Fictional St. Olaf, MN: Hometown of Rose Nylund from The Golden Girls

[bler144]

At least as the story around Northfield goes, one of the original writers from the Golden Girls was a Carleton College alum/alumna (I'd have to research to find the name or prove it was true) who wanted to make a dig at their cross-town "rival" school.

The Creator (Susan Harris) is a Cornell U. grad, though, so it wasn't her.

[ProudSouthernBelle]

I dreamed of visiting Minnesota growing up, watching the Golden Girls. I loved Rose's innocence. If you listen to every single interview of Betty White, when asked about Rose, she referred to Rose as "not dumb, but terminally naive."

I am originally from the South, and after hearing constantly how amazing the schools are in Minnesota, I was surprised to learn the truth about education here. All inner city Schools in MN are sub par. They are actually rated the lowest in the country. The reputation they have for amazing schools actually comes from the ratings outside any urban localities. Rural schools, with predominantly Caucasian and affluent families in areas such as Farmington, Andover and Loretto have amazing schools. It has less to do with the curriculum, and more to do with familial encouragement and personal resouces available to students. The newspapers have called out the community for severe apathy.

But, the people inside and outside of twin cities use double negatives and grammatically incorrectly speech as much, if not more than most of the country. Also, Minnesotans know everything, correct all others about facts, pronunciations and language more than any group of individuals I have ever known, even when you can prove they are wrong. It really should be nicknamed the Know It Alls state. (Obvious in the tone of the individual who posted the thread about Betty's matriculation; her biographies and autobiographies all say she was a CA native and went to Beverly Hills and Horace Mann in L.A., then started acting professionally three months after high school in 1939.)

In the cities, they pronounce words in the most unique way, and they pretend not to understand words when they are pronounced correctly by an outsider.

Bag is pronounced bague, as in vague
Roof is pronounced ruff, like a dog
Catre corner (pronounced by most as Catty Corner) is pronounced as kitty corner. I have been chewed out by ex-coworkers for pronouncing it as the French, who originated the term.

I now work in a rather rural city, South of Minneapolis. The people are much nicer, don't pretend to not understand me, and have never corrected my words or pronunciations. But, we do joke about the grey duck/goose controversy.

When you hear Minnesota Nice, in certain distinct areas, it really means the catty way of insulting outsiders, while pretending to be innocent. I would welcome Rose Nylund's naivety over rude any day!