The thing that has always confused me is where the border between South, West, and Midland really lies. My own opinion is that there is less a definitive line between the two and more a gray spectrum-y area of transition. For example, the town of my childhood (Eastern Colorado -- Fort Collins, Colorado) is at a veritable crossroads, a blended grey area.
Colorado's eastern neighbor Kansas is usually considered Midland, yet southern Kansans have a bit of a Southern accent. Western Kansas and Eastern Colorado are often indistinguishable in most ways -- flat, dry plains, cows, factory farms, ranches, oil wells, redneck homophobes, tornadoes, nearly similar linguistic features.
Yet Ft. Collins is also considered to be part of the "Front Range", i.e. those towns in the foothills whose eastern and central regions rest on very flat desert lands with tornadoes, yet whose western regions rest in greener foothills, and whose wealthier residents spend much time a very short drive up into the mountains proper. Our famous reservoir, Horsetooth, dominates the vista to the west from almost any vantage point, so that a lost wanderer need not find a star for compass but need only turn to face the looming mountains.
Twenty or so miles north lies Laramie, Wyoming. Thirty miles southwest lies the legendary hippy town of Boulder. Sixty miles to the south lies Denver. Further south and east, residents live close to Oklahoma and Texas. Unlike in Rhode Island, where insular folks on the East Bay think of Warwick and the West Bay as a whole other planet, everyone in Northern Colorado knew people or visited people from the other side of the mountains, people from Grand Junction, for example. And sixty, a hundred, even up to five hundred miles was not considered a far drive at all (unlike out here on the east coast). Rich folks probably frequented Aspen and the other large ski resorts. A large Hewlett Packard plant employees most people who are not employed at the big aggie college (Colorado State). Both institutions brought in people from around the country, although the town remained largely WASPish throughout the 1970s and 1980s, with a large addition of Hispanics. Finally, in the 1970s, rural farms and culturally isolated mountain villages still helped define the local patois.
So this location guaranteed a very odd linguistic mix indeed, neither Midland nor Western, sort of both. Many say that in the 1970s, the predominant accent was more Midland than Western, with a dash of Southern thrown in, but it was always a bit hard to tell. Ever since the Californication of Colorado during the 1990s, the accent seems to have become much more regularized. Add to that the generation of children raised entirely by television, and accents become much more homogenized across all regions.
Sorry to have babbled on at such incredible length. This topic fascinates me inordinately.
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Colorado's eastern neighbor Kansas is usually considered Midland, yet southern Kansans have a bit of a Southern accent. Western Kansas and Eastern Colorado are often indistinguishable in most ways -- flat, dry plains, cows, factory farms, ranches, oil wells, redneck homophobes, tornadoes, nearly similar linguistic features.
Yet Ft. Collins is also considered to be part of the "Front Range", i.e. those towns in the foothills whose eastern and central regions rest on very flat desert lands with tornadoes, yet whose western regions rest in greener foothills, and whose wealthier residents spend much time a very short drive up into the mountains proper. Our famous reservoir, Horsetooth, dominates the vista to the west from almost any vantage point, so that a lost wanderer need not find a star for compass but need only turn to face the looming mountains.
Twenty or so miles north lies Laramie, Wyoming. Thirty miles southwest lies the legendary hippy town of Boulder. Sixty miles to the south lies Denver. Further south and east, residents live close to Oklahoma and Texas. Unlike in Rhode Island, where insular folks on the East Bay think of Warwick and the West Bay as a whole other planet, everyone in Northern Colorado knew people or visited people from the other side of the mountains, people from Grand Junction, for example. And sixty, a hundred, even up to five hundred miles was not considered a far drive at all (unlike out here on the east coast). Rich folks probably frequented Aspen and the other large ski resorts. A large Hewlett Packard plant employees most people who are not employed at the big aggie college (Colorado State). Both institutions brought in people from around the country, although the town remained largely WASPish throughout the 1970s and 1980s, with a large addition of Hispanics. Finally, in the 1970s, rural farms and culturally isolated mountain villages still helped define the local patois.
So this location guaranteed a very odd linguistic mix indeed, neither Midland nor Western, sort of both. Many say that in the 1970s, the predominant accent was more Midland than Western, with a dash of Southern thrown in, but it was always a bit hard to tell. Ever since the Californication of Colorado during the 1990s, the accent seems to have become much more regularized. Add to that the generation of children raised entirely by television, and accents become much more homogenized across all regions.
Sorry to have babbled on at such incredible length. This topic fascinates me inordinately.