Do us Minnesotans have an accent? (Duluth, Moorhead: wedding, live in, restaurants)

[bonnieb143]

Originally Posted by ShiNnGsTar*

It must be a Northern Minnesotan thing then. Cause ya, Ive never heard anyone say that in the South metro area.

jah, oh for cute has been around as far back as the 60s, 70s. I heard it all the time growing up. "Oh for dumb," "oh for stupid," "oh for cute," etc...jah, it is a Northern Minnesota thing goin on der.

[nerfer]

(Note: Some of this may be specific to rural northern MN).

When I moved to Texas I was rather annoyed when somebody corrected the way I said flag (with a long A). I figured with the Texas accent (tent=tint, a woman introduced herself to me as "Windy", you drive on an "ah-ihl roahd" or oil road, etc) they couldn't be right, but I looked it up in the dictionary, and they were right. Since then I kept track of the differences. Some of them are the long o, like in Minnesotan, or motorboat. Obviously the -ag words. We can't tell the difference between caught and cot or dawn and don. Root and roof have almost the same vowel as put. We say poor like pore, not like pure. But I'm still conflicted on how to say creek. And does route have an 'ow' sound or 'oo' sound?

I think cities tend to be more cosmopolitan, with fewer differences. People from Dallas were less likely to have a strong southern accent than those from rural areas, same thing in MN.

The "oh fer cute" is definitely MN, but not widespread. I have a cousin from St. Cloud who uses that, but we didn't hear it much in northern MN. It's in the book "How to Speak Minnesotan" (excellent book for anybody reading this thread!), which has connections to The Prairie Home companion, and Lake Wobegone is supposedly near St. Cloud, so maybe it's local to that area.

I remember watching MASH and Col. Hunnicut (who supposedly came from MN) said a sentence that ended in already (like "Stop it already"), and I immediately said that's not Minnesotan.

Regarding the dialect, I was probably 14 before I figured out soda and pop were the same (I thought soda meant cream soda and pop was a soft drink). My parents always called the couch a davenport (but they're from ND, so I don't know where that lies), and we never called it a sofa, that was for richer people. We have choppers for mittens with inserts, and use the brand-name sorels for lined winter boots (like kleenex for tissues). In our cars we spin cookies instead of donuts (more of a RWD thing). We use the term boughten for store-bought items, like boughten bread, which is very specific to MN and some areas of WI and MI I think. Definitely not present here in Chicago (which tends to have an Italian influence, kind of like NY to me in some aspects, but not in the 'r's).

When I lived in Connecticut I found out some people really do say "it's ten of 3" for 2:50 and "ten past 3" for 3:10. I read that repeatedly in elementary school but it never really made sense to me and I never ever heard anybody say that, so I thought it was an example of how English teachers sometimes try to impose their own rules on things (like splitting the infinitive or ending a sentence with a proposition, just because it wasn't done in Latin).

I have a friend from NY who lived in the TC, and he was really annoyed by the phrase "Are you coming with?". In addition to leaving off the understood object, he says, it's not coming, you're going somewhere. Kind of like our occasional borrow/lend confusion.

I was in college before I heard somebody say "Have a good one." That confused me, have a good what? Now I hear it fairly frequently.

And has nobody mentioned "uff da"???

[santos]

[quote=nerfer;5162408](Note: Some of this may be specific to rural northern MN). I have a friend from NY who lived in the TC, and he was really annoyed by the phrase "Are you coming with?".[quote=nerfer;5162408]

We liked your friend enough to offer an invite and now to find we were annoying.

[quote=nerfer;5162408]we didn't hear it much in northern MN[quote=nerfer;5162408]

Did you actually live up there for more than say, one week?

[quote=nerfer;5162408]Lake Wobegone is supposedly near St. Cloud [quote=nerfer;5162408]

You really blew this one, Lake Wobegon is a totally made up town.

[quote=nerfer;5162408] I think cities tend to be more cosmopolitan, with fewer differences. People from Dallas were less likely to have a strong southern accent than those from rural areas, same thing in MN.
[quote=nerfer;5162408]

Oh for sophisticated!

[quote=nerfer;5162408] choppers for mittens with inserts [quote=nerfer;5162408]

Choppers were leather mittens. It was the leather that made them choppers. Popular with the men who worked outdoors, like mining, railroad.

[quote=nerfer;5162408] boughten for store-bought items, like boughten bread, which is very specific to MN and some areas of WI and MI I think.[quote=nerfer;5162408]

Specific to farm kids everywhere.

[quote=nerfer;5162408] we never called it a sofa, that was for richer people. [quote=nerfer;5162408]

This is really funny, hahahaha

[quote=nerfer;5162408] Chicago (which tends to have an Italian influence, kind of like NY to me in some aspects,[quote=nerfer;5162408]

As an FYI, 50 years ago there was a huge Italian population on the Iron Range. Don't know where you are living in Chicago but I know of no place on earth that is like NY in any aspect other than being a city.

[quote=nerfer;5162408] In our cars we spin cookies instead of donuts (more of a RWD thing)[quote=nerfer;5162408]

Another new one.

I'm bored now. Yours was an interesting post, tried not to quote anything out of context. Are you parroting what you read in a book? Hope you aren't offended, I was just having fun.

[Thedosius]

Originally Posted by nerfer

When I moved to Texas I was rather annoyed when somebody corrected the way I said flag (with a long A). I figured with the Texas accent (tent=tint, a woman introduced herself to me as "Windy", you drive on an "ah-ihl roahd" or oil road, etc) they couldn't be right, but I looked it up in the dictionary, and they were right. Since then I kept track of the differences. Some of them are the long o, like in Minnesotan, or motorboat. Obviously the -ag words. We can't tell the difference between caught and cot or dawn and don. Root and roof have almost the same vowel as put. We say poor like pore, not like pure. But I'm still conflicted on how to say creek. And does route have an 'ow' sound or 'oo' sound?

Texans shouldn't be correcting anyone's english.

I have a friend from NY who lived in the TC, and he was really annoyed by the phrase "Are you coming with?". In addition to leaving off the understood object, he says, it's not coming, you're going somewhere. Kind of like our occasional borrow/lend confusion.

Per the census, about 38% of Minnesotans are of German descent. How does one say "Do you want to come along?" in German?

"Kommst du mit?"
"Come you with?"

The dangling preposition comes, I would bet, from the old Germans who were learning english on isolated farms throughout Minnesota about 100 years ago. I think that's kind of cool.

[nerfer]

Originally Posted by santos

We liked your friend enough to offer an invite and now to find we were annoying.

LOL He was just annoyed by the phrase, not the people.

Originally Posted by santos

Did you actually live up there for more than say, one week?

Hmm, from age 6 to 22. I think that qualifies

Originally Posted by santos

You really blew this one, Lake Wobegon is a totally made up town.

That's why I said "supposedly". Oh fer obvious :-)

Originally Posted by santos

Oh for sophisticated!

Choppers were leather mittens. It was the leather that made them choppers. Popular with the men who worked outdoors, like mining, railroad.

I don't know if it was the leather or we used them with woolen inserts, since we never used them without the inserts. Kind of a package deal.

Originally Posted by santos

Specific to farm kids everywhere.

Might be a farm thing, but not everywhere I'd say. Gives me a new angle to pursue this on though, as I meet new people. Don't meet many farm kids, however.

Originally Posted by santos

This is really funny, hahahaha

As an FYI, 50 years ago there was a huge Italian population on the Iron Range. Don't know where you are living in Chicago but I know of no place on earth that is like NY in any aspect other than being a city.

I grew up west of the range, but thought it had a definite Finish/Russian population, in addition to the usual Germans and Norwegian/Swedish Scandihoovians in the state. Perhaps there are Italians there, I knew at least a couple at UMD.
But the Chicagoans have a definite accent of their own, not quite like the surrounding area, of course it varies since there is such a Polish and Hispanic influence as well. To my unsophistated ear, there's a similarity to New York city. One person with a Chicago accent traveled to Missouri and they said he sounded "like a cop, like on TV".

Originally Posted by santos

Another new one.

I'm bored now. Yours was an interesting post, tried not to quote anything out of context. Are you parroting what you read in a book? Hope you aren't offended, I was just having fun.

No offense. A fella could do worse, I guess. But almost all of what I said comes from growing up in MN, then living in various parts of the country after
college. I haven't seen "choppers" mentioned in any book on MN, for instance, and yet nobody outside the state seems to know what they are (teeth? helicopters?).

Another word specific to MN is popple, for the poplar (aka quaking aspen) trees. And there's balmy, or bam, for the balm of gilead tree, related to popple, but of lower quality wood.

Hope you don't mind, but I fixed up your end quotes, so it's a bit more readable.

[kuan]

Out in the country it's breakfast, dinner, and supper. Is that specific to the upper Midwest? I'm a city boy. I don't know these things.

And yeah, "bought'n" is a word my MIL uses a lot, even though she's been in Illinois for 30 years!

[santos]

nerfer, I see you are offended by my post. I apologize. I am too intense about correcting what I know to be an obvious error--my bad. I know only about life in the town of Hibbing, Brooklyn, and Kitzville and can claim no knowledge of areas west, east, south or north of them. I meant no harm.

I find it interesting that young people raised on the Mesabi Range can't wait to leave, and as they age can't wait to go back. Or to embrace its rich ethnic heritage. This is true for me at any rate.

Thedosius, my Italian forebears were taught English by their German ancestors, and their surnames were altered. Italians who came to this country speaking some English fared better in protecting family name pronunciation. My dad used to tell his father "If you didn't have that big nose no one would know you are Italian."

[Thedosius]

Originally Posted by santos

I find it interesting that young people raised on the Mesabi Range can't wait to leave, and as they age can't wait to go back. Or to embrace its rich ethnic heritage. This is true for me at any rate.

I've only been in the Range area once, and thought it was surprisingly interesting. In some ways, I found it rather grim- there is little emphasis on creating beautiful buildings to match the beautiful environment, and most of the buildings looked like run-down bait shops. On the other hand, I was surprised by the feeling of it being a different culture, almost a different country- and I really liked that. I remember going to a liquor store up there (I chuckled at just how many liquor stores per capita there seems to be), and the woman behind the counter was Serbian or Croatian, and had a rather thick accent.

Over all, the Rangers seem like tough, salt-of-the-earth folks, with a lot of people of eastern European, Balkan, or Italian descent. That is a different background than what predominates in the parts of the state I am most familiar with, where caucasians are largely of German and Scandinavian ancestry.

Thedosius, my Italian forebears were taught English by their German ancestors, and their surnames were altered.

I think your syntax got mangled here a little bit...are you saying "my Italian forebears were taught English by Germans who had immigrated to the U.S. before them"?. A lot of German families also had their names butchered (or chose to have them "Americanized" because they were so excited to become Americans). Fortunately, my German ancestors had a name that didn't require much alteration- "Engel". The other side of my family was English or Scotch, with names like Weed, Dodge, Kellogg, Brisbane. Of course, English names didn't get changed all that much. All of the preceeding were on my mother's side- my dad's family is Czech, Ukranian, Danish, and again some German.

My dad used to tell his father "If you didn't have that big nose no one would know you are Italian."

The picture in my head is of an Italian-looking immigrant who spoke with a German accent.

[santos]

Thedosius, please follow me around because my syntax gets mangled quite a bit. Yes, that is what I meant. Dad's father used to get angry when people would ask "are you German", or "are you polish". Dad would rile him by saying "I think you are Jewish".

Do remember that the Mesabi Range has been a bit economically stressed for 30 or so years. In Hibbing the Wal-Mart and K-Mart came to town. The downtown area is very sad indeed. I saw also that there is a new wave of immigrants moving in and that the area called Brooklyn is really seedy. Kitzville appeared dying too. There doesn't appear to be the property pride that there once was. It will be interesting to see what the new mining operation brings.

Your summation "feeling of it being a different culture, almost a different country" is spot on.

[knke0402]

My hometown had fluent German speakers until the 1970s.
Very, very, very, very German town