America and Americans / Europeans

[Donald M Lance]

Oklahomans are even more insistent that they are in the Midwest, because
they don't like being lumped in with that awful state to the south.
And then there's Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls TX.
DMLance

on 2/22/02 12:26 PM, FRITZ JUENGLING at
juengling_fritz at SMTPGATE.SALKEIZ.K12.OR.US wrote:

> I have a student from Arkansas, who insists that Arkansas is in the
> Midwest.  Her logic--Arkansas is next to Missouri and Missouri is in the
> Midwest.
> Fritz
>
>>>> "Dennis R. Preston" <preston at PILOT.MSU.EDU> 02/22/02 04:31AM >>>
> My regards to Don for bringing this question back to the only area of
> interest (at least for this list) - namely, the empirical one of what
> people think rather than "official" one (whatever that might be,
> although the relations between the two are often interesting). Carmen
> Fought (Pitzer College) has reported to me recently that she has had
> no success in convincing some of her undergraduates that there is no
> "real" answer to the question "Where is the Midwest?"
>
> dInIs
>
>> on 2/21/02 9:13 PM, Laurence Horn at laurence.horn at YALE.EDU wrote:
>>
>>> At 7:29 PM -0500 2/21/02, David Bergdahl wrote:
>>>> "Are Finns Europeans?"
>>>>
>>>> I'd say yes: the dividing line in the north is the Urals.
>>>> ___________________
>>> Whether or not they're Scandinavians is a bit trickier.  I'm told
>>> (that is, I was told by Finns when I was in Helsinki) that
>>> technically they aren't, although most non-Finns consider them to
> be.
>>> (It's a geographical, rather than cultural or linguistic, parameter
>>> that's crucial.)
>>>
>>> larry
>>>
>> The intention of my question was "What would an American think or say?"
> For
>> many Americans, Mexico would be in Central America and England would be
> in
>> Europe.
>> DMLance
>
> --
> Dennis R. Preston
> Department of Linguistics and Languages
> Michigan State University
> East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
> preston at pilot.msu.edu
> Office: (517)353-0740
> Fax: (517)432-2736
>