[John29210]

I have lived in Kansas for 10 years and have noticed that some people have Southern accents and some don't. Does anyone know why that is? I have never thought of Kansas as a Southern state.

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Name : John29210, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Age : 22, City : Hays, State : KS Country : United States, Occupation : Student, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Lower class, 

[Todd24645]

John: I lived in Lawrence for five years and discovered that as in many other areas, Kansas is right in the middle. As far as accents; you have the 'southerners' from Oklahoma and Missouri and the 'mid-westerners' from Nebraska and Iowa. Also the accent in the eastern part of the state is more southern than in the west (near Colorado). You will also notice as in other areas of the country, the lower on the socioeconomic ladder the stronger the accent.

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Name : Todd24645, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Agnostic, Age : 40, City : Shep, State : TX Country : United States, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Lower middle class, 

[onanov]

I went to college at the University of Kansas in the late 1970s and I was impressed by the fact that in Lawrence, Kansas, a big deal was made of my southern accent. At 18, my solution was to repress it (and eventually, that repression stuck). Come to find out that Kansas is a divided state, with people in Arkansas City speaking 'southern' and people in Leavenworth speaking 'northern.' My only guess as to why this is true is that Kansas, historically, was a major trigger point for the Civil War (and Ang Lee's latest film release soon will depict this)--and was a battleground between the forces in support of slavery and the forces opposing it. Many people moved to Kansas from New England and other states above the Mason-Dixon line in support of abolition and settled places like Lawrence (named for Lawrence, MA) and slaveholders moved from places like Georgia and settled places like Atlanta, Kansas.

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Name : onanov, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Gay, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Unitarian, Age : 43, City : Iowa City, State : IA Country : United States, Occupation : Graphic Designer, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class, 

[H.]

Though Kansas is not culturally Southern, many of the early settlers of the state were white and black Southerners and a large percentage of Kansans are descended from Southerners. As you may recall, most settlers to Kansas passed through Missouri which was a slave state and a Border State (with both Northern and Southern characteristics). The Kansas-Nebraska Act stated that the residents of Kansas and other new western territories could decide for themselves whether to make the state a free or slave state. So, both Southerners (sometimes including slaves) and abolitionist Yankees settled the state and battled each other for territory, leading to the designation "Bloody Kansas" in the 1850's.

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Name : H., Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Gay, Race : white Southerner, Religion : Methodist, Age : 25, City : Washington, State : DC Country : United States, Occupation : statistician, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class, 

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