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On an ancedotal note, the older of the two brothers had a little article published about him in the school alumni magazine. He lived in Maine and got active in politics up there. They interviewed some Maine locals about him and one said that she "liked his slow Southern twang."
Is this proof? Probably not, but I thought it was worth sharing
MDisNorth, The IDEA site is real people with real accents, but the PURPOSE of the site is not to conduct a complete linguistic survey of each state but rather to provide a few authentic samples for stage actors to imitate.
Yes the two brothers accents are not what you would find in Virginia. But what you find in Virginia is not the same dialect you would find in North Carolina, which is not the same dialect you will find in the mountains of Tennesse, and so on and so forth. If you don't believe me go back to the IDEA site and check out the dialect samples from North Carolina. Check the speakers from Ocaocroke Island, the elderly speaker from Rocky Mount, and then the speakers from the mountains. These are three distinct dialects.
The point I am trying to make is that there are many distinct sub-dialects that make up what is considered "Southern" speech. The accents of Southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore are in this family.
Here is a map from Dr. William Labov, the leading expert on dialect in North America. He includes parts of Maryland in his defintion.
Your simply missing the entire point.The site displays real people with real traditional accents,the whole argument is the average Md from that area speaks remotely similar to the two brothers,those are traditional eastern shore accents with similar southern dialects,regardless what Dr.William includes i am telling you the accents are not the same and that is obvious just by comparing them,you hear the difference.No one stated there was not several different southern dialects,you or someone else stated that Md has different southern dialects,however you fail to realize along the eastcoast the dialects are in correlation north to south,Maryland has very few southern dialects and the dialects are at most mixed with a northern dialect,because of the mix it alters how different they sound therefore making there accent not traditionally southern.Dr.Williams may call it a southern dialect,yet specialist including myself who has studied dialects for years include any Maryland native dialect with being northern with some southern dialect similarities,that is common sense.Maine is north of Maryland,therefore the further north you travel the dialects become more northern,that further just proves my point earliar in this thread were i stated the dialects are in correlation to north to southward on the eastcoast.That is why there are some New Yorkers who think Baltimore,DC,Philly accents are southern,that is why there are Maine residents who find Connecticut accents southern,that is why there are DC residents who find Richmond accents southern,they are all within correlation of each other,the further south you travel the thicker it becomes,the only difference is the cities DC/MD have southern migrations that came from decades ago,and recently with gentrification and the shift from the upper north to big cities like Baltimore/DC that is changing and these low income residents are forced to move to areas of PG county,Charles county were there is affordable living.Maryland is northern,your so trapped its not funny,the weather is remotely similar to NYC,subtropical summer climates,rainy springs,potentially dud or snowy winters,the political aspect is very northern and liberal,the anti-religious or non religious numbers are high here as they are in most northern cities,you are part of the Northeastern Corridor,what part of NORTHEAST do you not understand?? You have been grouped by most within whats current and thats the Northeastern Corridor,i laugh when someone mentions Mason Dixon,as do many others who know the true history become sits noncredibility and the contradiction surrounding its meaning.You are northern,northern,northern,walk outside now its 18 degrees currently,hell its 25 in Northern Virginia(start of the actual south yet still part of the DC metropolitan area).Just because there is similarity with a certain dialect does not mean you can officially call it southern,to call it southern you are comparing it to a traditional southern accent,since the eastcoast accents become even southern sounding the further south you travel,you compare the accent to the nearest southern accents thats part of the southeast,that is the Virginia accent,there are Virginians with the same dialects(being that they are not far)yet most of Virginia has a traditional southern accent,and though the Eastern Shore boys have similar dialects,there northern dialect mixture which is so obvious just by listening to them makes them sound entirely different.Which is why if those boys were in Lynchburg,Virginia they would be called CITY!,which is why a Maine resident would call them southern,yet one who has traveled truly knows traditional southern lets not forget that dialect in Eastern Shore stretches up to Southern New Jersey/Pennsylvania with some.You are NORTH,NORTH,NORTH.Even part of your own source shows some 20 percent of Maryland with placing the dialect as being southern while the other 80 percent does not.Sighs!,is it so hard to understand that those areas being close to a southern state would have some influence on it? be it dialect,the build,or etc? Just because its Maryland should not mean within our argument everything about the state should be northern only when southern influences spread through Southern Jersey and Pennsylvania.tsk tsk.Go to google and look up southeast us,the majority geographical map displays for its entire search show the southeast starting with Virginia on down.Your northern!.
Quote:
The major Mid-Atlantic cities display differences in speech that have their roots in the original settlement of the colonies. These differences have often radiated out from the original points of settlement and colored the speech of surrounding areas.
The most important common characteristic is the complex distribution of two forms of short a: the lax a in bat, and the tense a in bad, which sounds very much like the ai in air . Some dialects lax all short a's, others tense all short a 's (See Buffalo below). But in the coastal Mid-Atlantic areas of New York City, New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, both types of short a exist, with complex rules governing which words are tense and which are lax. These rules do, however, differ from city to city: ash, for example, is lax in Philadelphia but tense in New York. Also common to the metropolitan areas of the Northeast is the pronunciation of soft th as d : dis (this), dem (them), etc.
The urban dialects also have grammatical peculiarities. One of these is the use of a distinct pronoun for the second person plural, the equivalent of the Southern y'all. In New York City, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Baltimore, the form is youse, a simple pluralization of you . This form is also heard in more rural areas in Southeastern Pennsylvania, and may have originated there. In Pittsburgh, the form is y'uns , a contraction for you ones. On the Delmarva peninsula, the second person plural is mongst-ye, a relic.
Last edited by MD_IS_NORTH; 02-12-2008 at 09:23 AM..
You are a dialectal specialist aye? Funny that you don't seem to be familar with Dr. William Labov's groundbreaking work on dialectal linguistics (not Dr. Williams, or whatever or whoever you are refering to.)
You obviously know enough to understand that dialect is a spectrum, a continum if you will, with gradual change throughout. So where do YOU draw the line. What standard do YOU use to decide whether a dialect is Southern or not? Do you have one? Or are do you just know it when you hear it? Just knowing it when you hear it isn't good enough for me. Dr. Labov's standard, The monophthongization of /ay/ is consitant, measurable, and his data is replicable. Based on HIS standard, not mine, parts of Maryland are in the Southern dialect region. If you have some data or theory that is better, please enlighten us since you are "specialist who has studied dialects for years."
The fact that only about 20% of Maryland is in the Southern dialect area is exactly my point! I have never said that Maryland IS southern. My entire point is that Maryland is a border state with cultural traits of both the North and the South. The fact that a portion of Maryland is in the Midland dialect region and a portion is in the Southern region only confirms this. If you are willing to concede this point, than I have already made some progress.
You are a dialectal specialist aye? Funny that you don't seem to be familar with Dr. William Labov's groundbreaking work on dialectal linguistics (not Dr. Williams, or whatever or whoever you are refering to.)
You obviously know enough to understand that dialect is a spectrum, a continum if you will, with gradual change throughout. So where do YOU draw the line. What standard do YOU use to decide whether a dialect is Southern or not? Do you have one? Or are do you just know it when you hear it? Just knowing it when you hear it isn't good enough for me. Dr. Labov's standard, The monophthongization of /ay/ is consitant, measurable, and his data is replicable. Based on HIS standard, not mine, parts of Maryland are in the Southern dialect region. If you have some data or theory that is better, please enlighten us since you are "specialist who has studied dialects for years."
The fact that only about 20% of Maryland is in the Southern dialect area is exactly my point! I have never said that Maryland IS southern. My entire point is that Maryland is a border state with cultural traits of both the North and the South. The fact that a portion of Maryland is in the Midland dialect region and a portion is in the Southern region only confirms this. If you are willing to concede this point, than I have already made some progress.
Quote:
You are a dialectal specialist aye? Funny that you don't seem to be familar with Dr. William Labov's groundbreaking work on dialectal linguistics (not Dr. Williams, or whatever or whoever you are refering to
Do not insult my intelligence based on your ignorance that just because someone is unaware of a certain persons work in a particulary subject they are totally ignorant to the facts,you have no idea how i even obtained my information,i certaintly hope you arent as ignorant to think a college degree establishes the only credibility of being aware of a subject ha!.Perhaps if you stop responding so defensively trying to be southern,you would realize that Marylands southern influence is minimal,it is due to being in close proximity to an actual southern state(Virginia),the migration is due to this,these are not MD natives.Realize this,families from Howard County have generations and generations in that area,most of southern MD dialect roots are in the south,the influence and the small dialect influence is due to the migration that become extremely common in the 1900's up till some few years ago when the migration numbers slowed substantially because of the increase movement toward the south,this is not credible toward your argument that Maryland is southern.
Maryland dialect-80 percent northern,20 percent southern=OVERALL NORTHERN,just like its politics,its location,its weather,its energy,its build,it being within the NORTHEASTERN CORRIDOR.Even with southern MD southern dialect having individuals the dialect is still different because of the northern mixture(migrated individuals tend to lose there strong southern dialects at full capacity which does not make it a traditional southern accent with much comparisons,because the comparisons are very minimal.Just listen to the audios yourself of how a Eastern Shore resident usually sounds like,it is different from any Southern accent because of its northern mixture,as i said before to call it southern your using a comparison,Williams uses a comparison that you mentioned,yet what about the words they use such as DERE and how proper they pronounced them compared to there southern neighbors,that does not make the accent a traditional southern dialect because it is missing a piece to be considered such,that is common freaking sense,and still the accents derive from the southern influence of southern migration,not because Maryland sits in the south because it does not.
People in the south are more likely to consider a MD resident north,much before a New Yorker or someone northeast would consider them southern,hell even when i first moved to NYC and a some said i was COUNTRY,they said i had a little bit of it,nothing like the south.Oh and Montgomery County is covered with his southern dialect study,Montgomery County natives have dialects that are extremely similar to the Midlands accent which is northern.Native Washingtonians on average carry a dialect that is still very different from any other regardless of its minimal similarities that he considers southern.Also you totally ignored or didnt understand that the dialects on the eastcoast are in correlation to northward to southern,An NYC dialect still has a correlation to a southern dialect because they both are part of American english,so what would the NYC dialect be in another study to someone who acknowledges the similarities of southerners saying YA'LL as well as New yorkers(YALL is common in both south and south).He established a difference based on his opinions resulting from using certain comparisons yet totally failed to mention the obvious northern dialect mixture with Most MD's native residents.
Last edited by MD_IS_NORTH; 02-12-2008 at 12:33 PM..
Different ethnic groups interacting with each other is by far a NORTHERN thing waaaaaay before southern.Even out west,the interacting is still more common than it is in the south.(ATL and charlotte are like the only cities that tend to have moderate numbers of interacting melting pots).NYC is the biggest melting pot in the northeastern corridor.Better yet most of its cities are the largest melting pots,from DC/BMORE/BOSTON (to a degree)
* * *
Actually, people of different races have always lived closer together in the South than the North. Even before the Civil War, New Orleans was way more integrated -- with a lot more intermarriage -- than anyplace up North. I'm not sure that many Northerners really even saw a lot of blacks before the Northern migration after the Civil War. It's hard to claim that Northerners mixed better than Southerners when they nearly didn't have to mix at all.
A big issue in the North that seemed kind of weird to me, coming from Virginia, was the concept of "white ethnicities". The Italians in my neighborhood in Brooklyn referred to WASPY-types as the "white people" implying that Italians weren't "white". Everyone knew whether they were Italian or Polish or Irish or Jewish or WASP -- except for me. I'd never thought about it before, and didn't fit into any of the categories, so sometimes I pretended to be Irish since my husband is, like, 1/4 Irish Protestant (I think?)
Maybe one indicator of whether a place is "Northern" or "Southern" is whether the "white" people think of themselves primarily as "ethnic" like in New York, Boston and other Northern cities?
MDisNorth, I am trying to give you a chance to PROVE your intellegence by having a serious academic debate about dialectal linguistics. I am presenting peer-reviewed academic research and opinions authored by THE expert in his field, William Labov.
All I am asking from you is your standard for determining what a Southern dialect is? Can you tell me? Do you know? If not, that is fine, I wouldn't expect you to. But if that is the case, than you need to stop passing yourself off as somekind of expert on this matter when it seems all you have is your lay opinion, no better or worse than anybody elses. The time for these kinds of opinions is passed. You have come to this discussion board with a single minded purpose (your name is evidence of this.) You have proceeded to present a unchanging one-sided opinion. You have even gone so far as to tell a native Maryland with a self-described Southern accent who self identifies as a Southern, that he is wrong about himself!! Do you even grasp the absurdity of telling someone that their self-identified cultural identity is mistaken?
It is time to put up or shut up. If you can have a serious academic discussion with me about this topic, than do it. If not I will leave you alone to shout into the wind.
Actually, people of different races have always lived closer together in the South than the North. Even before the Civil War, New Orleans was way more integrated -- with a lot more intermarriage -- than anyplace up North. I'm not sure that many Northerners really even saw a lot of blacks before the Northern migration after the Civil War. It's hard to claim that Northerners mixed better than Southerners when they nearly didn't have to mix at all.
A big issue in the North that seemed kind of weird to me, coming from Virginia, was the concept of "white ethnicities". The Italians in my neighborhood in Brooklyn referred to WASPY-types as the "white people" implying that Italians weren't "white". Everyone knew whether they were Italian or Polish or Irish or Jewish or WASP -- except for me. I'd never thought about it before, and didn't fit into any of the categories, so sometimes I pretended to be Irish since my husband is, like, 1/4 Irish Protestant (I think?)
Maybe one indicator of whether a place is "Northern" or "Southern" is whether the "white" people think of themselves primarily as "ethnic" like in New York, Boston and other Northern cities?
True,however
I stated this before in a previous message,most families especially african american even in NYC have ties to the south.My argument was melting pot is more common north than it is south and has been for a good 20 years now.Nyc/DC/Bmore/Philly have experienced migrations from more areas than any U.S southern city.That is why the biggest melting pots are within the Northeastern corridor,just look up Wikipedia cities cities compare the southern ones to the northern ones.Your likely to find many more higher number of different ethnicities in the area than you are to find in the southern cities with the exception of Miami.
Quote:
New York City is exceptionally diverse. Throughout its history the city has been a major point of entry for immigrants; the term melting pot was first coined to describe densely populated immigrant neighborhoods on the Lower East Side. Today, 36% of the city's population is foreign-born.[9] Among American cities, this proportion is exceeded only by Los Angeles and Miami.[84] While the immigrant communities in those cities are dominated by a few nationalities, in New York no single country or region of origin dominates. The ten largest countries of origin for modern immigration are the Dominican Republic, China, Jamaica, Guyana, Pakistan, Ecuador, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia, and Russia.[86] About 170 languages are spoken in the city.[8]
MDisNorth, I am trying to give you a chance to PROVE your intellegence by having a serious academic debate about dialectal linguistics. I am presenting peer-reviewed academic research and opinions authored by THE expert in his field, William Labov.
All I am asking from you is your standard for determining what a Southern dialect is? Can you tell me? Do you know? If not, that is fine, I wouldn't expect you to. But if that is the case, than you need to stop passing yourself off as somekind of expert on this matter when it seems all you have is your lay opinion, no better or worse than anybody elses. The time for these kinds of opinions is passed. You have come to this discussion board with a single minded purpose (your name is evidence of this.) You have proceeded to present a unchanging one-sided opinion. You have even gone so far as to tell a native Maryland with a self-described Southern accent who self identifies as a Southern, that he is wrong about himself!! Do you even grasp the absurdity of telling someone that their self-identified cultural identity is mistaken?
It is time to put up or shut up. If you can have a serious academic discussion with me about this topic, than do it. If not I will leave you alone to shout into the wind.
I proved my intelligence by telling you something you still have yet to discredit,until you do refrain from speaking to me about this issue.
Determining what a southern dialect is,is based on similarities and comparisons,and the comparison between those Eastern Shore dialects and a traditional southern dialect found in Virginia are different because of there northern mixture,that once again is obvious just by listening to the audios,are you going to tell me that the Eastern Shore dialects sound more northern because its the northernmost southern dialect?? HAHAHAHAHA,i guess i can use the boys saying WE WENT UP DERE(There) to consider the dialects the southernmost northern dialects lmaoooooo,hell "DERE is a common northeast saying totally different from any traditional southern dialect that uses the word,that is a different,my cousins in ATL saying WE WENT DHURR,MY FAMILY IN VIRGINIA SAYS THURR,show me any dialect found in the southeast on average that says WE WENT UP DERE?.You need to shut up and stop this senseless rambling about Maryland being the south,when its part of the northeastern corridor.The thread title asked a question,the answer is NORTH,CULTURE WISE=NORTH,DIALECTS PRIMARILY NORTH AND EVEN WITH ITS SOUTHERN DIALECTS IS A DIFFERENCE FROM TRADITIONAL ACCENTS IN THE SOUTH,TO CALL SOMETHING SOUTHERN YOUR COMPARING,YOUR SOURCE COMPARED THE SOUTHERN DIALECTS YET NOT THE NORTHERN,IF THE DIALECTS IN MD ARE PRIMARILY NORTHERN THAT FURTHER PROVES MY POINT,ITS A NORTHERN STATE,SURROUNDED BY NORTHERN ALIKE POLITICS,MINDSET,WEATHER AND EVEN DIALECT.MARYLAND IS NORTH
NOW PUT SOMETHING UP TO DISCREDIT THAT.
You are talking to someone who has studied this for years,your debating against facts and you sound stupid as hell,why dont you shssh it up and realize YOU ARE NORTHERN,I do not care what you identify as,Technically you are northern,you are part of a state that has two cities carved inside it that are part of the NORTHEASTERN CORRIDOR,YOU ARE NORTHERN,NORTHERN,NORTHERN,PERIOD!
Its time for your insults to common sense to stop,because you want so bad to identify with the south(which your name does not give me).You are Northern,You are not in a place were the average southern in Virginia on down would come and not consider the average person A yankee,that is due to the difference in being north of the south which is still in correlation to the way people talk.Sighs,just stop.
The Mason-Dixon line became symbolic of the division between the "free states" and "slave states" from the Missouri Compromise until the end of the American Civil War. Pennsylvania abolished slavery early while Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri remained slave states until the end of the war.
After the Civil War, the line continued to be considered a cultural boundary.[citation needed] Some have imagined it continuing westward from Pennsylvania down the Ohio River to the Mississippi River, and crossing the Mississippi to place Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas south of the line. Debate whether border states such as Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and West Virginia belong on the north or south side of this boundary line continues to this day. However, a common assumption of the split between "northern" and "southern" U.S. lies between Virginia and West Virginia.
MY POINT PROVEN!
YOU NORTHERN!
Last edited by MD_IS_NORTH; 02-12-2008 at 01:25 PM..
I found this interesting site. Its worth a read. Even the Maryland song talks about "northern scum." I personally don't feel strongly one way or the other about being north or south, I'll just settle for mid-atlantic.
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