Minnesota Accent

[tlarnla]

I think the "Minnesota accent" applies to certain parts of Minnesota more than the whole state.

I remember when the movie Fargo came out, and people were talking about the Minnesota accents in the movie. A couple of my cousins complained that the Minnesotans don't talk anything like that. I didn't tell them, but I was thinking, "That's how you talk!"

I remember there used to be a lot of people in the Stearns County area that spoke like the Brainerd characters in the movie. That area was heavily settled by German immigrants. My mom says that when she was a kid, her parents spoke mostly in German to their friends and relatives. Even when I was a kid, I remember that most of the older people in Stearns County said, "ya" instead of "yes", and there were a few other German words you'd hear a lot that I didn't really hear anywhere else.

My grandparents did not have a Fargo-type accent though. They had strong German accents. They were born and raised in Minnesota. They were actually 2nd-4th generation Americans, but they had thick German accents and were fluent in German. Many of the towns around there were German communities. I'm thinking that what people are referring to as the Minnesota accent might be influenced by the German communities.

BTW, I thought the car dealer's accent was different, and that seemed to sound like a "north of St Paul" type of accent, where I think we had more Scandinavian immigrants. Am I way off-base here, or did anybody else think so?

[tlarnla]

How does the Minnesota accent compare to the Canadian accent? I can't really tell them apart.

I have been asked if I was from Canada and/or told I had a Canadian accent a couple times. I remember once I was asked that by a couple guys in Florida, and when I asked where they were from, they said, "Canada". So Canadians thought I had a Canadian accent !