Why is the American accent so easy to imitate?

Travis, I see your point of view, but it does ignore the strong strain of fundamentalism that can still be found in the Upper Midwest, e.g. the Dakotas, etc.

I think negative stereotyping put forward in the media (the Beverly Hillbillies, for example) is responsible for this dichotomy of perception.

Travis, there have been sporadic attempts to allow the consideration of more than one theory (which, if Darwin's natural selection is the superior explanation -- as I believe it is -- would not seriously compromise it). Some of the more prominent ones, though, have occurred outside the South (in Kansas and Pennsylvania).

Jasper, I was amused by some of the Beverly Hillbillies stuff, but you're right about the stereotyping of Southerners. It's politically correct to say outrageous and even bigoted things about us -- I'm one myself -- which wouldn't be allowed when speaking of some other groups. We're made up of a wide variety of individuals and groups, and these stereotypes don't do us justice.

I like the non-rhotic Coastal Southern dialects (Jimmy Carter is a good example), inland southern dialects not so much.

Actually North American fundamentalism did not originate in the southern United States. As a conscious movement it began slightly north of the United States itself, at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, at the Niagara Bible Conference (late 1800s). It was further developed at Princeton Theological Seminary (New Jersey) and in a book called "The Fundamentals" by Milton and Lyman Stewart (who were from Pennsylvania).

Of course, the essence of their teaching was that they were supporting the fundamental concepts of traditional Christianity and not anything new (I believe they were right about that -- check out the "five fundamentals"). The term "fundamentalism" was applied to the ideas of these persons and their supporters, and it was distinguished from the "modernism" supported by a growing number of non-traditional Christians.

Note too that historically earlier American examples of what might be called "fundamentalist" societies -- though more extreme -- existed in Puritan New England and not in the South. The South was long considered worldly and less inclined towards religious fanaticism (or even religious devotion). As time passed, of course, New England lost that reputation, and now fundamentalists do make up a significant minority in the South.

Southern fundamentalists are not anything close to being as radical as the Taliban, though. There are tens of millions of them, and they live in all parts of the country. Consider this for a moment. If they were as aggressive as the Taliban, and inclined to fight a guerrilla war, they could inflict more casualties than were caused by the entire Confederate army. I wonder how hard the not "blindly nationalistic" Northerners would fight this time. :-) Be thankful that they aren't like the Taliban.

Free Texas!!!

>>Travis, I see your point of view, but it does ignore the strong strain of fundamentalism that can still be found in the Upper Midwest, e.g. the Dakotas, etc.

I think negative stereotyping put forward in the media (the Beverly Hillbillies, for example) is responsible for this dichotomy of perception.<<

I did not say that such reflected reality at all but rather was stating common perceptions amongst many less conservative people up here, which are in many ways stereotypical than anything else.

Also, I am fully aware of such here in the Upper Midwest, where many rural areas, and especially the more remote rural areas, can be very conservative and have strong elements of religious fundamentalism in reality. Hell, here in Wisconsin, the only thing that makes it a so-called "blue state" are the cities of Milwaukee and Madison - outside their city limits, and I mean that literally, things are largely conservative here.

Even in the surburb of Milwaukee I am originally from, Wauwatosa, there is a very strong undercurrent of conservatism, such to the point of there being challenges to Halloween in schools here not for reasons of political correctness but due to some fundamentalists claiming that it was effectively supporting Satanism or like, and of our moderate Republican state senator Peggy Rosenzweig, who was relatively palatable to even many Democrats here, having a campaign being run against her by a more hard-conservative Republican and being defeated despite widespread support from Democrats here.

But this goes back to the original comment in a way. Here in southern and eastern Wisconsin, we really do not have anywhere near the degree of religious fundamentalism that shows up in, say, the South or more remote parts of the Upper Midwest. Hence we tend to see a difference between the kind of conservatism we are familiar with, which lacks a strong religious component and which still largely respects a separation between civic and religious life*, and specifically religious conservatism. The former as seen as something that can be accommodated, as much as it may be detested by non-conservatives, but the latter is seen as being effectively synonymous with religious fundamentalism, as being beyond the pale, and as being essentially against modern civilization itself.

Of course, though, as for our own homegrown religious fundamentalists, they are largely overlooked in this whole view of things because, for starters, there is only limited awareness of their existence in any quantity in the Upper Midwest at least here in southeastern Wisconsin, and furthermore they are still Upper Midwesterners and hence more likely to still be perceived as "us" as much as we may detest their beliefs

* despite society being still implicitly regarded as essentially Christian by most, even though many will not admit that; even atheists here are in practice generally Christian atheists in the way that there is such a thing as Jewish atheists

** regardless of whether such would involve abrogating the Constitution or not

>>Travis, there have been sporadic attempts to allow the consideration of more than one theory (which, if Darwin's natural selection is the superior explanation -- as I believe it is -- would not seriously compromise it). Some of the more prominent ones, though, have occurred outside the South (in Kansas and Pennsylvania).<<

In the case of Kansas, well, it is not part of the South per se, but from the general viewpoint here that makes little difference - just like how Texas is technically not part of the South, but when it comes to these kinds of matters that is of little consequence. In all honesty, we largely see much of "Middle America" - in which we do not include the Upper Midwest proper but which we readily include just about everything south of the Chicago area - much the same as any other part of it. In reality, the South is from this direction seen as just another part of and practically conflated with Middle America in general, all things considered.

That said, the matter is not the attempts at attacking evolution in the classroom have really specifically happened in the South proper at all. It is rather that the South is commonly associated with religious conservatism, and such attempts by religious conservatives have projected an image of them as basically threatening, well, modern civilization - regardless of any particular religious conservatives' connection with such attempts. Hence even though such attempts may not necessarily be specific to the South at all, the strong association of the South with religious conservatism have tied all the negative views of such with it regardless of the particular sources of those views.

And, yes, you will hear associations be made between religious conservatives and the Taliban amongst more left-of-center people here - I am not making that one up. That is, of course, regardless of whether said associations are actually valid per se in the first place.

Mind you that a lot of the views shown above are largely from the point of view of more left-of-center and more urban/suburban people here, and may not be consistent with the views commonly held in more rural parts of the Upper Midwest (where, for instance, I hear country music, for instance, is very popular today).

(Also, I should have pointed out that the above are not my own views today per se, but rather the views that I have just generally noticed in the left-of-center-to-right-center* semi-suburban middle class population in which I grew up. I used to have similar views in the past, honestly, but these days my views about the South itself have greatly softened - even though my views of religious conservatism per se are as strong as ever.)

* even though Wauwatosa itself is quite conservative overall, especially compared to the city of Milwaukee, there still are more than enough people who are not at all conservative there, and even the conservatives for the most part seem to be far more concerned about keeping down their property taxes than about imposing their religious beliefs on anyone (despite the local Republican party getting more extreme over time itself)

"Jasper, I was amused by some of the Beverly Hillbillies stuff, but you're right about the stereotyping of Southerners. It's politically correct to say outrageous and even bigoted things about us -- I'm one myself -- which wouldn't be allowed when speaking of some other groups. We're made up of a wide variety of individuals and groups, and these stereotypes don't do us justice."

Isn't THAT the truth?

Continuing on in this vein of thought, I grew up near a small town in Tennessee that had the second-largest concentration of Ph.D.s in the country (Los Alamos, NM has the first.) But yet I bet not one single Antimooner has even heard of it.

I remember going to a Math Competition in 1979, thinking I was pretty damned smart and was going to ace the competition. (My IQ was just at Mensa level). Let's just say I was humbled by the competition, who were far more advanced in math than I; in fact, I scored near the bottom of the scales. (So much for being a "genius".) It turned out that many of my competitors had had second years in Calculus. All this happened in that small town in Tennesssee.

That year, Tennessee qualified in the top-10 states for SAT scores. But yet, the common stereotype of Beverly Hillbillies, the KKK, and country music lives on...

And about what you are saying there, I myself very strongly doubt that you guys down there are religious fundamentalists or their like at all overall. It is more that such kinds of things just gain negative attention and, due to lack of other sorts of attention, tends to dominate what is often heard about the "Middle America" as a whole - and anything we associate with "Middle America" we associate with the South. We do not hear things like that up here, but we certainly hear when someone decides that it is a good idea to put the Ten Commandments in some courthouse somewhere, for example. And even when one puts matters like religion and politics out of the picture, even though those are the things that do provoke the strongest perceptions of Middle America as a whole, it is still implicitly assumed that people down there are well, just what you described, even though it is well-known that the KKK has been long a non-factor in reality.

<<Continuing on in this vein of thought, I grew up near a small town in Tennessee that had the second-largest concentration of Ph.D.s in the country (Los Alamos, NM has the first.)>>

Pretty funny, huh? We combine the highest per capita concentration of PhD's in the nation with the most miles of unpaved dirt road. (Of course, it helps that we don't have a lot of "capitas" to even out the big brains up in Los Alamos and Sandia Labs...)

Getting back to American regional accents...

I grew up in northern Michigan (if you want to talk about northerners!), and to us, Ohio sounds Southern. And in general I've found that we like Southern accents (I made an experiment once while waiting tables: elongate those vowels, soften the consonants, slow down a bit...people smile more), we think they're warm and friendly. And we like British accents too--I just graduated from undergrad and there was a trend among the incoming students of speaking in the most glaringly appalling British accents. Grating. But while I acknowledge the dreadful nasality of the North-Midwest tongue, I quite like some of my regionalisms: we don't say "oot an aboot" like Canadians, but we do clip the Ts and the "ou" becomes something more like "eou" or somesuch tripthong. Used to be ashamed of it, but hey, variation is interesting.

But I grew up people who talked like they were from Orange County who'd never set foot outside Michigan, because of television. And I've played online games with nonnative English speakers and even non-American Anglophones who sound generically American because they talk to Americans.

>>Getting back to American regional accents...

I grew up in northern Michigan (if you want to talk about northerners!), and to us, Ohio sounds Southern. And in general I've found that we like Southern accents (I made an experiment once while waiting tables: elongate those vowels, soften the consonants, slow down a bit...people smile more), we think they're warm and friendly.<<

To sort of link this to what I was saying before, we here in Wisconsin really do not dislike people from the South at all in Real Life. It is rather the *perceived* political and religious life and popular culture of the South, compounded by the history of the South, which is commonly disliked.

(And likewise, I myself at least find Southern dialects to be quite clear and nice-sounding, at least compared to my own dialect, which I honestly find to be rather Danish-esque in practice...)

>>And we like British accents too--I just graduated from undergrad and there was a trend among the incoming students of speaking in the most glaringly appalling British accents. Grating. But while I acknowledge the dreadful nasality of the North-Midwest tongue, I quite like some of my regionalisms: we don't say "oot an aboot" like Canadians, but we do clip the Ts and the "ou" becomes something more like "eou" or somesuch tripthong. Used to be ashamed of it, but hey, variation is interesting.

But I grew up people who talked like they were from Orange County who'd never set foot outside Michigan, because of television. And I've played online games with nonnative English speakers and even non-American Anglophones who sound generically American because they talk to Americans.<<

This does seem to show a rather interesting cultural difference between Michigan and here in Wisconsin. The overall trend here in Wisconsin with respect to such things seems to be insularity and provincialness more than anything else, with basically the rest of the US outside of northern Illinois, Minnesota, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan only being seen as places where one goes off to for school, work, vacation, retirement, or to escape our winters, and not as places to culturally or linguistically emulate; if we have actual connections with other places beyond such, it is probably due to having relatives and or friends there who themselves are emigrés from Wisconsin, generally for the reasons listed above. Hell, for most of us most of the time, the rest of the US really only exists in the media and our concerns in Real Life generally only extending as far away as Chicago and the Twin Cities, aside from relatives and or friends who have moved elsewhere. So hence it is very interesting to hear that the pattern right across the lake in Michigan is practically the opposite of such in this regard, and I myself wonder why there is such a large cultural difference in this regard, considering that both are generally thought of together as Upper Midwestern (even though Wisconsin most likely has more in common with Minnesota and North Dakota than with Lower Michigan).