Date: Fri, 21 Oct 1994 12:45:56 EST From: "Betty S. Phillips" Subject: Re: Offensive terms I sympathize with David Johns and his encounters with the term "Yankee". My mother, from Wisconsin, married my native-Georgian father in 1945, and Waycross was her first point of entry into the South. She never did find any humor in her new relatives' "Damn Yankee" jokes. But as David's comment about how people show no embarrassment or hesitation about asking, "Are you a Yankee?" suggests, the resentment toward Northerners is really fairly shallow (in my experience). Certainly, I've known Northerners who assimilated fairly rapidly and painlessly into Southern life. Betty Phillips Dept. of English Indiana State U. Terre Haute, IN 47809 Date sent: Fri, 21 Oct 1994 06:12:00 EDT Send reply to: American Dialect Society From: "David A. Johns" Subject: Offensive terms To: Multiple recipients of list ADS-L # Since it was used a while back in this discussion, let me # register my offense at "The War of Northern Aggression,:" y'all. # # David Bergdahl Ohio University/Athens OH A few years ago, while exploring back roads along the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi in southwestern Wisconsin, I found a cemetery with graves going back to the mid-19th century. Near the back were a few headstones dated 1861, with inscriptions indicating that the young men buried there had died in the "Infamous Southern Rebellion". So there. "Yankee", by the way, is definitely a negative term in Waycross, GA, where I'm living now -- I've even seen bumper stickers saying "I had [!] rather be dead than be a Yankee." But natives have no qualms about using it openly; in fact, I hear "Are you a Yankee?" several times a week, not to mention constant references to Yankees "coming down here and telling us how to live our lives". I don't know what this says about Southern manners. David Johns Waycross College Waycross, GA