What is a Yankee?

Guest   Sun Feb 04, 2007 3:49 pm GMT
Why is Kansas not part of the South?
Guest   Sun Feb 04, 2007 3:50 pm GMT
"Why is Kansas not part of the South?"

O.O It's not?
Travis   Sun Feb 04, 2007 9:27 pm GMT
>>"Why is Kansas not part of the South?"

O.O It's not?<<

No, it is not. I'm not sure how I would categorize it regionally, as while some would call it part of the Midwest, I would strongly disagree with that as well. I would just lump it into the West most likely, for lack of any other way to categorize it.
Guest   Sun Feb 04, 2007 10:36 pm GMT
Maybe it should get its own little bubble? ;)
zzz   Sun Feb 04, 2007 10:45 pm GMT
Kansas is divided into three sections: the eastern part is Midland, the middle is Transitional, and the western part is Western.
zzz   Sun Feb 04, 2007 10:54 pm GMT
And I can't resist saying:

Kansas est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Occidentes, aliam Orientes, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Centra, nostra Galli appellantur.

("All Kansas is divided into three parts...") -Julius Caesar

:)
lol
van Oranje-Nassau   Mon Feb 05, 2007 4:36 am GMT
You are too erudite for this forum, Cæsar!
Uriel   Mon Feb 05, 2007 9:24 am GMT
Kansas is nowhere near the South.

I've always thought of it as midwestern -- you need to be in the Rocky Mountain area to qualify as "western" to me. So the West doesn't start until Colorado/Wyoming/Montana and on.

No one in the US --not even a New Englander -- sounds remotely British, I don't care what mergers they have or don't have or how non-rhotic they get.


Here's a handy map of how US cultural regions break down, Damian.

http://www.marion.ohio-state.edu/fac/schul/400/uscultreg.png
zzz   Mon Feb 05, 2007 3:39 pm GMT
I would have to disagree with that map, Uriel. It shows Florida as being part of the South. And I do think that people from the Western-most part of Kansas have a Western accent, because it is right next door to Colorado, although of course most people wouldn't consider Kansas to be part of the West.
Lazar   Mon Feb 05, 2007 5:37 pm GMT
<<It shows Florida as being part of the South.>>

I know what you mean (that at least the peninsular part of Florida has some non-Southernness going on), but practically every regional breakdown of the US that I've seen has assigned Florida to the South. There's just...nowhere else to put it! ;-)
Travis   Mon Feb 05, 2007 6:18 pm GMT
>>Kansas is nowhere near the South.

I've always thought of it as midwestern -- you need to be in the Rocky Mountain area to qualify as "western" to me. So the West doesn't start until Colorado/Wyoming/Montana and on. <<

That's the thing - I myself tend to use a far more narrow definition of the Midwest, basically limiting it to Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, and North Dakota, including the latter due to its cultural closeness with Minnesota more than anything else. This is instead of using it as a catch-all term for parts of the continental US outside of the Northeast, South, Southwest, and West, something which seems to be done oftenby people from outside the Midwest. Also, I really do not consider the more southern parts of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to be particularly Midwestern, having more in common with the Midland region and in such being transitional towards being parts of the South itself.

(On that note, I tend to use the term "Upper Midwest" to refer more specifically to Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, North Dakota, and the northern parts of Illinois and Indiana, even though it may be used more generally so as to be synonymous with how I myself define the Midwest overall.)
Travis   Mon Feb 05, 2007 6:23 pm GMT
>><<It shows Florida as being part of the South.>>

I know what you mean (that at least the peninsular part of Florida has some non-Southernness going on), but practically every regional breakdown of the US that I've seen has assigned Florida to the South. There's just...nowhere else to put it! ;-)<<

I would say that the best thing to do would be to be split Florida regionally, and have the northern part of Florida above the peninsula while simply considering the peninsula to be a weird delocalized extension of the North with warm (and muggy, and hurricane-plagued) weather with no other real regional categorization.
southern belle   Tue Feb 06, 2007 1:50 am GMT
yankees are nasty little buggers from the north that think they're hot to trot and all that and a bag of chips. but really they're just a bunch of critters that hide in their tall towers and look like bugs when you're flying over head. but i have met a few exceptions to this. VERY FEW!
Guest   Tue Feb 06, 2007 1:56 am GMT
What's the difference between the North and the Midland?
Uriel   Tue Feb 06, 2007 12:43 pm GMT
<<I would have to disagree with that map, Uriel. It shows Florida as being part of the South.>>

Hey, I didn't draw it myself! ;)

Yeah, Florida's not really the South, as such. And everyone divides up the US a little bit differently -- when it's YOUR particular region, you tend to split hairs a bit more; when it's not, you're willing to lump more things into it. I've never been to the Midwest, so I call anything from Ohio to Missouri to North Dakota Midwest (also, that was how I learned it in school -- the 13 states of the Midwest).

But I think that map is for the most part a pretty good approximation of different regional areas.

<<What's the difference between the North and the Midland?>>

The difference between the North and the Midland is in accent -- people in the Midland have some Southern features and some non-Southern features in their speech (the infamous "nucular" is alive ans well in Oklahoma, for instance), whereas Northerners don't have any of those Southern features in theirs. So you can think of the Midlands as a sort of transition zone.

<<And I do think that people from the Western-most part of Kansas have a Western accent, because it is right next door to Colorado, although of course most people wouldn't consider Kansas to be part of the West.>>

I would agree with you, because I think that outside the South and New England, all other regional variations are more minor and tend to blend into a gradient across the country.