Upstate/downstate

[Gwyn Alcock]

True, usually when we point fingers about tax bases vs. expenditures, water
rights, and whether to say "the" when mentioning a freeway number, it's
always northern vs. southern California, not up- and downstate.

I could imagine somebody in the San Francisco/Sacramento areas saying
"upstate" when referring to Redding or Eureka or Shasta, however; there's an
entire third of the state north of the Bay Area. I've just never heard it.

Gwyn Alcock
Redlands, CA
(born in northern, raised in southern, lived in both)

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
Of Peter A. McGraw
Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2004 4:30 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Upstate/downstate

<snip> To my
knowledge California's great divide is between Northern CA and Southern CA.
To judge by NY and IL, the "upstate/downstate" opposition seems to involve
a given state's single dominant metropolitan area and the rest of the
state.  Since California has one major metropolitan area for each of its
two halves, it seems unlikely that there would be a suitable context for
"upstate" or "downstate."