What do people mean by "southern" and "Midwestern"? (Springfield: vs., agriculture)

[linicx]

I agree with you. The problem with the people who dream this stuff up is simple to understand. They never set foot outside of DC. .
s

Originally Posted by MoSouthernMan

The census maps are BS though. Delaware is NOT a southern state! Most of Maryland is NOT a southern state as well, heck Missouri is more southern than Maryland is.

The census needs to break states down into different regions depending what part of the state you're in. Like WV for example the part that jets way north should not be in the southern region.

Missouri same way. Places like the southern quarter of the state should not be lumped in with the Midwest. I wish they would break down the regions more.

[MoSouthernMan]

Originally Posted by linicx

I agree with you. The problem with the people who dream this stuff up is simple to understand. They never set foot outside of DC. .
s

Very true. Like northern VA for example I wouldn't lump in with the south, but more the mid atlantic and northeast should have their own region. I don't see anything southern about northern VA that isn't too far from PA. Just like ND should not be in the same type of Midwest region as Missouri which the census has.

[linicx]

Again I agree. Except for slaves I didn't see much southern in the early history of English VA. I think the Dakotas belong in the Mountain Time zone, but I don't think its is a great indicator either.

Every state has an historical mix of immigrants beginning with our native North Americans. The Illinois Nation, for instance, held land on both sides of the Mississippi including Missouri. The second treaty that ceded land to the government was signed south of St. Louis.

[ColdAilment]

Originally Posted by RDM66

I agree that accents and dialects are fading over time. About a year ago there was a piece on NPR about a linguist in Texas who has conducted a 25-year study on the Texas twang. He met annually with the same group of Texans over a 25-year period and made sound recordings of them. Over time their accents mellowed out and were less pronounced. He blamed the rise of mass media for killing regional dialects and accents. Now everyone everywhere is learning subconsciously to speak like a news broadcaster.

I think over time my own accent has faded. I remember more than 30 years ago when I started college in Kansas City my classmates would tease me about my accent. I sounded like a "hick from the sticks" compared to them. Over time I've lost some of it. It's softened and is less noticeable. I think my accent probably resembled Harry Truman's accent at that time. Truman grew up on farm only 5 miles from where I was raised. Probably nobody in Missouri speaks like this anymore. Not even Truman would speak like this if he were alive today.



President Harry S. Truman fires General Douglas MacArthur - YouTube

Might want to traverse the state of Mississippi if you think accents are fading. Maybe they aren't as thick as they were 70 years ago before television and such, but with over 40 years of adequate access to television and exposure of people with other accents, I can tell you, the accents in the south are still pretty thick.

I pride myself in often being able to pick out what state a person is from based on their accent. People from more urban areas of Tennessee often have a very slight southern accent about them, in some cases have no southern accent at all. In the hills of the Appalachians in Tennessee and North Carolina the accents grow thicker. Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, in their medium sized and smaller towns still have the thickest southern accents of anywhere, and that hasn't changed.

Within the large cities, Atlanta, Birmingham, Mobile, Savannah, New Olreans, the accents are pretty much washed out, with an influx of northern people, and the metro lifestyle, southern accents fade greatly.

The coastal regions of the southern states are also mostly free from southern accents. Biloxi and Gulport in Mississippi feel more like the Florida panhandle than they do the deep south.

And someone mentioned it earlier, but a man living in a rural area of New York would have more in common with a man living in a rural area of Mississippi than he would with a man living in metro New York City.

Rural people, no matter what state you are in, will usually enjoy country music, hunting, fishing, big trucks, and conservative values. Urban people will be pretty much the opposite, this holds true whether you're in Atlanta, the capital of the south, or New York City, the largest melting pot in the world.

[MoSouthernMan]

Great post I saw in another thread from THB last year. Pretty much exactly what I preach.
//www.city-data.com/forum/gener...een-north.html

A combination of US 60, The Ohio River, and a few other localized factors.

A line is a pretty rough estimation anyway. Here in Southeast Missouri, different communities are more southern/northern depending on various factors such as history and immigration patterns. U.S. 60 is a decent approximation around here but I would say it's probably 25-30 miles too far south for a true dividing line. Places 20 miles north of U.S. 60 are still pretty southern culturally.

Maybe somewhere around the line on my attachment for SE Missouri.

[redbacchus]

So yeah guys. It's been established where Missouri is "Midwestern" and where Missouri is "Southern".

My question is *WHY*?

[MUTGR]

Originally Posted by STLviaMSP

Obviously you didn't read the article, as it is a comparison of red states and blue states along a variety of health, educational, and economic metrics. I suggest you study up. He makes a fair point: exactly what do the majority of red states bring to the table except for problems?

Then why to people keep fleeing the blue states in droves for those red states?

As the North Rests on Its Laurels, the South Is Rising Fast | Joel Kotkin

People keep voting with their feet.

[tuckessee]

Originally Posted by redbacchus

So yeah guys. It's been established where Missouri is "Midwestern" and where Missouri is "Southern".

My question is *WHY*?

The areas that are southern in culture are within the humid subtropical climate zone, have southern flora and fauna (cypress, tupelo, southern oaks, yellow pines, neotropical migratory waterfowl, alligator snapping turtles, etc.), southern accents, euphemisms, and demeanor (y'all, bless her heart, slow easy-going attitude, at the grocery you push a buggy), southern crops (cotton, rice, tobacco) and restaurants serve southern cuisine (fried meats and veggies, pulled pork, cornbread). The further north you travel in that state and as you switch climates these factors quickly dissipate and turn into Midwestern culture, with a blend in the middle. I can't speak for Midwest culture because I've never seen it. From what I understand German food is very popular, the people either have no accent or sound like Wisconsinians. Flat black dirt land with no trees

[MoSouthernMan]

Originally Posted by tuckessee

The areas that are southern in culture are within the humid subtropical climate zone, have southern flora and fauna (cypress, tupelo, southern oaks, yellow pines, neotropical migratory waterfowl, alligator snapping turtles, etc.), southern accents, euphemisms, and demeanor (y'all, bless her heart, slow easy-going attitude, at the grocery you push a buggy), southern crops (cotton, rice, tobacco) and restaurants serve southern cuisine (fried meats and veggies, pulled pork, cornbread). The further north you travel in that state and as you switch climates these factors quickly dissipate and turn into Midwestern culture, with a blend in the middle. I can't speak for Midwest culture because I've never seen it. From what I understand German food is very popular, the people either have no accent or sound like Wisconsinians. Flat black dirt land with no trees

Except most Missourian's don't sound like they're from WI. Missouri outside of the places that have a southern dialect in southern Missouri, speak with the Midland Dialect. WI does not fall within Midland Dialect.

http://hugh.thejourneyler.org/wordpr...alect_map2.jpg

[Flyover_Country]

Originally Posted by tuckessee

The areas that are southern in culture are within the humid subtropical climate zone, have southern flora and fauna (cypress, tupelo, southern oaks, yellow pines, neotropical migratory waterfowl, alligator snapping turtles, etc.), southern accents, euphemisms, and demeanor (y'all, bless her heart, slow easy-going attitude, at the grocery you push a buggy), southern crops (cotton, rice, tobacco) and restaurants serve southern cuisine (fried meats and veggies, pulled pork, cornbread). The further north you travel in that state and as you switch climates these factors quickly dissipate and turn into Midwestern culture, with a blend in the middle. I can't speak for Midwest culture because I've never seen it. From what I understand German food is very popular, the people either have no accent or sound like Wisconsinians. Flat black dirt land with no trees

German food is very popular in parts of MO but there is very little in MO that qualifies as "flat black dirt land with no trees." A few counties in the very northwest part of the state along I-29 do but that's it. That description really fits Iowa, Nebraska, the eastern half of the Dakotas, southern Minnesota and Wisconsin, and most of Illinois. Nowhere in Missouri is there anything that sounds like a Wisconsin accent. You don't get the "Meeneesooota" accent until you get into South Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. You might get is some old-timers in St. Louis with a little bit of the nasal accent saying "fark" instead of "fork" and "farty far" instead of "forty four." I don't think that sounds anything like the Minnesota accent, they'd draw the Os out and say "fooorty fooor."