Ven two Minnesootins meet oop nort

There is an old joke that because of the vast differences in manners of speaking English from one side of the Atlantic Ocean to the other, an Englander has to learn a new language when he comes to the United States and an American has to learn a new language when he travels to the British Isles. Some might also say still another variation of the English language must be learned to understand spoken words and to be understood in Minnesota. Read on below to learn more .... and, by the way, if the print on the illustration is too small to be legible, click on it to enlarge it.

How to talk Minnesotan

In my never-ending quest to add confusion to the world, I want to say/write a few words about speaking Minnesotan.

The first time someone ever said anything to me about my accent, I was in training with the Marine Corps. My reply was, "What accent?"

The guy asking me was from New Orleans and had an accent that simply did not quit. Another fellow from New Orleans, conversely, had absolutely no discernible trace of any accent -- at least none that I could hear. It was then when I first began to realize I must sound as strange to someone from Texas or Alabama as they sound to me .... remember, at the time I was only a few months out of high school, still a teenager, hardly a man experienced in "the ways of the world."

A book by Howard Mohr published in 1987 and currently experiencing a resurgence is entitled, "How to Talk Minnesotan." The book was largely based on idiosyncrasies and colloquialisms of the region. For instance, with a most residents having Scandinavian ancestry he noted that locals consume a considerable amount of lutefisk, but do so more out of a sense of duty than with relish. (Personally, I never have tasted it .... I cannot stand the smell of it.)

A film entitled, "Fargo," was released in 1996.Fargo is a city in North Dakota and the action in the motion picture takes place between there and the Minneapolis/Saint Paul metropolitan area. While the action includes a kidnapping and a few murders, the centerpiece of the movie is the way Minnesotans sound when they talk. Here are a couple of examples: 

Minnesotans often string words together: "Have to" often is "hafta" and "I'm going to" often is "eye-mina" and "what are you" often is "wha-cha" and "up north on the lake fishing" often is "oop-nort onda-lake fichen."

Thanks to the Scandinavian background, the Minnesota accent has a sing-song quality and the word "yah" frequently replaces "yes." Here is a common sentence: "Ya, shure, you betcha."

You get my drift ????  Rather than trying to describe it further, I have included a pair of video clips from the film to provide a taste of talking Minnesotan. While the conversations in the clips are a bit exaggerated, they sounded pretty normal to me .... welcome to Minness-ooohhh-ta. The film was made in Minnesota and is "drop-dead funny" and is a classic .... if you never have seen it, it is well worth your time.

Whatever .... this being the final day of January 2018 and to note that only two months of FramWinter now remain, this piece seemed like one more fine way of disrupting sense and sensibility and playing havoc with the good order of the universe.