Do you talk more like a Yankee or a Southerner? (US)

[Alelou]

How can I be a Yankee? Don't they live in New England?
31% Dixie? I've lived most of my life in the Pacific Northwest. We didn't seem to be represented at all.

Anybody who is NOT from the South is a Yankee, unless of course you're a damned foreigner.

[Distracted]

Amen. And that's pronounced "dam furriner".

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

HEY!

[Distracted]

Gotcha!

[Asso]

Mh... I don't intend to do this game.
My family comes from Sicily.
May you imagine what sort of Yankee I could be?

[Alelou]

Amen. And that's pronounced "dam furriner".

Yep. I almost added the pronunciation but I got bogged down trying to make it phonetic!

Nothing personal, KTR.

In Vermont, they call people from out of state "flatlanders" even if they're just from 20 minutes south of Brattleboro. In my part of NY I've heard the term "incomers" used sneeringly for new people. Mainers refer disgustedly to "summer people." Floridians complain about "snow birds." There's terminology for the outsider in most places, and if there are enough of them, they usually get their own special pejorative. (It's certainly preferable in the South to be called a Yankee than a carpetbagger.)

For that matter, I believe "Yankee" started as an insulting term in a bawdy English song about the colonists. The colonists, however, embraced it with enthusiasm.

[Lady Rainbow]

Amen. And that's pronounced "dam furriner".

Yep. I almost added the pronunciation but I got bogged down trying to make it phonetic!

Nothing personal, KTR.

In Vermont, they call people from out of state "flatlanders" even if they're just from 20 minutes south of Brattleboro. In my part of NY I've heard the term "incomers" used sneeringly for new people. Mainers refer disgustedly to "summer people." Floridians complain about "snow birds." There's terminology for the outsider in most places, and if there are enough of them, they usually get their own special pejorative. (It's certainly preferable in the South to be called a Yankee than a carpetbagger.)

For that matter, I believe "Yankee" started as an insulting term in a bawdy English song about the colonists. The colonists, however, embraced it with enthusiasm.

Yeah, and even my husband's family has perjoratives about other members of the family. For example, Robert always says, "My family ain't 'rednecks'. They're 'hillfolk'."

[Bether6074]

Oh boy. 22% Dixie for me. Says I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy. Terrific.

[CX]

Coming from North Dakota, I would proudly bear the name "flatlander"

[Asso]

[evcake]

I understand that to the British we are, or were all Yanks.

[Alelou]

Yep.

When I lived over there, most Brits got kind of glazed over if I told them where I was from (Massachusetts at the time). They know New York, Florida, and California. When it came to the rest they were as vague as most Americans are about geography. "Is that near Disney World?" I might be asked.

[Distracted]

I understand that to the British we are, or were all Yanks.

Well, up until about the 1940's, if you asked a French speaking Louisiana man if he wanted his daughter to marry an "Americain", he knew precisely who you were talking about...anybody who spoke English...and his response would have been an irrevocable, "Mais, non. Pas du tout!!!"

There are cultural divisions everywhere, getting fewer and fewer in this age of instant communication. I'm not sure sometimes whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. Sure hasn't done much for the Cajun cultural heritage.

[Lady Rainbow]

Coming from North Dakota, I would proudly bear the name "flatlander"

CX, my mother-in-law gets a lot of teasing because she's from Iowa, and father-in-law calls them "Ioweeenians."

When my mom was leaving the Philippines to go to nursing school in London, my grandmother was bawling because she was leaving. Mom told her, "Don't cry, Inay (Mom). I'm going to marry a rich American." My mom tried to arrange a marriage for me thirty years later with one of her best friend's son (who was Catholic, Filipino and was studying to be a doctor to boot).

So yeah, the cultural divide can be within a culture, too.

[Elessar]

It's actually quite weird for me to identify with as a Midwestern almost-redneck because around here, I'm totally not - and in my upbringing, I was totally not. You're talkin about a kid who grew up in downtown Phoenix, in a townhouse complex sandwhiched between the busiest intersection in North America for like 5 years running, and a deteriorating North Phoenix that had once been where the retirees went to the "edge of the city" to enjoy calm, quiet life away from the big city, all of it slipping into a gangland while I was between the ages of 6 and 9. When I was 8, my best friend was a 13 yr old named Deetrick who had 2 brothers, one who stabbed the other, and both of which I heard a few years ago went to prison

I actually muse thinking how I might have grown up there if I hadn't moved away when I was 9. I might've turned out to be one of those egghead chemists that makes fat dough working for a crack rock hustler, cookin him up some hardcore Colombian yayo