Geographical query [S. Worthen

The first answer would never even have occurred to me, not I supect the vast majority of non-USians

Indeed. It took me several beats to reverse-engineer it.

I did wonder if any Canadians think like the US-ians though on this or not. Also, for expats who have moved in the past in either direction, how their thinking on this ends up.

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The Mid-Atlantic states are actually Delaware, DC, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia (at least according to my AAA guide)

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West Virginia? But it's not on the ocean!

Still, thank you for the clarification. I wonder if anyone from New Jersey thinks they live in a mid-Atlantic state or not?

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I have to admit "mid-atlantic state" to me seems rather "It's chucking it down outside, I'm wet, it's 2pm and I can't go home and get dry until I've answered 70 emails and written 2 reports".

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Did you have a traumatic trip to Bermuda in your past?

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Nope...New Jersey is the "Tri State Area" (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York). And North of that starts New England.

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Except that you can find multiple "Tri-State Areas" across the US and even within the area between New England and the South you hear different combinations of states referred to as "Tri-State". The most common is PA/NJ/NY but I've also heard DE/PA/NJ and NY/CT/NJ referred to that way.

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I thought of somewhere in the middle of the ocean forst even though I think I've heard the term midatlantic states but, the accent I'd think of as 'transatlantic'

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What a lovely answer! And absolutely appropriate. I wonder if your thoughts on the subject are representatively Canadian or not? I'd rather like them to be, whether or not they are.

References to a "midatlantic accent" confuse me endlessly since I am never quite sure where the speaker means.

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A 'mid-atlantic' accent to me savours of Brit DJs trying to sound American, in the 60s, but insidiously pervasive in other areas.

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My answers rarely turn out to be typical of any place and I'm a dangerous dual-national with a lifetime of strange dialectal influences so I think you'll have to settle for wishful thinking.
The term transatlantic speech came to me by way of drama students who studied it as an accent taught to American film and movie actors and radio announcers in the twenties and thirties.

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Why are the second two options lumped together?

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In retrospect, I wish I hadn't, but it's too late now. If I were to redo the poll, I'd either ask about geography or about accents, but not lump them together in one ungainly set of choices.

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I voted for the second on the geography basis. The idea of a midatlantic accent sounds like someone trying too hard (and still failing) to be clever.

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I hear the term all the time, but I always think of choice B. Probably because I am right next to NJ.

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So: is NJ a midatlantic state or not?

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Its Considered to be. I don't really think of it that way, but its advertised as such.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey

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I'm shocked. NJ doesn't have a state song.

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I was very confused the first time someone told me I had a mid-Atlantic accent (not least because it was followed up by "Thank god you don't have some horrible southern twang, ha ha!") and managed to expand the confusion by saying, "But I don't sound like a Yankee." "What? Of course you do." "No I don't." "What?" "What?"

I've always wondered why the Weather Channel refers to the fronts affecting the Atlantic seaboard but never the Pacific seaboard.

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I always have to double-check what the speaker means by "midatlantic" - it's far too confusing otherwise. Of course, it remains confusing if, say, I'm just one of many audience members in a large auditorium.

Perhaps the Pacific doesn't have a seaboard but some other technical seaside term. Like the difference between a hurricane and a typhoon.

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Hmm. According to the all knowing wikipedia, there is a corresponding Pacific Seaboard. But it doesn't exist in my universe if Jim Cantori does not acknowledge it.

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Shouldn't a mid-atlantic accent be Icelandic? Or possibly Danish?

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Yes! Or would that be a north Atlantic accent? Looking at the map, The islands of São Paolo or Ascension look the most overall centrally located. Cape Verge Islands are very N-S central, but rather too close to the African coast to count overall, I'd think.

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I'd think of an area in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, largely devoid of humans except those passing through. No accents come to mind.

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Bermuda?

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True! I've always been poor at geography...

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Well, those of us from the Left Coast call it the Pacific Coast. If you'd said mid-Atlantic accent I'd have known what you meant immediately, but since I live in a mid-Atlantic state, that's what came to mind first.

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There aren't enough states on the W coast to have midpacific states.

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The first meaning would never have occurred to me. My guess is that the responses will break down to a considerable extent by nationality.

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I've never heard of the first answer. I think it must be extremely regional or US-nal.
Or it's like us out here in BC who refer to Ontario as "Eastern Canada," when it's really "Central Canada" and think it's strange when people refer to Alberta as the West. No - we're the West.

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Huh. Interesting. I include Pennsylvania, New York and D.C. in the Mid-Atlantic region personally.

Here are my entirely anecdotal and personal regional definitions for the East Coast:

New England is: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut

Mid-Atlantic is: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and D.C.

South is everything south of Virginia, except Florida. Florida is Florida.

I know. It doesn't really make sense.
I'm also never quite sure what to do with Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky. They don't quite read as "mid-West" but they're not East Coast and not quite South either.

Anyway.

The middle of the Atlantic Ocean is ... the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, or mid-Atlantic used in a sentence that contextualizes the former as such. But Mid-Atlantic is always that random conglomeration of states between New England and the South.

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Oh and the reason I say that the South starts in Virginia is because that's when it feels like the South, though really, you could include Northern Virginia near D.C. in "Mid-Atlantic" because the shift doesn't really happen until you drive through Richmond going south or out towards the Shenandoah valley.

And this is all highly subjective based on the "feel" of driving through and stopping places on more than one road-trip to Georgia during the late 90s.

Missouri is also confusing, by the by. When we drove from Oklahoma to D.C. crossing Missouri and through St. Louis was funky. Oklahoma felt like The West, but Missouri neither felt "Southern" the way Georgia does, nor mid-Western like Illinois and Indiana did.

Anyway that's sort of out of scope :) My co-worker from Indiana points out that the term Mid-West probably originates from the time when the West, was everything west of the Mississippi. Wikipedia defines it to include from Missouri up through North Dakota.

But yeah. Out of scope. And I think that Mid-Atlantic is definitely only meaningful to folks who grew up on in the US and perhaps only particularly to East Coasters.

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Hah!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_States

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Hiya hon - don't know if you are considering applying for naturalisation, but we've had a bit of a shock here - the Home Office is proposing fee increases to naturalisation applications from £268 to £575. I'm scrambling now to get the test taken and the application in before 1 April, when the fees would come into effect if they pass (which they probably will).

Just thought I'd let you know!

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I'm not eligible for another 3.5 years! Thank you for letting me know.

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Ah, I didn't realize that it took that much longer for partners!

I suppose it gives you time to save up for the fee, then, if nothing else...!

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If memory serves, you can apply after 3 years if you're married, 5 years for any reason at all if you have residency, regardless of partnership status. At this point, marriage would no longer help speed things along since it would, at most, save 6 months.

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Besides, living in sin sounds cooler ;)

I'd forgotten about the difference in times, mostly because I haven't actually read any naturalisation info in ages. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll pass the test and get everything submitted by the last day of March...didn't think I'd have to scramble THIS much to get it taken care of!

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MidAtlantic...middle of the Atlantic Ocean. UBoats, Convoys, topedos, and other WWII stuff come to mind.

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