NPR is giving lessons in how to do the Minnesota accent
. I should probably practice so I can blend in better.
One nice thing about it is that they’re emphasizing the subtleties–it’s inspired by the television series, Fargo, but all the people in that show have the extreme version of the local accent — they all sound like they’re straight out of the Iron Range, way up north. Around where I live, the accent is recognizable but much, much softer.
We should all work on our accents while I struggle with a few other things: it’s a heavy grading day for me, and my computer is still mostly dead and unreliable (I’m pecking this out on my iPad, which is totally unsuitable for writing of any length). My goal is to get all the exams graded today, and reward myself wit the local showing of the new Star Wars movie.
Don’t worry, my keyboardless state means I won’t be able to dump spoilers on you. I’ll be reduced to short texting style one-liners by then. “WORST STAR WARS EVER.”
The thing that people don’t realize about accents, though, is that it isn’t just what you add in that makes the accent correct, it’s also what you have to leave out. I could do all the things suggested at the NPR link, but the minute a Minnesotan heard me say “leg” (laig) or “egg” (aig), they would know something was wrong. And the year I spent living in New Jersey when I was four really makes it mark when I say, “The boys enjoy playing with the noisy toys.” (No matter where I go, I hear, “You’re not from around here, are you?”)
It’s similar when trying to write dialog for fiction written in the past. It’s easy to research idioms that people might have used in earlier time, but it’s also important to know what they would not have said, because that idiom didn’t come into use until 20 or 50 years or a hundred years later, and that’s something writers fail at regularly.
I visited my family in Minnesota many years ago with my ex. Someone had given her the book, “How to Speak Minnesotan,” and she’d thought it was a joke. Until we got there, and she realized it was an accurate translation. The funny part was when she tried explaining her vegan diet to my aunts & uncles.
My Minnesota accent has always been confined to a few words, so that I fit in anywhere I go where people talk approximately like a newscaster or narrator.
When I lived in MN I was surprised to find that people from other states expected me to sound like I was from Ontario.
There cannot possibly be a worse SW movie than Attack of the Clones. I fell asleep in the theater. Only time that’s ever happened to me.
@4 frog:
Didn’t see it, but, wow! Worse than Phantom Menace?! That would take some doing.
Re: the new one, according to the local (Toronto) paper, they’ve basically remade Episode IV; Disney is nothing if not safe. Yawn.
A guy I went to high school with just went viral (He’s the reporter who saw the bank robber go by) and now I’ve seen people making fun of his accent on national TV. And yeah, them making fun of his accent sounds like me making fun of a Canadian accent.
I did just notice we don’t move our jaw much while reading this article. I thought the lack of movement was a general American thing.
“Cool kids”? It’s Minnesota! Being cool there is just a matter of waiting for winter, then it’s freezing cold.
“Worse Star Wars evar”? Easy: All of them.
yes. when I first immigrated to NE, (from further south than NY, but not THE South), I was often befuddled by the superlative use of “could care less”. Puzzled how that could be a superlative. took a while to realize it was a short form of “couldn’t care less” (maybe having to do with double negatives)
still.
doesn’t that fall under “dialect”, more than “accent”? Having only briefly listed to McWhortle, the distinction is not perfectly well understood.
Coleslaw —
I was raised in the south. I have never lived anywhere but the south. I had southern parents, grandparents, great-grandparents…you get the idea. (I, however, am not southern…I just live in the south.) I’ve been in this one southern hellhole, erm, town for 40 years now (and before that was a few years in Alabama, which is, if anything more southern than Sux Carolina.) And everywhere I open my mouth here, for over 40 years, I hear,” You’re not from the south, are you?” Or, “You must be from up nawth or California*.” And they won’t take “No, I’m from here” for an answer. They argue it with me, insisting I am lying, and get even more pissy if I say “well before this, I lived in Alabama.” No, I am still lying, I have to be, whyyyy won’t I tell them where I I’m reallyreally from?
*Cuz those accents sound totes the same, amiright? *sigh*
Yeah, it’s not easy having an accent which apparently marks you as perpetually ‘not from here’. I get told I have all sorts of accents, from Irish to Russian, even though I never travelled outside Australia until I was 24.
I blame Attenborough and the Young Ones.
I’ve also got an accent and other mannerisms which perpetually indicate I am “not from here”, for any value of here. And, at the moment, a primary language which marks me as “not from here” in about the same way an SR-71 spyplane at a bicycle show would indicate “not quite the same thing — sure, it’s high-end and made from Titanium, just like some high-end bicycles, but…”. I certainly do get told — or asked — about my accent, with most people guessing “Canadian” (I point, eh, out to, eh, them, eh, I’m, eh, not, eh, because there, eh, aren’t enough ehs, eh). Plus verbal, eh, habits, like the Irish eejit and feck, or the British pronunciation of certain words, like the famous tomato and jaguar.
Even my writing zips all over the place, like the older spelling clew (“clue”) or the use of both British and over there suffixes (-ise and -ize, for instance). And one which has — to my surprise — caused a lot of problems, use of the “c.” abbreviation for the Latin circa, meaning “about” or “approximately”; e.g., I often have to explain “c.100″ means “about 100” or “~100”.
So what? Except for the “c.” confusion (anbd a tendency too tpyo or accidentally words (insert: omit)), I can’t recall much, if indeed any of the above, ever being a problem or causing unwarranted embarrassment (I do make a fool of myself every now and then, and usually have a laugh at it), but that may just be me, my obtuseness, or the mildly deranged penguin lurking in the background.
I have relatives in rural southeastern Minnesota. I’ve visited a few times, they’ve visited my parents a few times, my mom had traces of the accent… in short, I have no trouble conversing with them, though I don’t speak Minnesotan. They accept that I speak Californian.
My husband is a Navy brat who grew up around the Pacific Rim. His father is Southern, and still has a bit of a Southern accent. Husband tends to mimic the accent when he talks to his dad — totally unintentionally. Husband can listen to East Asian speakers and identify the language that they’re speaking, though he doesn’t speak any East Asian language. But Minnesotan is totally foreign to him. He’s had numerous conversations with my grandmother, uncle, and cousin… and he takes me aside afterwards and asks what they’re talking about. His brain does not compute Minnesotan.
Go figure.
The Minnesota accent seems to have a certain Swedishness to it.