Yankees; was Re: FRIGIDAIRE and KLEENEX (was ICE BOX)

[Jonathan Lighter]

I'd guess that the redcoats would have considered the ur-Yankee to live just outside of semi-civilized Boston and eat salt cod for breakfast.

Vermont was part of New York in those days, and I propose taking it back !

JL


James C Stalker <stalker at MSU.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: James C Stalker
Subject: Re: Yankees; was Re: FRIGIDAIRE and KLEENEX (was ICE BOX)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I, a non-yankee by any measure but the international one, was told, on this
site some years ago, that te ur-yankee was not only from Vermont, but from
the Green Mountains and ate apple pie for breakfast. How's that for
defining sociolinguist variables? That paraphrase is from memory. Give me
a few days and I can probably find the poster, and maybe even the original
post, should anyone want to know.

Jim

Laurence Horn writes:

> At 10:29 PM -0600 3/1/05, Barbara Need wrote:
>>
>> So would a Mayflower descendant born in Tennessee count as a Yankee
>> by this narrowest definition? (Mother born in New Jersey; mother's
>> father born in Massachusetts; his parents born in Maine.)
>>
>
> Hmm....Yankee bred but not Yankee born. Mebbe so, on the grounds
> that just because a cat has her kittens in the oven it doesn't make
> them biscuits. (As I think they're more likely to say in Tennessee
> than in Yankeeland...)
>
> L
>
>
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James C. Stalker
Department of English
Michigan State University


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