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Northern Appalachia is a polar opposite of Southern Appalachia, such to the point the two can never be grouped together.
There's differences, but they are hardly polar opposites. It's hard to determine where one gives way to another. I'd argue around 1/3rd of the way through West Virginia, but other lines are equally defensible. I've certainly met people from rural Southwestern Pennsylvania with quasi-southern accents. Then again, I've met people from rural Central Ohio with them too.
There's differences, but they are hardly polar opposites. It's hard to determine where one gives way to another. I'd argue around 1/3rd of the way through West Virginia, but other lines are equally defensible. I've certainly met people from rural Southwestern Pennsylvania with quasi-southern accents. Then again, I've met people from rural Central Ohio with them too.
Your experiences contradict professional linguistic studies, so I'm supposed to believe you over them? Northern Appalachia is culturally, linguistically, historically, and demographically different from Southern Appalachia.
No you couldn't. The Great Plains and Great Lakes aren't exactly polar opposites. If they were, why would they both be included in the Midwest?
Industrialized and agrarian are pretty close to opposites. I know those labels are less true in modern times, but agribusiness is still king in the Plains.
Your experiences contradict professional linguistic studies, so I'm supposed to believe you over them? Northern Appalachia is culturally, linguistically, historically, and demographically different from Southern Appalachia.
The "Midland" accent region is a portion of the country where northern and southern speech patterns mix. To my Yankified ears (I grew up in New England) a lot of people in the Midlands have a semi-southern twang to their accents.
Industrialized and agrarian are pretty close to opposites. I know those labels are less true in modern times, but agribusiness is still king in the Plains.
Yes and no...but mostly no. The biggest cities of the Great Plains, Omaha, KC and Minneapolis were all industrial processing centers for agricultural products, not "cowtowns", the same way Pittsburgh or Cleveland were industrial processing centers for extracted natural resources, not "mining towns".
And the "farming" of today is more akin to our conception of industrial labor than the pastoral "working the land" imaginings of non-farmers. The Great Plains are basically an enormous food factory without the benefit of organized labor.
Not that those cities should be included in any list of 'Rust Belt" cities, they are "Grain Belt" cities, but their connection to their agrarian past is more based in stockyards, grain mills, slaughterhouses and rail yards than cattle drives and cowboys. But the "Rust Belt" and "the Midwest" are not synonyms.
To say nothing of the fact that the rural Great Lakes is everybit as "agrarian" as the rural Great Plains. The real reason they are both included in our idea of the Midwest, is that the Great Lakes states very consciously and calculatingly marketed themselves as part of the Midwest (which is a term originally used to primarily describe Kansas and Nebraska, and to a lesser degree Iowa, Missouri, even Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia) to attract emigrants and settlers.
Industrialized and agrarian are pretty close to opposites. I know those labels are less true in modern times, but agribusiness is still king in the Plains.
The culture, linguistics, and demographics are not nearly enough to be polar opposites, I'm sorry. Your argument is weak.
Yes and no...but mostly no. The biggest cities of the Great Plains, Omaha, KC and Minneapolis were all industrial processing centers for agricultural products, not "cowtowns", the same way Pittsburgh or Cleveland were industrial processing centers for extracted natural resources, not "mining towns".
And the "farming" of today is more akin to our conception of industrial labor than the pastoral "working the land" imaginings of non-farmers. The Great Plains are basically an enormous food factory without the benefit of organized labor.
Not that those cities should be included in any list of 'Rust Belt" cities, they are "Grain Belt" cities, but their connection to their agrarian past is more based in stockyards, grain mills, slaughterhouses and rail yards than cattle drives and cowboys. But the "Rust Belt" and "the Midwest" are not synonyms.
To say nothing of the fact that the rural Great Lakes is everybit as "agrarian" as the rural Great Plains. The real reason they are both included in our idea of the Midwest, is that the Great Lakes states very consciously and calculatingly marketed themselves as part of the Midwest (which is a term originally used to primarily describe Kansas and Nebraska, and to a lesser degree Iowa, Missouri, even Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia) to attract emigrants and settlers.
Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia are not Midwestern at all.
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