Do you consider Virginia to be part of "The South"? (Richmond: credit, place)

[kimlou813]

I believe that lower southern VA is more "southern" than NOVA. Nova, being so close to DC has a city feel to it.

[ItalianExec]

Wow. This thread will never die. You can start to sense the south when you get to Burke. Absolutely Fredricksburg is the south. Hell in Richmond you can still yahoos with Confederate flags on their trucks.

[ItalianExec]

Originally Posted by Charlesaf3

This is nonsense. Clearly you don't know Richmond at all

What? Most native Richmonders have a southern accent.

[Peak2Creek]

No way man!

[cdmurphy]

Originally Posted by ItalianExec

Wow. This thread will never die. You can start to sense the south when you get to Burke. Absolutely Fredricksburg is the south. Hell in Richmond you can still yahoos with Confederate flags on their trucks.

That doesn't mean too much. I've seen yahoos flying the Confederate flag outside their homes in Maryland.

[11KAP]

it's still in the southern atmosphere right along
with dc and maryland, but that's about it.
there are more than enough people who live
there from other places, so it depends on the
person i guess.

[NorthEast Coast 202]

Originally Posted by irvine

I'm a DC native and I grew up in both DC and Northern Virginia, aInd I do consider myself Southern. There are many others that do as well.



I don't believe Maryland tries to downplay it, although certain people may.
The state song which was written during the war, and the various Confederate monuments in towns throughout the state (Rockville, Ellicott City, Easton, etc), the most impressive of which are in Baltimore, certainly do not hide the state's role in the Civil War.

Concerning the UPenn Phonological Atlas, I disagree with where it places the extent of Southern dialects within Maryland. The Virginia Piedmont dialect, the native dialect in most of Maryland does in fact reach just north of Baltimore. And the Baltimore variant of the Virginia Piedmont dialect, while it may share a few linguistic traits with Philadelphia, IS Southern: e.g. flattened vowels: long i before r in words like tire, the oi diphthong, etc

Also unique to the Virginia Piedmont dialect especially around Richmond and Washington, DC is the ou diphthong in words like house and about, which may sound slightly Canadian to those not familiar with local speech patterns.

The local Southern dialect is fading in the DC area, but that could have been argued decades ago. What many younger locals in the area speak today is a watered down version of "American Southern" and, of course, the majority probably have no perceptible "accent" at all. I'd venture to say that the dialect is much more widely spoken in parts of Montgomery, Howard and PG Counties and in Southern Maryland, than in Northern Virginia, which was certainly the case in the 90s, when I was growing up. I had friends who grew up in Greenbelt and spoke with a very strong "Southern accent," much stronger than mine.

NPR had a good discussion about 8 years ago on whether or not DC is still culturally Southern. I'd say it is, if it wasn't there wouldn't have been much of a discussion. So yeah, Maryland, DC, and Virginia are part of the South.

I'm from DC too and you are a bamma.

[Carlingtonian]

The only meaningful divide in our country nowadays is urban versus rural--not North versus South. Atlanta and Dallas are a lot like here. I'd guess that Salem and Harrisonburg are a lot more like Monroe, La., and Macon, Ga., than they are anywhere within 50 miles of DC.

[Ex bubba]

Originally Posted by Carlingtonian

The only meaningful divide in our country nowadays is urban versus rural--not North versus South. Atlanta and Dallas are a lot like here. I'd guess that Salem and Harrisonburg are a lot more like Monroe, La., and Macon, Ga., than they are anywhere within 50 miles of DC.

Residents of those areas might beg to differ when you lump small cities together as the same. ATL and DAL are full of northern transplants changing the character of these areas radically over the last few decades. About the only good thing the north has brought to the south is money and Sunday shopping. Everything else is additionally aggressive negativity and less civility.

[atlgobraves]

Northern Va is definitely not southern. However the rest of VA is.