Yankee

Yankees
Yankee Americans
Regions with significant populations
United States, Northern States, New England
Languages
English
Religion
Majority:
Christianity (Protestantism) [1]

The term Yankee and its contracted form Yank have several interrelated meanings, all referring to people from the United States. Their various meanings depend on the context, and may refer to New Englanders, the Northeastern United States, the Northern United States, or to people from the US in general.[2][3][4]

Outside the United States, Yank is used informally to refer to an American person or thing. It has been especially popular in the United Kingdom, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand where it may be used variously, either with an uncomplimentary overtone, endearingly, or cordially.[5][6] In the Southern United States, Yankee is a derisive term which refers to all Northerners, and during the American Civil War it was applied by Confederates to soldiers of the Union army in general. Elsewhere in the United States, it largely refers to people from the Northeastern states, but especially those with New England cultural ties, such as descendants of colonial New England settlers, wherever they live.[7] Its sense is sometimes more cultural than geographical, emphasizing the Calvinist Puritan Christian beliefs and traditions of the Congregationalists who brought their culture when they settled outside New England. The speech dialect of Eastern New England English is called "Yankee" or "Yankee dialect".[8]

  1. ^ Luis Lug; Sandra Stencel; John Green; Gregory Smith; Dan Cox; Allison Pond; Tracy Miller; Elixabeth Podrebarac; Michelle Ralston (February 2008). "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey" (PDF). Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Pew Research Center. Retrieved February 12, 2012.
  2. ^ Aristide R. Zolberg (2006). A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America. Harvard University Press. p. 520.
  3. ^ Barbara Handy-Marchello (2005). Women of the Northern Plains: Gender and Settlement on the Homestead Frontier, 1870-1930. Minnesota Historical Society. p. 205.
  4. ^ Francesco Cordasco; David Nelson Alloway (1981). American Ethnic Groups, the European Heritage: A Bibliography of Doctoral Dissertations Completed at American Universities. Scarecrow Press. p. 119.
  5. ^ "Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary Online". Cambridge University Press.
  6. ^ Bird, Kim (2012). "250, 100, 280 class railcars of the South Australian Railways". Proceedings of the 2012 Convention. Modelling the Railways of South Australia. Adelaide. p. 3‑390. One of the drawing office staff relates how they spent months reading "Yankee magazines and extracting all the articles on Budd Rail Diesel Cars".
  7. ^ Ruth Schell (1963). "Swamp Yankee". American Speech. 38 (2): 121–123. doi:10.2307/453288. JSTOR 453288.
  8. ^ Robert Hendrickson (2000). The Facts on File Dictionary of American Regionalisms. Infobase. p. 326. ISBN 9781438129921.

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