Which states are Upper Midwest?

[ilikeverin]

I've always considered Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa the Upper Midwest.  Michigan is definitely culturally distinct.  If we're willing to subdivide states, then, sure, the eastern part of the Dakotas and the UP are "Upper Midwestern", but if we have to define them as a whole I would not consider ND or SD a part of the Upper Midwest.  They're part of the Great Plains.

Jimrtex, if places like Ohio are not in the Mid-West, then what region do you think OH is in?

Based on the linguistic map, the northern portion (Cleveland, Toledo) should be part of Northlands that extends into New York, includes all of Michigan, eastern Wisconsin, Chicago, northwestern Indiana, and then extending into the areas of heavy German and Scandinavian settlement through Wisconsin, Minnesota and into the Dakotas and Montana.

The area to the south would be Midlands.

As a linguist who's worked closely with students of Labov, who developed this map, I must point out that dialect regions don't necessarily indicate cultural regions. They are not mutually exclusive, but shared dialectal features are indeed historically indicative of others shared experiences such as: migration, geographical breaks, economic ecology,  etc.

In short, speakers from places like PA and WI can share the aforementioned features in their speech patterns while still being from two very distinct cultural/geographic regions.

What is a "region" of the United States? (don't limit yourself to linguistic or cultural regions). I assume the original poster considered the "Upper Midwest" to be a "region"?

Could you translate the text on the map into common English?

Why were urban area dialect areas identified. Are they distinct from rural dialects? I assume before say 1920, most persons learned to speak from their family and neighbors, and the effect of school would be somewhat limited, since the teacher would often be a neighbor with somewhat limited normal school education.

What is acoustic analysis. What other ways are there of analyzing "speech patterns"? (quotes to indicate I don't know what term you would use)

What is a "vowel system", and what is a Telsur informant?

"What is a "region" of the United States? (don't limit yourself to linguistic or cultural regions). I assume the original poster considered the "Upper Midwest" to be a "region"?"

"Region" is used here colloquially. It can be any continuous area that is constrained by predefined factors--linguistic regions, cultural regions, subcultural regions, geographic regions, etc.

'Could you translate the text on the map into common English?"

I could help you more if you would tell me what specifically you don't understand.

"Why were urban area dialect areas identified. Are they distinct from rural dialects? I assume before say 1920, most persons learned to speak from their family and neighbors, and the effect of school would be somewhat limited, since the teacher would often be a neighbor with somewhat limited normal school education."

Urban areas are indeed distinct from rural dialects, especially in modern-day America. Your assumption is correct, for the most part. The basic idea is that urban speakers tend to be more innovative; that is, the language changes that take place in certain areas usually happen first in densely populated zones. The less populated and more rural areas may exhibit a significant delay in those changes or not exhibit them at all (i.e., rural areas are more linguistically conservative).

"What is acoustic analysis. What other ways are there of analyzing "speech patterns"? (quotes to indicate I don't know what term you would use)"

Acoustic analysis is the analysis of the distinct physical sounds that speakers made, known as "phones" (see below). Acoustic analysis can imply any kind of analysis of features identified under acoustic physics, ranging from tone to pitch to sound formants.

Speech patterns can be analyzed for their content in context (Pragmatics) or for other purposes, such as identifying an individual (Forensic Linguistics). The kinds of analyses vary depending on the subfield.

'What is a "vowel system", and what is a Telsur informant?"

Telsur was the name of the project; the rest of that phrase explains itself. Regarding vowel systems, our language inventories are composed on a certain set of physical sounds (to which we refer as phones). Unique phone tokens are practically infinite, as they can vary in contour, pitch, tone, quality, etc.

The way we, as speakers and listeners, process phones is by grouping tokens of a kind into a type or category, such that 1,000 different productions of the "i" vowel phone from 1,000 different speakers are perceived as "i." That abstract category is what we call a phoneme. Phonemes exist as distinct categories that share a same space in your mouth. This relationship across vowel phonemes is referred to as a vowel system. See an example of a standard English vowel system below:

*hughughug*

[ilikeverin]

I've always considered Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa the Upper Midwest.  Michigan is definitely culturally distinct.  If we're willing to subdivide states, then, sure, the eastern part of the Dakotas and the UP are "Upper Midwestern", but if we have to define them as a whole I would not consider ND or SD a part of the Upper Midwest.  They're part of the Great Plains.

Is the Upper Midwest part of the Midwest? (i.e. upper Midwest)

Yes, the Upper Midwest is a component of the Midwest, along with the Great Lakes (IL/IN/MI/OH).

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I'm not attempting to make a formal definition; my proposals are just based on my intuitions as a local.