Jayjay and I vacationed in Minneapolis this past year. One of the things we did was visit the local Weight Watchers for a meeting. The meeting leader was a woman who had moved there two years ago, from California. I swear that she could have dubbed Frances McDormand’s voice in the movie!
How easy was it to lapse into the accent? Let’s just say that I was teasing Jayjay with it and we were there less than a week.
Perhaps you should consult the scholarly tome How to Talk Minnesotan: A Visitor’s Guide.
In my job I take a lot of calls from Minnesota, and the locals don’t all talk like that. It’s more of a rural accent, and when you get into St. Paul and Minneapolis you get more variety in accents.
I was working with a technician named Mary from (I think) Brainerd, and at the end of the call I said “Thanks, Margie” unintentionally. I hung up the phone and when my co-worker asked what I was laughing about, I told him “I’m fleein’ tha inter-vieeeeew!”. For the rest of the day I found myself saying “oh, ya!” and “Don’t cha know”.
I was married for 20 years to a woman from the Iron Range region (Grand Rapids, Duluth, Hibbing, etc.) and made many visits to the area. Yes, they talk very much like that and sometimes more so. My children have all settled in central Wisconsin and have all developed the honking ‘O’ typical to that region.
It’s conceivable that they got it wrong in the movie but we non-Minnesotans can’t tell it from the real thing.
The accent Herb Brooks had (and Russel did a great job of performing) is specifically a turn of the century east St. Paul twang…so comparable to Southie being called a New England accent. A better example of a Midwestern accent can be found in The Straight Story.
First time I went back to visit my folks in Michigan after moving to MN, I was accused of having developed the “strangest accent”…
Very few folks have as strong an accent as in the movie, but yes, Up Nort you will hear a pretty identifiable accent. Even in NordEast (the Northeast section of Minneapolis) you will hear more of an accent. (As far as I know, NordEast is still the strongest population of older scandanavians around the twin cities.)
I still don’t think the accents here as as strong as the UP, though!
OK, I live in central WI and am not sure what you mena by “the honking O.” (Though I always drink out of a bubbler.) Please 'splain.
Just a milder form of the nasal “o” that many from MN, WI, MI exhibit in their speech. Not trying to be offensive.
I’ve actually been to Brainerd, Minnesota, the town in which the movie’s main events occur (it’s actually a twin city itself, being now indistinguishable from Baxter) and where the main character, Chief Gunderson, lives. The natives really do speak like that, and the movie doesn’t exaggerrate it very much; on my first visit I was quite shocked at how close to accept was in the movie, and I had to hold myself back from giggling. Brainerd and environs are very rural; it’s a solid 2-3 hour drive from Minneapolis/St. Paul to get there, and there’s still a hell of a lot of rural Minnesota north of that before you hit Canada. Jerry Lundegaard’s drive to Fargo to deliver the Ciera and meet the kidnappers would have taken him a solid
As with anywhere else, the strength of the accent is dependent on whether or not you’ve lived your whole life there. If you did, you sound like Marge Gunderson.
People who live in the Twin Cities, even if they’re old stock Minnesotans, have much milder accents, but they’re still very distinctively Midwestern. They don’t sound like Marge Gunderson, exactly, but have a touch of that plus a touch of the other typical northern/midwestern characteristics, like their weird way of pronouncing the long O.
The movie, incidentally, doesn’t make any sense in having anything happen in Brainerd. There’s no reason why the kidnappers would have ever driven though Brainerd. It isn’t between Fargo and Minneapolis/St. Paul, which is a straight shot down I-94, and it isn’t between MSP and Moose Lake, which, it is suggested, is the location of their hideout; that would take you up I-35. Brainerd isn’t on an interstate.
After liffing in Minot, Nort Dahkotah for tree yeers, I can say dat yup, dere’s some acksents dere . . .
Seriously, there’s an accent up there. I’ve heard what I think I can distinguish between Scandinavian-based accents and German-based accents (it seems that Bismarck, ND is the dividing line: Scandinavians to the north, Germans to the south).
From what I can tell, the Glen Ullin and Carson folk sound a helluva lot different from those in Kenmare or Moorehead.
Tripler
Been dere, done dat.
Also, “beig” for “bag.” That’s how I say it, only I try to avoid saying “root” since I moved out of South Dakota. Now I get mercilessly teased for it.
As others have noted, the thickness of the accent varies a lot depending on location, age of speaker, etc. But it is a ridiculously easy accent to adopt and to fall back into. Even talking to friends from the area over the phone for a few minutes will have me lapsing back into that accent for days afterwards. Although the SD variant isn’t nearly as strong, and we never say “you betcha.”
I live at the top of Highway 61, just above north eastern Minnsota. I found that the accents in “Fargo” were pretty typical of those in the Iron Range of north eastern Minnesota.
The pregnant police chief sounded a little odd to me, for she sounded like someone from a north eastern US city (New York or Pittsburgh) trying to sound like someone from rural north-eastern Minnesota. The remaining cast, however, seemed bang-on, particularly the officer who was in the police car much of the time with the chief, and the wife of the car salesman.
I though most of the accents in Fargo sounded pretty Minnesotan. I was particularly impressed with the girl who says, “Go, Bears” at one point. When I first moved to Minnesota 14 years ago, I used to try to imitate the vowel in “bear” and found it rather difficult. (Now I’ve completely picked up the accent, sigh so I can do it with ease.) It’s stronger in rural areas, as others have mentioned, and it’s also stronger with middle-aged ladies.
Drop Dead Gorgeous has the best Minnesotan accents, though, IMO. Kirsten Dunst’s was perfect, especially for saying"Mont" Rose for Mount Rose.
My sister lives in Green Bay Wisconsin and sounds very much like Fargo. I tease her every time I talk to her and she gets pissed and says, “we don’t talk like that, yanno.” Then I laugh harder.
My brother & I grew up in Wisconsin too, and we probably had the accent for awhile. We both also lived in Minnesota for a few years. Whenever I’m around that accent, I immediately start mimicking it. Not on purpose, but it’s a really easy accent for me to fall back into.
Oh, I’m not offended, just trying to figure out what it is. I know that people from other regions think we pronounce our r’s too strongly (meaning, we put them in, heh). Still not sure about the “honking O.” Can you give some examples of words that have it?
One of the daughters went to a small Lutheran college that draws most of its students from Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. She says you can accurately deduce a person’s home state by the way they pronounce its name:
Minniesooota
Wis can sen
Eye wah
And, yea, lots of people in rural Southeast Minnesota and Northeast Iowa talk something like the characters in Fargo. It’s a Norwegian thing.
The German influenced accent is different and tends to suppress the TH sound in favor of a T sound and go with some directly translated mid-19th Century idioms. For instance, the German nicht wahr, isn’t that true, becomes the interjection “not.” “T’ teef stol’t a tousand dollars, not?” Also, yah instead of the more Yankee affirmative yea, often repeated as yah, yah. It’s a pretty obvious carry over from the German, Sweedish, Norweian and Danish ja.
Yankees (New Englanders?) still say ‘yea’? Forsooth!
Spavined Gelding provides a wonderful example, “Wis-CAN-sin.” Where I (southern Ontario) would pronounce the name of that state “wis CON sn,” with the O being distinctly a long O though short, and the last syllable having little vowel sound at all, most folks from Green Bay would probably say “Wiss-CAN-sin,” with the middle O sound being nasally converted into something that to my ears sounds much more like an A. “Honking O” is a pretty good description.
This is as opposed to a true Midwestern O, where the O is often ditched in favour of a completely different, dipthong sort of sound. A Kansan trying to say “snow” says something that sounds sort of like “sneeaw.”
People from the west, for example, clip the ‘o’. Folks from the midwest tend to elongate it and run it through the nasal passage. Sort of a ‘noohhh’, wherein the lower jaw is further back during the execution and the mouth is more open. Difficult to describe. One of the things I first noticed about my former in-laws was that they enunciated much more clearly than where I was from.