Without getting into to much detail (understanding that OSA trolls this place regularly) My Mother is a YANK . So I guess I am a half- Yank- but truthfully I am British through and through. But Yankee, I do think, has many meanings:
Yank- slang for American (usually the really LOUD kind!) in Europe (mainly UK)
Yankee- someone who roots for the New York Baseball team
Yankee-someone from new England
This is my understanding: the Mason Dixon Line is the line separating the US in halves - north and south- so in order to be a YANKEE one must be from New England of course north of this line (which after googling it is an old railway line).
In my country this Mason Dixon is much like, I suppose the Pennines which separates Manchester (Lancastrians) and Yorkshire (Yorkist) in ONE of our versions of the American Civil War the War of the Roses.
One of the greatest dialect changes comes from those West of the Pennines (think Manchester accent) vs those who live East (in York or the surrounding counties whereby people speak from the front of their mouths). Not only to the accents differ vastly between these two areas (less than 200 KM at best)- but the attitude and mannerism very greatly from each side of the Pennines. Those from the East see those from West of the Pennines as being of low cast; uneducated and rough looking in manner and appearance (not true of course) and those from the West see those East of the Pennines as full of themselves, given to airs and "above themselves" in dialect and manner. Snobbish for no good reason if you will. Of course being "above yourself" is about the worst insult one can be given!
I think the Mason-Dixon line is more like Hadrian's wall.
Especially since much of the Southern Hill Country is populated by Ulster Scotts-Irish. I myself am a mix of Scotts-Irish and German, perhaps the unholiest mix in Europe.
A Yankee
fan roots for the baseball team. There are some people outside the NY metro area who commit this despicable act.
Yankee up North refers to the inhabitants of Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachussetts, and Maine - that is the
real New England. New Yawk is definitely
not Yankee to these folks.
Down South, it means anyone from above the Maryland border with Pennsylvania, the one that the King had to send Mason and Dixon to survey before a war broke out between those two colonies. (That predates the railroad by about 100 years). The Southern definition includes Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and sometimes Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. Kentucky is a strange state, in that they are culturally Southern, but remained within the Union in the Recent Unpleasantness Between the States.
Actually, Kentucky is strange for a
lot of reasons. Redneck Scotts-Irish mixed with DAR blueblood thoroughbred horse owners.
Anyhoo, New York and New Jersey have their own culture very distinct from the WASPish Daughters of the American Revolution
true Yankee culture. Those two states were heavily influenced by both Jewish and Italian immigration in the 19th Century, and Chinese and Indian immigration in the late 20th. While pockets of WASPs can be found in Westchester County just north of NYC, they are mixed with Jewish, Chinese and Indian enclaves, so even there you don't get the exclusionary feel of New England.
Unfortunately the TV show Jersey Shore is not too much of a charicature of lower-class Italian-American
Guido culture in NJ and the non-Manhattan boroughs of NYC. Manhattanites refer to them as Bridge and Tunnels - meaning thay have to go over a bridge or through a tunnel to get to their favorite nightclubs in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan.
Pennsylvania is a hybrid Southern / Northern culture, and is sometimes referred to as Pennsyltucky, because it has the urban cultures of Philadelphia in the East and Pittsburgh in the West, with a copy of rural Kentucky in between them. (The capital, Harrisburg, is firmly in the "Kentucky" part).
& 
Did you bring yer box o' Cispie-creams? (chew toys.... we haven't had a good one for a while, fly at er!)
