What states do you consider to be part of the Midwest?

if you wanna be rong

jaymc where does "Middle America" end and the Midwest begin?

at the edges of a John Cougar Mellencamp video

Missouri is 100% midwest, no contest

― Mr. Que, Thursday, October 22, 2009 8:48 AM (26 minutes ago)

y'all ever been to Springfield? (3rd largest city in MO)

cuz i have and it is way more Southern than Midwestern.

Quick wiki browse: Sits in the Ozarks, Confederate stronghold from 1861-1865, site of the first recorded shoot-out, birthplace/terminus of "SOUTHERN" intercontinental Route 66, etc.

iiiijjjj, you been to Springfield right?

jaymc where does "Middle America" end and the Midwest begin?

The Midwest is part of Middle America.

i dunno there's burbs up here that are pretty "southern" imo

Isn't the Midwest meant to be neutral, "accentless", Mom's Apple Pie America? If so, no way the Dakotas are in it, that's witch country.

lol

just because MO has a "southern" city doesn't mean it is not, as a whole, "midwestern" imo

yep, I canvassed for Obama there and I would say that based on the lay of the land, including plenty of creeks and hollows, the per-capita frequency of churches and Waffle Houses, not to mention the physical size of the numerous churches, that it felt distinctly more southern than midwestern to me at least. all this could be said about Branson and the Ozarks in general too. also, I drove past Roy Blunt on I-44.

accentless lol

i have been to Springfield twice. seemed Midwestern to me.

PARRk THE CARRR

i thought that was for the Bahstin accent.

Pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd.

BRRATS

Dialect Survey Maps and Results

http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/maps.html

Delaware and Maryland are mid-Atlantic.

Also, Laurel, can I get that porkchop and rice casserole recipe? Thx.

xp

I'll ask about it, J. Or check at home and try to remember to bring it to work.

btw most chicagoans don't speak with a "chicago" accent. accentless as in 95% of midwesterners sound like your typical CNN newscaster, hollywood actor, etc.

that is not actually true in mn

that's 4% right there.

yeah that's not true of 95% of northern ohioans, michigan people, or wisconsin, etc. people i have met either.

95% accentless. 1% Chicago accent. 4% hockey accent.

btw most chicagoans don't speak with a "chicago" accent. accentless as in 95% of midwesterners sound like your typical CNN newscaster, hollywood actor, etc.

― hope this helps (Granny Dainger), Thursday, October 22, 2009 12:50 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Could have fooled me on that. Unless they are transplants. Pretty much everybody I know has one.

Missouri is 100% midwest, no contest

definitely. If Kansas and Illinois are Midwest, but Missouri isn't, then is Missouri the extended middle finger of the south?

That's cause you socialize exclusively at the Pipefitters Union hall, Bill.

Yeah, even people who aren't running around talking about "da Bears" still say "Oh my Gaaaahd" and "Chicaaaahgo." I am mostly aware of this because of the extent to which I've started doing it myself, which kind of bums me out.

i've heard buffalo lumped in as a midwestern city which is totally ??? except for the accent.

― harbl, Wednesday, October 21, 2009 9:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this seems right to me + i grew up in buffalo and live here now. it's the rust belt imo.

% of people in Chicago with "Chicago" accent=% of people in NYC with "New York" accent. I've come across thousands of people born and raised in the area and only a handful have had that thick "hey dere my friend whaddaya say we get some brats and watch da bears" accent. Wish it was more prevalent tbh, cause it's pretty hilarious.

It is totally hilarious.

lol

I listen the Steve Dahl Show podcasts, right, and he plays voicemails from listeners. I'd say 1 out of 20 have a Chicago accent. Which he of course then usually mocks, awesomely.

I'm probably don't pick up on the more subtle versions of the accent, though.

Hello there, my friend. What do you say we purchase some bratwursts, and then watch the Chicago Bears football game?

Or, if you prefer, the Chicago Bulls basketball match. I believe they are competing against the Spurs of San Antonio this evening.

yew tak funny, meh friend, but yea i could gofer sem saaaasages.

- The midwest is a feeling.

- Arguments about Missouri and the south are somewhat compelling to me, actually, because there is a difference -- there are certainly places west of it that have way more in common with the core midwest than it does. Places like Lincoln or Omaha or Lawrence KS are way more, umm, spiritually contiguous with the idea of the "midwest" than a lot of Missouri. Haha Missouri is the gateway, the crossroads.

- I don't count the Dakotas; apart from a few far-eastern spots like Fargo or Sioux Falls or whatever they're just different, much more part of that whole northern-Rockies group.

- I can go either way on how far people want to extend the idea out onto the plains. You sorta just pick it up from context, really, whether someone's "midwest" is more Great-Lakesy or more Great-Plainsy. The only thing that bugs me is east-coasters whose idea of "midwest" is totally undifferentiated and encompasses most of the country. Or -- and I'm sorry if this is anyone here -- people who toss out Iowa as this quintessential midwestern flat grain-filled flyover spot, because if you've spent any time whatsoever near the midwest you know very well that Iowa is not the "center" of anything. Like any notion of a cultural or geographic category that thinks Iowa is right in the middle of it is just flat wrong.

Yeah, what most people consider the "Chicago accent" is largely a white working-class thing.

I move that it be renamed the Berwyn accent.

so can we agree that the Idea of the Midwest needs to be first broken up into cultural, physical, etc. separate contingencies and then depicted with individual raster map overlays that can show the degree of Midwesternness at any particular coordinate, as opposed to vector maps with a hard-and-fast line-in-the-sand boundary that says "this is the Midwest, this is not?"

Modern Geography was invented at the University of Chicago in the sixties by the way. I learned that in a History of Geography class.

we are all midwesterners now

except me, coz i'm from pittsburgh

I srsly think of western PA as being midwest.

it's definitely in the graying-out zone

i thought california was part of the midwest till i lived in LA, now i think the midwest is everything that isnt los angeles, new york, new jersey, or philadelphia

nabisco no it is not, wtf

no ocean coastline? no mountains? wasn't in the confederacy? yup, that's midwest.

is it boring? that's a better yardstick maybe

Like any notion of a cultural or geographic category that thinks Iowa is right in the middle of it is just flat wrong.

http://www.umesc.usgs.gov/terrestrial/amphibians/armi/images/armi_midwest_420-360.gif

Sure looks like Iowa is near the center of that area.