Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Hillman, I loved the vid - made me seriously miss setting out for the back country of Osage County (ok, not the true Ozarks - more the foothills - but close enough ) on a spring or fall weekend.
Silvermouse - these guys' resistance to Missouri being culturally Southern is very weird! They should read some Twain (who more than once referred to MO as a Southern state ).
That's because most of Missouri for the most part is not culturally Southern. I have been all over the South and over much of Missouri and I for one happen to know just by common sense that Missouri is not nearly as southern as the northernmost southern states. If I recall correctly,The Missouri that Mark Twain grew up in was far different than the one today. Doesn't anybody read history anymore? Missouri even back then was a heavily divided state not nearly like today. Mark Twain even went so far as to acknowledge this...his stories pretty much reflect that as well. Anyone who would say St. Louis, Columbia, and Kansas City are nothing like the rest of Missouri...that's removing pretty much all of Missouri's major cities that give it its identity. NO one state is a homogenous mixture, that is true, but there are more similarities I think Missourians have than differences...most of Missouri retains a lot of influence from all three of these cities while at the same time having its own rural vibe. This is not the different from any state anywhere. The only times I truly sense that I've entered an entirely different world is in the Mississippi Delta region and the far south central Ozark region of Missouri, like around St. Francois County and Poplar Bluff. The people there are more like Arkansas than like the rest of the state.
The dialect of rural Missouri has many phonological, grammatical, and lexical Southern features - as do dialects of rural SOUTHERN Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio (east of there it gets more complicated), and the southeast corner of Kanasas (further west into Kansas I'm not terribly experienced with).
The accent of rural NORTHERN Illinois is a Northern accent, similar to a Wisconsin accent, just as a rural Missouri accent has a lot in common with an (at least northern) Arkansas accent. It has to do with who settled rural Missouri back in the nineteenth century (all the way up to its northern border), and these were primarily people from the upland/mountain South (Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, what's today West Virginia, etc.)
I'd be happy to share with you (by email or another file sharing app of your choice) a paper I wrote in graduate school on a syntactic feature found in Missouri (as well as elsewhere in the mountain South - and I use that term linguistically, obviously, and not geographically) that can be traced back to older forms of Scots-Irish English, but I feel silly going into too much detail about nerdy stuff like that on CD. Just let me know - and I'm dead serious.
Ah, linguistics!! Interesting topic!! If you are well versed in linguistics, Alicia, you've probably seen some of the Hans Kurath maps of U.S. Dialects. I remember this map showing something along the lines of 23 to 24 dialects withing the U.S., with each dialect falling into one of three basic divisions: Northern, Midland, and Southern. Northern includes the New England accents, Upstate New York, and the territory around the Great Lakes. The area where I'm from, Northern Ohio, speaks "Inland Northern", which is a Northern dialect heard in Northern Ohio/Indiana/Illinois and all of Michigan. It is the nasal twang of Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland. Listen to Hillary Clinton, and you'll hear a good example of this accent. The noticeable feature of our accent is the "ee-ack", as in "we don't hee-ave an ee-accent", something folks love to say around here.
Go down the road from Cleveland to Columbus, and one hears Inland Northern giving way to the Midlands accent. Not as nasal, and the letter "o" takes on an "ew" sound to Northern ears. Where does all of this have relevance to Missouri?? Well....
Midland speech in the midwest states has two basic divisions: North Midland and South Midland. Pittsburgh, PA, for example, speaks with a North Midland dialect. Cincinnati speaks South Midland. Columbus and Indy sit right about where North and South Midland differentiate. My perception of Missouri was that Branson speaks South Midland, and St. Louis speaks a solidly North Midland dialect like Pittsburgh, PA.
I think folks mistake South Midland for Southern. Old folks in South Midland areas said things like "a-goin', a-thinkin', a-guessin', etc. The phrase "I'm a-fixin' ta go up town" would be a South Midland type phrase. The letter "r" is very much present, unlike in Southern speech. Southernmost Ohio speaks SOuth Midland, as does Northern WVA. Southern WVA speaks Southern. Compare the accent of someone from Fairmont, WV, or Marietta, OH to what you hear in the MO Ozarks. This is the accent of Southern MO. Than compare the accent of Southern WVA to Northern WVA, and you will hear the difference. South Midland is a twangy, country sounding accent, but not extremely drawled like Southern. Southern accents drop the letter "r", unlike South Midland accents.
Ah, linguistics!! Interesting topic!! If you are well versed in linguistics, Alicia, you've probably seen some of the Hans Kurath maps of U.S. Dialects. I remember this map showing something along the lines of 23 to 24 dialects withing the U.S., with each dialect falling into one of three basic divisions: Northern, Midland, and Southern. Northern includes the New England accents, Upstate New York, and the territory around the Great Lakes. The area where I'm from, Northern Ohio, speaks "Inland Northern", which is a Northern dialect heard in Northern Ohio/Indiana/Illinois and all of Michigan. It is the nasal twang of Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland. Listen to Hillary Clinton, and you'll hear a good example of this accent. The noticeable feature of our accent is the "ee-ack", as in "we don't hee-ave an ee-accent", something folks love to say around here.
Go down the road from Cleveland to Columbus, and one hears Inland Northern giving way to the Midlands accent. Not as nasal, and the letter "o" takes on an "ew" sound to Northern ears. Where does all of this have relevance to Missouri?? Well....
Midland speech in the midwest states has two basic divisions: North Midland and South Midland. Pittsburgh, PA, for example, speaks with a North Midland dialect. Cincinnati speaks South Midland. Columbus and Indy sit right about where North and South Midland differentiate. My perception of Missouri was that Branson speaks South Midland, and St. Louis speaks a solidly North Midland dialect like Pittsburgh, PA.
I think folks mistake South Midland for Southern. Old folks in South Midland areas said things like "a-goin', a-thinkin', a-guessin', etc. The phrase "I'm a-fixin' ta go up town" would be a South Midland type phrase. The letter "r" is very much present, unlike in Southern speech. Southernmost Ohio speaks SOuth Midland, as does Northern WVA. Southern WVA speaks Southern. Compare the accent of someone from Fairmont, WV, or Marietta, OH to what you hear in the MO Ozarks. This is the accent of Southern MO. Than compare the accent of Southern WVA to Northern WVA, and you will hear the difference. South Midland is a twangy, country sounding accent, but not extremely drawled like Southern. Southern accents drop the letter "r", unlike South Midland accents.
You know what you are talking about! I would say that most of Kentucky speaks Southern. The Ohio River is the approximate dividing line of southern speech patterns. Southern dialect is present in Southern Missouri, but it is not the dominant dialect in most parts of Southern Missouri except in the Mississippi Delta area. Most of Arkansas speaks a distinctly southern dialect except maybe for the Northwest corner, but around Fayetteville the accent is certainly Southern.
Actually, ajf131, there has never been anything but a rhotic (non-'R'-dropping) dialect in Kentucky - therefore, it wouldn't be 'Southern' according to your definition of 'Southern.'
Orwelleaut - Hans Kurath's (admittedly somewhat archaic) South Midland dialect IS a variety of Southern English - it is what I have been referring to as a "Mountain Southern" (or APPALACHIAN) dialect, rather than what some would call a "Deep Southern" dialect.
The paper I referred to in an earlier post is a quantitative examination of a South Midlands syntactic feature which is VERY prominent across the entire state of Missouri and non-existent in North Midland speech. My research was based on five-hundred surveys distributed to native Missourians across the state. My mentor on this project was Matthew Gordon, THE authority (along with Gilbert Youmans, with whom I worked on other projects) on language variation / sociolinguistics (this is what 'dialectology' is referred to in modern academia) at the University of Missouri-Columbia. I also worked with Michael Montgomery, who is retired now but was at that time faculty in the linguistics department at the University of South Carolina (in another Columbia. ). I worked with Dr. Montgomery because he was the only person to ever study this particular syntactic feature before I did (and even coined its operational technical label).
Orwelleaut, I also find it rather ironic that you're trying to argue with me on a subject so close to my heart when you merely 'drove through Missouri' once, while I spent a significant part of my life (my entire youth, from ages eleven through twenty-eight) LIVING EVERY DAY OF MY LIFE in non-urban Missouri. (I also miss Missouri with an intense passion, but I'm stuck in the greasy coastal Mid-Atlantic for reasons to complicated to go into.)
Last edited by Alicia Bradley; 06-05-2009 at 10:40 AM..
Actually, ajf131, there has never been anything but a rhotic (non-'R'-dropping) dialect in Kentucky - therefore, it wouldn't be 'Southern' according to your definition of 'Southern.'
Orwelleaut - Hans Kurath's (admittedly somewhat archaic) South Midland dialect IS a variety of Southern English - it is what I have been referring to as a "Mountain Southern" (or APPALACHIAN) dialect, rather than what some would call a "Deep Southern" dialect.
The paper I referred to in an earlier post is a quantitative examination of a South Midlands syntactic feature which is VERY prominent across the entire state of Missouri and non-existent in North Midland speech. My research was based on five-hundred surveys distributed to native Missourians across the state. My mentor on this project was Matthew Gordon, THE authority (along with Gilbert Youmans, with whom I worked on other projects) on language variation / sociolinguistics (this is what 'dialectology' is referred to in modern academia) at the University of Missouri-Columbia. I also worked with Michael Montgomery, who is retired now but was at that time faculty in the linguistics department at the University of South Carolina (in another Columbia. ). I worked with Dr. Montgomery because he was the only person to ever study this particular syntactic feature before I did (and even coined its operational technical label).
Orwelleaut, I also find it rather ironic that you're trying to argue with me on a subject so close to my heart when you merely 'drove through Missouri' once, while I spent a significant part of my life (my entire youth, from ages eleven through twenty-eight) LIVING EVERY DAY OF MY LIFE in non-urban Missouri. (I also miss Missouri with an intense passion, but I'm stuck in the greasy coastal Mid-Atlantic for reasons to complicated to go into.)
Since when do you decide what my criteria is? You are now putting words in my mouth. Southern dialect varies by state, and I know simply by you saying most of Missouri speaks is absolutely untrue. The Mountain South dialect as you call it on the map I saw didn't extend much farther north than Lebanon, Missouri, and even in that area dialects vary greatly. Look up Southern American English in wikipedia..it is impossible too change that map btw, it's been the same way since it was put up, and it was there before I entered there,and tell me that Kentucky doesn't coincide with that accent. I have heard Kentucky's accent many times and if that's not a Southern accent I don't know what is. What I can say is that the majority of Missouri is not dominated by Southern dialect, nor does most of the state favor it. Every dialect map out there proves this...I don't even need to provide proof because I searched for all of it a long time ago. Look it up yourself. You're even refuting sources based on your sole experience. My dad grew up further south in Missouri than you and he read your posts and thinks you couldn't be more wrong. I've even heard famous fisherman in the Ozarks like Dion Hibdon who grew up in Stover, Missouri, not that far east of Clinton...he has a bit of a twang perhaps but definitely an overall Midwestern accent you'd expect in the rural Midwest at that latitude. Unlike Orwelleaut, I have been to Clinton several times and don't see one thing Southern about it. Same with Rolla. I called a few friends in Kansas City and asked them about Clinton...they don't agree at all with what you are saying, and they've been there even more than me. Maybe it was like that when you were growing up, but it sure as hell isn't anymore. Heck...you couldn't get sweet tea, grits, and hominy in Joplin in the 1960s according to my dad, and I know you can't get them even remotely near the quantities you can in Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, and Arkansas. Also, across the entire state of Missouri? That is baloney. South Midland is NOT a variety of Southern dialect. South Midland covers at least half of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, and Kansas, and is bounded on the south by the Ohio River. The majority of dialect maps out there show Southern speech patterns in Missouri extending only about as far north as Lebanon. You don't believe me? Here are various maps I found on my first hits on "South Midland Dialect" on google.
I don't completely agree with the third one but it still contradicts your claim about Mountain South dialect covering most of Missouri. More links below.
Some maps told a different story, but only one or two. None that I could find coincided with what your definition of South Midland dialect is, and it is NOT the same as Mountain South dialect. I could give many more dialect maps that tell basically the same story. This is the general consensus among most dialect studies.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
) on a spring or fall weekend.
