Do us Minnesotans have an accent? (motel, transfer, university)

[k41150]

Yes, there's a Minnesota accent; it's a slightly watered-down Scandinavian accent, especially noticeable in long 'O's and home-grown phrases like 'You betcha!'.

I've lived all over the US and no longer have a Minnesota accent, so I hear it much more strongly now that I'm back here.

[ozzie679]

Originally Posted by TravisW

I definitely have an accent, although I grew up in central ND. When I moved to the Fargo-Moorhead, I got a lot of crap for my "Minnesota accent".

Fargo-Moorhead???? They have the thickest Minnesota accent ever.

[Perkins Well]

Originally Posted by ozzie679

Fargo-Moorhead???? They have the thickest Minnesota accent ever.

I hope to hear a Minnesotan accent in 2009.

[TravisW]

Originally Posted by ozzie679

Fargo-Moorhead???? They have the thickest Minnesota accent ever.

Actually, nobody that I know who actually grew up here has any sort of noticeable accent (to my ear). People over 50 do, to some extent. It's nothing like back home, though.

[knke0402]

The ND accents are much more disgusting than MN ones.. MN ones are actually kind of interesting, THe ND ones sound like imbreaded hicks with no education. Just my opinion.

[TravisW]

Originally Posted by knke0402

The ND accents are much more disgusting than MN ones.. MN ones are actually kind of interesting, THe ND ones sound like imbreaded hicks with no education. Just my opinion.

That's "inbred".

"Imbreaded" sounds like a KFC kitchen staff traveling across Iraq with a squad of Marines.

To say that there's a particular "Minnesota" accent is a massive oversimplification of where the accents come from and how they are distributed. The stereotypical "Minnesota" accent is pretty much what is in the movie "Fargo". That is an accent derived from predominantly Norwegian and Swedish settlement, and isn't really the same as, say, a Polish-derived accent. The main accents in ND are Scandinavian and German/Russian. They share a couple of common things, such as long o's and "ja" as a word; but beyond that are pretty different. The end result is that my accent is more similar to some people in SE Minnesota than people who may have grown up 30 miles west of me. So really, it follows ethnic settlement lines and little else.

[SAKA]

I think Sarah Palin sounds Minnesotan.

[knke0402]

I do too.

[rangerider]

Originally Posted by nerfer

...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)...

I found this really interesting...I grew up in northern Nebraska and always heard "davenport" or "couch", never sofa, and it was always "kleenex". Davenport goes back to the very late 1800s, and is a large upholstered couch, sometimes convertible into a bed, possibly named for the manufacturer. Earlier than that, 1850s, a small writing desk. Raising dust in the parking lot could be either cookies or donuts, but occasionally "brodies (brodys?). And to my Depression-era parents, anything that wasn't homemade was boughten, especially bread. For reference, she was Czech/Bohemian blood and he was largely English, so it may have been environment more than anything. And it was always "pop", too. Winter boots were Tingleys or overshoes, so maybe people called them whatever brand was common, especially after "rubbers" took on a decidedly different meaning.

My wife grew up in MN, and it took her a good long while to start losing the accent after she moved out west. She falls into it pretty easily after a week back there. I didn't notice the accent a lot at first, but what I did notice was that people had a tendency to not finish sentences nor let the next person finish theirs when in a group. That might just be peculiar to her family, though. Drives me up the wall...

[ozzie679]

Originally Posted by rangerider

My wife grew up in MN, and it took her a good long while to start losing the accent after she moved out west. She falls into it pretty easily after a week back there. I didn't notice the accent a lot at first, but what I did notice was that people had a tendency to not finish sentences nor let the next person finish theirs when in a group. That might just be peculiar to her family, though. Drives me up the wall...

My friends from KC say the same thing. It drives them nuts when we don't finish our sentences. They always tell me a sentence can't end with the word "with".

If you really want to get old school Minnesotan....people in my area of the state sometimes end questions with the word "not"