Robuu

You could argue it's too far from the Great Lakes, but too rural? There are tons of rural areas along the lakes with the doon'tcha knoow family of eeaccents.

Clevelanders sound more Fargo to me than they do NJ. Which makes sense since the Fargo accent is another Great Lakes accent.

^ Definitely hard to communicate sounds through text, especially since a direct consequence of what we're discussing here is that the same spellings can have different sounds to different people! This is why linguists have their own very complicated alphabet, but who's got time for that? Since someone mentioned above to listen to the UrbanCincy podcast to hear Jake and Randy, I found one with you in it. http://www.urbancincy.com/2015/07/episode-54-summer-update/ At 7:20 you say 'pond'. It sounds like the "ah" sound I am talking about. Relatedly, at 3:32 you say 'about', and I don't hear the U (w sound) that I perceive in my own pronunciation of the word.

Correct. Got, Lot, Cot, Caught, all the same for me. Also, I say both whore-er or harr-er. For example, I''ll say "It's a harr-er picture" but watching a "whore-er show." I also use pop and soda weirdly...I'll request a soda but drink from a pop machine. But that's a whole other discussion! I've heard the most famous example of telling someone's accent is "Merry, Marry, and Mary." I say them all the same but I guess some folks don't? I don't know an accent where all those words are pronounced with the "aw" sound. The caught-cot merger, AFAIK, refers to the "ah" sound. The Merry/Marry/Mary triple-distinction is a signifier of northeastern accents, which have more vowel sounds overall than most regions. Like the "caught-cot merger," this is the "pin-pen merger." I think people with the caught-cot merger can hear the difference in the way other people say it, but people with a full pin-pen merger literally can't hear the difference when others say them distinctly. Like how native speakers of some Asian languages can't learn the difference between L and R sounds. There are some funny videos on Youtube of people trying to figure out how 'pin' and 'pen' are pronounced differently by their friends. Edit: I should add that I've become similarly confused when I've asked friends with NYC accents about the differences between Merry/Marry/Mary.

See, I use Cot and Caught as "Cawt." I'm sleeping on a "Cawt" after I "Cawt" a fish at the lake. The nasal-A-ccent may pronounce "Caht" more notably (which I don't have). That YouTube video is definitely not how I say "Cot." Do you pronounce 'got' like "gawt"? What about 'lot'? These o sounds separate a lot of American dialects, like horror = whore-er vs. horror = harr-er The patterns are difficult to nail down. e.g. Both NYCers and Bostonians will say "harr-er", but NYC will say "Bawstin" and Boston will say "Bahhstin"

The vowel in (non-merged) 'caught' is like 'aw' as in "aww, poor baby". As opposed to the 'ah' in "aha!" which goes with 'cot'.

^^ Having listened to that video now, I'm also reminded that I know older Cincinnatians who say "yuge".

Neither have I, but like I said, the relationship we were talking about doesn't mean "sounds like" but more "shares the most features with." I've known a number of old-timer Cincy folks who, for example, will say something like "fawther" for "father." This is definitely something done in the NYC/NJ area. Perhaps also in Boston, Philly, or Baltimore; not sure. But I don't think it occurs anywhere off the eastern seaboard except Cincinnati. This is, for sure, disappearing, though.

There seem to be a lot of competing interests from neighborhood stakeholders in OTR, which is normal and natural. But some of the identified solutions seem rather against conventional wisdom of how to deal with problems. It seems like some community forums for consensus-building might help to get more people on the same page regarding density, parking, open space, gentrification, etc. Maybe a neighborhood master plan or something along those lines would be in order, to create a more unified vision.

"Most similar" and "closest to" mean something quite different from "sounds like." The Appalachian ("southern" as you call it) influence in Cincinnatians' speech is a mid-20th Century phenomenon, as it was the Great Depression that really kicked off job migration from Appalachia. Cincinnati's original cultural and linguistic development was independent from areas in proximity because Cincinnati was a booming bubble of civilization in the middle of nowhere. Many of the early settlers and their families were from northern New Jersey, which would likely explain the similarities to the NYC accent.

The legislature did the same thing with marijuana reform. They did nothing about it for years and years, until people started collecting signatures for ballot measures they didn't like. Then suddenly it became an emergency issue.

My bad, I misread your earlier post.

I'm not sure you realize how large UC is. It's already over 2/3 the size of OSU, by enrollment. (Though apparently it receives only half the research funding from the state.)

52 Places to Visit in 2018 Cincinnati is #8 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/travel/places-to-visit.html

^ Absurd that Mt. Adams would have the third highest transit score on that list. Weekend bus service was recently cut through the neighborhood, and it's spotty during the week with just one route. The downtown bus hub is walkable, though the walk back up Mt. Adams is a little strenuous, and not reasonable for anyone with mobility issues.

^ Imagine what a greater impact this could have if KY repealed its "right-to-work" law.

My question would be where the people filling these jobs are coming from. Does Cincy have a larger group of long-term out-of-work people who weren't counting towards unemployment stats? Columbus has exploding population growth, and there must be jobs for those people moving in. Cincy does not have exploding population growth, so with a greater gain in jobs, I'm left wondering where the new employees are coming from.

^ Looks fake to me, and the letter reeks of trolling. An image search on the profile pic leads to the "old black man meme" and a bunch of meme generators with that same pic. Signs point to an alt-right 4channer type. Edit: The man in the picture's real name is Jessie Little, and he's from NYC, not Morrow. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/90-year-old-man-vows-payback-punks-captured-camera-mugging-attack-article-1.470307

I'm not sold on the two-lane roundabouts ODOT seems to like. One-lane roundabouts are great.

How can this streetcar be up and running for 15 months in a one-way loop (3.6 miles) and not be reliable? It's such a short-run line. How can this be? Perhaps I keep forgetting about that political conspiracy to destroy a $150 million investment. Maybe I'll ride the Connector on a weekday and will, of course, provide my review. Until then, get on board your streetcar Cinci. There is no excuse for it, other than Cranley's attempt at sabotage. I guess you can call it a conspiracy, but that just sounds like you're throwing shade at the people giving you the explanation, given that word's connotations.

The biggest problem with the streetcar for commuters (or workday lunches) is that it's not reliable. Which has nothing to do with the size or shape of the route. If people could park in a lot and reliably catch a streetcar to their office, we'd see if it catches on with commuters. But currently, for all the reasons listed above, it's simply not reliable when time matters. So it's primarily useful when time doesn't matter as much, i.e. good-weather weekends.

Goes against conventional wisdom of Columbus being the best performing MSA in the state. Surprising to see that over a whole year. Maybe Cincy is still recovering from the Great Recession? It would be interesting to see the median and mean annual salaries for the jobs added to each MSA. It wouldn't make sense to have Dayton together with Cincinnati, since they are separate MSAs (and even separate CSAs).

Being that Cincy is a headquarter city (and with much cheaper rent than NYC), it would be nice if they would try a new concept like an Amazon store, where you could order stuff online and pick it up at the small-format store. Maybe it could also include display models of things that could be ordered for pick-up or delivery, but without all the space needed for inventory. A downtown department store for urban dwellers of the information age. Wishful thinking, I'm sure. Sad to see this store close, as unsurprising as it is.

Not just free publicity but more incentives. Make the cities drool as it dangles in front of their face, and extract more goodies. Somewhat similar to what the MLS has been doing to Sacramento and Cincinnati, on a much grander scale. Edit: I think you're right about the real estate market going haywire. I think this would be a "be careful what you wish for" scenario. Slow growth and homegrown business expansion would be more ideal. Amazon could bring legitimate gentrification, on a scale the Midwest has never seen.

Where did I say density isn't a problem for Cincinnati? Cincinnati has a ton of problems, with density being one of them. Columbus might end up with more of the problems Cincinnati has if it doesn't build transit and densify during its boom years. Which is something Cincinnati did do; the city is mostly built in a transit-oriented manner, with residential streets surrounding defined neighborhood business districts. Cincinnati's density problem is one of abandonment, not built form. Including abandonment of the level of transit service that drove the city's early development. Columbus currently has the opportunity of shaping its future that no other cities in the state have. It has the growth. But it has to decide how to channel it in a sustainable manner.