Southern discomfort

FLORIDA TODAY ^ | 3-oct-2003

[stainlessbanner]

Some high-falutin' study by the University of Vanderbilt over there in Tennessee says Southerners just ain't what they used to be.

Says the numbers of people living in the South who reckon they're actually "Southerners" is in decline, down to 70 percent, according to polls conducted on 17,600 people from 13 states, including Florida.

[XRdsRev]

You ask someone in Pennsylvania what a "Yankee" is and they'll say "anybody from New England".

You ask someone from Virginia what a "Yankee" is and they'll say "anybody north of the Potomac".

You ask someone from Florida what a "Yankee" is and they'll say "damned tourists".

You ask somebody from another country what a "Yankee" is and they say "any American".

The definition of Yankee really depends on where you are from and in the eyes of the world, we are all Yankees.

[Junior]

Anybody want some sweet tea?

For true Southerners it was simply "iced tea." We didn't have to start differentiating between sweet and unsweet until those damned Yankees with their alien ways started migrating down here.

[stainlessbanner]

....The ones who think sweet tea is that rasberry flavored junk really get me ....

I want tea, not koolaid

[Junior]

Amen, brother!

[Political Junkie Too]

FLORIDA TODAY

Oh, come on!

When I grew up in Ft. Lauderdale, everyone used to call it New York City's sixth burrough.

-PJ

[Eaker]

You ask somebody from another country what a "Yankee" is and they say "any American".

The definition of Yankee really depends on where you are from and in the eyes of the world, we are all Yankees.

You ask somebody from Houston what a "Yankee" is and they say "anybody north of Dallas".

[ErnBatavia]

You mean the stuff my wife calls "Froo-Froo Tea"?

[MamaTexan]

Ask somebody from Texas what a Yankee is,
they'll say "Anybody north a Dallas."

[DeFault User]

Anybody want some sweet tea?

That phrase and much of the other hokey language in the article reveals that the author is not a Southerner.

[XRdsRev]

Honestly, having been born and raised in New Jersey, I never heard the term "sweet tea" used anywhere except the south.

Up here if you ask for "tea", you'll get a coffee cup of hot water and a tea bag. Sometimes that can be more trouble than it's worth, since some restaraunts have about 20 different kinds of teas in bags. You best know which one you want or you could end up with something you aren't going to like.

If you ask for "iced tea", you'll get a big cold glass of sweetened tea.

You can ask for "unsweetened iced tea" but not everyplace has it unsweetened so you might be out of luck.

If you ask for flavored tea, they will usually ask you what kind of Snapple you want.

A friend of mine from Va was up here last week and we stopped at a nice restaraunt for lunch. He asked for "sweet tea" and the witress just looked at him for a couple seconds, it was hilarious. Finally she asked him if he meant "iced tea" to which he applied in the affirmative. Everything went off without a hitch after that.

[Junior]

The whole "sweet tea"/"unsweet tea" thingy is relatively recent down here in the deep South. I first noticed it when I moved to Atlanta in 1991. I'd been used to ordering "iced tea" and getting sweet tea for years, but I suddenly found the waitresses wanted to know whether I wanted my tea sweet or unsweet. Evidently, the phenomenon had struck south Florida years before because of the huge influx of Yankees (I swear, New York accents are the most common accents in Miami) and had slowly made it's way north. Initially, you only had to differentiate in the larger cities, but now even the diner in the hamlet wherein I live wants to know whether I want my tea swee or unsweet.

[SquirrelKing]

My wife, from Florida, is a self-admitted "swamp yankee". Here's another sweet tea post: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/876485/posts

[mac_truck]