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Where does the south end/begin?


Where is your line?  

182 members have voted

  1. 1. Where is your line?

    • Pennsylvania, Southern Ohio, St Louis
      26
    • South of DC, Ohio River
      92
    • Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina
      48
    • Other
      16


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Georgia is definatly southern...head anywhere outside atlanta and youll see. But is Atlanta really southern? How many people actually are from the south who live there now?

most people, i would guess, living in Atlanta were either born in the north or midwest, or are one generation from that (raised by northerns). You dont get the kind of population growth Atlanta has had by breeding...its all immigration from the north, and more recently Mexico.

how important is geography to the culture of a city? Is Atlanta really southern?

personally I dont think Atlanta is a southern city...but what do you think? :shades:

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  • 2 weeks later...

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Texas is geographically South-Central, yet culturally mixed. It can be divided into 5 basic regions. I was

born and raised in Texas and I know a lot about the state. Western Texas is culturally southwestern, minus

much Native American influence. The Northern Panhandle is southcentral-great plains like Oklahoma and

Kansas. South Texas is majority Hispanic-influenced. East texas and Central Texas to a lesser degree, are

Southern. Finally, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Austin and San antonio metro areas are mixed and quite

cosmopollitan.

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There is not a line that defines one from the other. I live in Southwestern Pennsylvania. The Pittsburgh area. To the South of the city, particularly, Fayette and Greene Counties, there is a heavy Southern accent. The term "Southern Accent" is as relative as to the placement of an imaginary line. To the people of Alabama this may not even be detectable as a "Southern accent".

Pittsburgh is a unique location. To the people from the the NE corridor, it is considered a Mid Western city. To the people of the Midwest it is considered an East coast city.

A Pittsburgher who travels to New England, their accent might be considered Southern, depending on the location of the Pittsburgh area they are from.

I suggest that there is not a line, but wide swathes of degrees of "Southernness". people from Kentucky are not like people from Alabama any more than people from Pennsylvania are like people from Maine.

I never understood why the South needs to constantly be trying to define itself. All Southerners are not all alike, and don't all believe in the same things. The people of the North are not all the alike, and don't all believe in the same things. There has been a blending of cultures since the Indians roamed the hills here.

It is more defining to say I'm a country boy, or I'm a city boy, than to say I'm from the North, or I'm from the South, or the Midwest, or the Southwest. The new suburbs of the south are indistinguishable, outside of the topography, from the suburbs from the north Midwest or Southwest. You never here of someone from New York State saying I'm just a good old Northern Boy. I find it a pointless argument really.

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I have to disagree with the Pittsburgh comments. Yeah some of the outlying county areas sound different than the core metro, but it's not southern, it's a dialect that is mix of the various ethnic groups that settled way back (the rements of it, "yunz" has european roots of sorts) and a little country.

But again, in the population center though, it's either light variation of a northeastern accent, or a pretty unrecognizable "American" accent. Through of coruse, there are some of the blue collar Pittsburghers for local flavor, but it's not as pronounced as it used to be anyway.

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Marathon I agree with you that Southern Illinois and Indiana are more Southern than Midwestern, But those are rural areas and it's kind of silly of you to say that it's more Southern than a city of over 700,000 (Louisville). Yeah Louisville being a major city is going to be diverse, But the same arguments can be made about other major Southern cities like New Orleans, Nashville, Memphis, ECT.

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Marathon I agree with you that Southern Illinois and Indiana are more Southern than Midwestern, But those are rural areas and it's kind of silly of you to say that it's more Southern than a city of over 700,000 (Louisville). Yeah Louisville being a major city is going to be diverse, But the same arguments can be made about other major Southern cities like New Orleans, Nashville, Memphis, ECT.

Perhaps, but "Southern" is by nature rural. And Cairo, Illinois is more than 100 km futher south than Louisville, to say nothing of Covington ;)

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