Silvery's dumb questions about America

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I've been meaning to ask this for ages

What is the difference between yankees and other Americans?

Everybody I know just calls all Americans either 'the damn yanks' or 'the colonists' so, what's the difference? Also, is it really an insult or has The Simpsons been fooling me?

 

Blast you, Silvery. I'm off to New York City in a short while. I'll be sure to check this thread out when I get back on Tuesday. "Damnyanks" not Damn Yanks. Don't care what the direction or grammar tells you. One word!

 

Nakia's right, it's one word.

Here in the US, yankees, or Yanks, generally refers to people from the New England-ish area. The exact borders aren't, well, exact, kinda like Southerner. I grew up in New Hampshire, definitely Yankee Territory, and we wear the badge with pride, so we don't think of it as an insult, though I hear it was originally intended to be one (round the revolutionary war period). The way I figure it, anyone still trying to use it as such is behind the times, by a couple centuries.

Similarly, there are some territories that are definitely Southerner, such as all of Georgia, while others are a little iffy, like Virginia and Maryland. Many people in each call themselves Southerners, yet most Georgians call them all pretenders (not litterally). My wife calls herself a southerner, yet I think the first time she ever wen't farther south than the VA/NC border was with me.

Really, though, it's a society thing. Yanks/Northerners are more of the 'apple pie, pumkin pie, winter should have snow' category, as well as typically being of the opinion that, if it ain't broke, fix it anyway. If you want the stereotypical picture, read "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" -1889 I think.

Southerners, on the other hand, eat and drink strange things, like Sweet Tea, Sweet Potato Pie, and deep fried everything. If it snows, they think the world is ending, and they seem to think that 85 degrees F with 95% humidity is the natural habitat of man. Oh, and in the south, ladies don't sweat, they "perspire".

 

from http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Yankee

NOG has it about right for what it means in current usage though I've never heard a southerner call a northerner a yank - I think that's UK. It was very popular at the time of the American revolutionary war, in the song of the era "Yankee Doodle Dandy," which may have been sung first in England to mock Oliver Cromwell.
http://www.earlyamerica.com/music/yankee-doodle.htm

Also, NOG, the correct Southern usage is "damm Yankee." Note spelling, to avoid offending our mothers and other grandes dames.

And when I lived in Vermont my neighbors were vehement that New Yorkers and New Jerseyites were NOT Yankess. They were flatlanders. I was a reb, though that was applied a bit halfheartedly.

 

I rarely hear that term used up here (Massachusetts)... I do not consider myself a yank... in fact, the only time I use the word Yankee is when referring to that god-awful baseball team.

Do the British still call us yanks? That's okay, I guess, it's only fair since I still call them redcoats...

 

I always love the line in The Dirty Dozen (or a movie like it, maybe it was the Guns of Navarone) when he says something like:

"This is a bloody suicide mission. We'll need to send someone tough and expendable. We'll send some Yanks!"

 

Thanks guys, I've always wondered about it!

 

I'm just glad to be far away from all that nonsense.

 

No, a damn Yankee is a Yankee who moves into the Southern lands. Northern Virginia is full of damn Yankees.
Unless you are talking about Ted Nugent, Tommy Shaw, and Jack Blades. Now they were good Damn Yankees.

 

You are right there. Living in the South is like being "damned." It's like, "What did I do to deserve this?"

Yeah, a pretty good place for old, washed-up ex-guitar players, who did too many drugs in the 1960s.

 

OUCH! I mean, that had to hurt. Mind you, I agree completely, of course.

 

Well, those same damn yankees who don't like living down here can leave. Oh that's right, they've left their home states because they're sick of having no work, or paying out the wazoo in taxes.

 

I was expecting just that response. Thanks for not disappointing me.

 

No, I left because I was nine and my parents moved (purely because of a better job offer). I'd love to go back, but my wife can't handle the cold, so little chance of that. Odds are we'll comprimize and go west. Still, you pay for it and I'd love to leave. Any takers?

Truth be told, the only things I really mind are the sweet tea everywhere (), the fact that this whole area was originally a swamp and is still trying to be (), and the fact that I hate cities (but that has nothing to do with north or south).

 

WTF?!?!? You people *still* refer to us as 'the colonists'??? I's been over 230 years! Get over it!!!

I grew up in Southern California, and if you called me a Yank or a Colonist in person, I'd probably clock you in the jaw...but then again, I'm sleep deprived and irritated right now... Either way, I don't take kindly to either terms. But it looks like I'm not the only one from the west who feels this way...so that makes me feel better.

 

Well, I have to agree with you there Nog. This whole area trying it's best to revert to swamp land. But hey, this is the south. That's what happens when you live a half inch above sea level.

 

A yankee is a northerner who comes south to visit & goes home
A damn yankee is a notherner who comes to visit & stays
A GD yankee is a northener who comes to visit, marries a southern girl, stays & has kids

Other yankees are called "halfbacks" - Most northerners are drawn to florida by instinct when they get older, some of them try to go back home but only make it half way back(VA,NC) before coming to their senses & realising the south is so much better than the north

Here in NC, the building industry stats say that approx. 50 families move here from the north every week. Compare what they pay in property taxes & home prices between say NY,NJ versus NC,GA.

Wait, whats wrong with sweet tea!?!?!?!

Everybody knows that the Garden of Eden is hidden somewhere in the NC,SC,GA area.

 

Really? What's so much better about it? I'd love to hear, since having lived in a number of places in both the South and the North, I've seen advantages and disadvantages in both places.

Nevertheless, it's really too bad that this thread has become filled with a lot of the old uneducated rhetoric that's left over from the old Civil War days, full of cultural bias and narrow-minded bigotry.