent.
Now I live in South Florida along with a massive amount of Northeasterners and I'm positive Midwesterners are NOT at all like the Northeasterners that live here.
I am from SE MO myself, and I have to agree that Midwesterners have nothing in common with folks from the NE.
However, the transition zone from southern to midwestern occurs very suddenly in SE MO....one can literally transition within 30 miles.
Once that transition is made, the folks that live north of the zone dont have that much in common with southerners.
I've lived on both sides of the transition zone, so this is something I know very well.
I would say we midwesterners are our own thing and not similar to either. Other regions have influenced us, but overall both the northeast and south are quite different from us. Northeasterners influenced the upper midwest during our founding years, they were the first to settle here (upper midwest) however during the "great migration" southerners both black and white moved here by the thousands and left thier mark. The biggest influence however on our midwestern culture was the Germans, Dutch and Norwegians that settled in the midwest in the mid to late 1800s. I think both southerners and northeasterners see the midwest as a middle ground between the extremes, and that I agree is true. We are a middle ground and can relate to both northeast and south.
The southern part of the Midwest (the southern portions of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois) were settled first and by a wave of migration via the Ohio River with strong southern roots.
But most of the midwest is a product of the northeast. Certainly the Great Lakes region. We've been joined at the hip with the northeast since the time they dug that big ditch to connect the Hudson/Mohawk with Lake Erie.
I am from Kentucky but now live up along the North Dakota and Minnesota border. The midwest is such a large area and hard to classify an entire region. As other have said...the southern parts of the Midwest (south of Interstate 70) definitely feel more the south with the language. I am always struck at what seems like a big difference as I drive down I-57 in Illinois from Champaign to Mt Vernon...going from more typical Midwest corn flat land to trees and southern drawl in that distance.
Great Lakes region -- Chicago-Milwaukee-Detroit all to me would resemble more Northeastern U.S. due to industralization that occurred in the past.
As for Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota and the Dakotas I dont see any northeastern u.s. or southern influences....
I do agree that as one goes west of about 100 degrees longitude it is much more western feel (west of Bismarck-Pierre-Kearney NE. The far upper Midwest (where I live) northeastern ND into northern MN and the UP of Michigan has a strong Canadian influence. The Red River valley was first settled by those coming south from Hudson Bay to Winnipeg then south to Grand Forks and thus there is a natural Grand Forks-Winnipeg connection that lasts to this day.
I am from SE MO myself, and I have to agree that Midwesterners have nothing in common with folks from the NE.
However, the transition zone from southern to midwestern occurs very suddenly in SE MO....one can literally transition within 30 miles.
Once that transition is made, the folks that live north of the zone dont have that much in common with southerners.
I've lived on both sides of the transition zone, so this is something I know very well.
I think it's probably somewhere around the Missouri River or as someone else said Interstate 70.
I take it by your user name that you are probably from not too far from where I grew up, if you listened to a St Louis radio station, which is Jefferson County. Then college in both Springfield MO and finishing at Southern Illinois and then living in St Louis before moving all over the stinking place and now in South Florida. I take pride in my ability to identify a person by their accent which I think I'm pretty good at doing due to not being able to stay in one geographical area for very long.
Truth. Grew up in Minneapolis and live in Pittsburgh. When I was in Minnesota, when we thought of Pittsburgh (if at all), we always thought of it as East Coast or Northeast.
I've learned that it's a little bit different from the cities in the Northeast that are actually coastal, but it is *decidedly* not Midwestern. Pittsburgh's in kind of a neat spot geographically, but if you have to lump it in with one region or another, it is definitely Northeast loooong before it's Midwest...
My friend's husband even refers to Ohio as more of the East Coast, but he's from California which makes some sense.
After living in Florida, a mixed salad at best, you really get a feel for the different regions and their people. I'm from the northeast, lived amongst a LOT of Midwesterners and have lived in the South for quite awhile as well. Midwesterners, for the most part, are their own entity. I think northern Kentuckians can be a lot like Midwesterners and there is a lot of other bleed over as well, such as Western Penn., western and north New York, but Midwesterners are very different from other areas. I do not see much influence from the South or North. It's funny how much you learn by living in Florida. I can now tell the difference between Midwestern, Northeastern and Southern accents as well.
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