Date: Wed, 2 Nov 1994 02:00:00 LCL From: "M. Lynne Murphy" <104LYN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]MUSE.ARTS.WITS.AC.ZA> Subject: Re: new york city and upstate RE: > From: NAME: David Bergdahl > > Among my list of preferred terms is "New York" or "New York, N.Y." for New > YorkCity. The latter has always seemed to me a barbarism, used by people who > misread New York City Police Dept as [[[New York City]Police]Dept]. > i completely disagree! as an upstate new yorker, i hate it when "new york" is used to mean "ny,ny" (but the latter is almost never used, and sounds hickish when used). us upstaters already resent the downstaters for a number of reasons (e.g., perceptions that all our taxes and water and hydroelectric power go there), so using "new york" in a way that doesn't include us only adds to the resentment. it's not that big a resentment, but it does make it harder for me to have any kind of regional identity. people assume that when i say i'm from NY i'm from the city (of course, i usually say "upstate NY" or "NY state" to avoid that--but why should i have to say NY state in order that the people from the city don't have to say NY city? "NY state" sounds like a football team.) which leads to the topic of "upstate" and "downstate". to us up rochester-way, anything from the catskills south is "downstate" but to the NYCers, westchester co. (commuting distance) is "upstate". (i frequently have to explain to people that no, being from upstate ny doesn't mean you get to benefit from the culture of the city. it's a7-8 hour drive for me.) the relativity of these terms is interesting, but not as interesting as in illinois, where someone from dekalb or rockford (NW of chicago) can be from "downstate". i'm spending way too much time responding to the ADS list! stop talking about things that interest me, while i'm still remembering to eat and sleep! lynne ______________________________________________________________________ M. Lynne Murphy e-mail: 104lyn[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]muse.arts.wits.ac.za Lecturer, Dept. of Linguistics phone: 27(11)716-2340 University of the Witwatersrand fax: 27(11)716-8030 Johannesburg 2050 South Africa "Language without meaning is meaningless." --Roman Jakobson