Towards/toward (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Paul Johnston]

When I was a kiddie living in Chicagoland, we always considered StL to be Midwestern, like us (our big sports rivals, though in the days before the Bulls, I rooted for the Hawks when they were there).  I don't know if we extended that to the whole state, but at least the Northern half and Kansas City, too.  Southern IL, despite a Southern accent, was also Midwestern.  The whole list of states:  ND, SD, NE, KS, MN, IA, MO, WI, IL, MI, IN, and OH.  Some people even included OK, which I would never do.  My wife, from Cleveland, would exclude MO (it's Southern) and the whole ND to KS row (it's Western).  So I wouldn't have been surprised if you didn't have a Southern accent.  I was surprised that people as far north as Terre Haute, IN, never mind Cairo, IL, have one (or at least something transitional).

Paul

On Apr 13, 2014, at 2:10 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Towards/toward (UNCLASSIFIED)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 9:54 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>
>> Don't many consider Missouri to be in the south because it was a
>> slave state?
>>
>
> I don't know, but it seems reasonable that that would be the assumption
> made by people who assume that the "peculiar institution" was peculiar to
> the Deep South, as racism supposedly is, today. :-(
>
>> O[r], Wilson, did you live in East St. Louis?
>
> Surely, you jest! :-)
>
> You have no way of knowing, of course, Joel, but asking a St. Louisan
> whether he's from the East Side is akin to asking a San Franciscan whether
> he's from Los Angeles. Back in the day, Chicagoans used to hassle visitors
> from StL by asking, "St. Louis? Illinois or Missouri?" as though there
> could be any question. The East Side was nothing more than where St.
> Louisans went after Missouri closed, at 1:30 am.
>
> Well, it could have been the case that people from the East Side claimed to
> Chicagoans that they were from StL., but I don't know. There's a rapper who
> proclaims, "I'm from St. Louis, but I'm from the *East* Side!"
>
> Youneverknow.
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
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