…I mean, beyond the vernacular. An accent’s more than just a “Oh yah, doncha know!” or two.
What vocal inflections and pronunciations are the most “key” to the Minnesotan accent?
Or should I just watch “Fargo” on an endless tape loop, until it starts to soak in? 
Forget watching Fargo - the accent was overdone.
Soft drinks are called Pop, not soda.
Minnesota is pronounced Minne SO DA with the “o” drawn out and three syllables with accent on the second.
Borrow is used frequently for lend.
Borrow me your car tonight, would jya? You betcha.
You know what a hotdish is if you’ve seen Fargo. Casserole is not in the Minnesota vocab.
“Didn’t you” is “din cha”.
“Uff Da” is said instead of “oh cripes” or “my goodness”.
Looking forward to reading about the ones I forgot, don’t cha know.
Minnesota - Land of 10,000 cultures - mostly throat.
Forget watching Fargo - the accent was overdone.
Soft drinks are called Pop, not soda.
Minnesota is pronounced Minne SO DA with the “o” drawn out and three syllables with accent on the second.
Borrow is used frequently for lend.
Borrow me your car tonight, would jya? You betcha.
You know what a hotdish is if you’ve seen Fargo. Casserole is not in the Minnesota vocab.
“Didn’t you” is “din cha”.
“Uff Da” is said instead of “oh cripes” or “my goodness”.
(Uff sounds like “hoof” without the “h”.)
Frequently hear rubber binder instead of rubber band.
Looking forward to reading about the ones I forgot, don’t cha know.
Minnesota - Land of 10,000 cultures - mostly throat.
Dere = there
ya = yeah
up nort = anywhere north of the Twin Cities
crick = creek
roof = rhymes with hoof
you betcha = sure, ok, right
“such a deal” is better than “quite a deal”
“Not too bad” or “not too shabby” = pretty darn good
choppers = those big leather mittens with cloth inserts
brisk = so damned cold that tires develop flat spots where they’ve been sitting on the street overnight
And always remember: Drew Pearson pushed off!
I think learning the vernacular helps learn the accent.
If you can nail “Oh sure” and the other phrases, then it makes it easier to apply the shifts to other words. E.g, initial “th” -> “d”. Very weird stuff with "g"s and "j"s.
So, anyway, “Fargo”. Well, a lot of actually took place in Brainerd. There’s a little town near there that’s barely on some maps. That’s where one of great-great-grandfathers first settled. So certain parts of the film were like going back to a re-union.
BTW. My Grampa said “spuds”. Was this a common Norw.-Amer. usage?
Really do say “you betcha” a lot. I’ve only spent enough time in Minnesota to have lunch at a diner but the waitress said “you betcha” so many times that I had to call my mom and tell her about it.
I lived in Minnesota in a suburb of the Twin Cities for most of the first 18 years of my life, and I have to admit I don’t know what a1997xf11 and Rysdad are talking about. “You betcha” “din cha” and “uff ta” don’t really exist outside of the extreme northern part of the state – the only time you hear them is in annoying radio commercials in which people feel the need to overemphasize the Scandinavian Heritage thing.
The accent was overdone in “Fargo”, but if you want to sound like an old-timer, it’s not half bad.
The younger generation’s accents are, at least in my experience, much more subtle. I’m afraid I’m not enough of a linguist to describe the sounds well enough for you to understand. The best I can do is say: Image the “Fargo” accent diluted down about a hundred times.
My personal experience:
I hear “din cha” (and “wontcha”, “didja”, etc.) often, but “uff da” is rarer than you’d think. I hear “shore” for “sure” quite often. “Not too shabby” and “not bad” and “pretty good” are used all the dang time. “Borrow” for “lend”, and “unthaw” for “thaw” I hear now and then, mostly from older folks but often enough to annoy me. “You betcha” is said occassionally, but usually in a self-aware, exagerrated way.
(For the record, I’ve lived in southern Minnesota for nearly all of my life. I lived up nort in Duluth when I was going to college.)
We don’t have any accent in Minnesota, we yust talk normal. It’s all dem other people from down south and out east that talk funny, you betcha!
I could be a bit biased, dere, but I lernd to fake a good Nort Dakotan accent after lernin’ a few of dem dere Ole and Lena yokes.
But ‘tween my Jersey accent, Nort Dakotan accent (wit both da Sveedish and German dialects dere), and a touch of Arizona, most of dem people can’t tell if I’ma comin’ or goin’.
Tripler
But don’t get me started on the Canadian, eh. . .
well. living in North Dakota for 10 years, there is a dialect. But you can’t hit it unless you live here for awhile. Just deal with your “frigid” 30 degree weather on the Least Coast, and leave us MEN alone.
[hijack]
Where in NoDak are you? I just moved over from there this summer. . .
[/hijack]
But I have observed that the northern half of the state has a decidedly Scandinavian accent (like Kenmare and Minot), whereas the southern half has more a German one (like in Mott and Elgin).
Tripler
I never understood the “wanna go with?” thing, but strangely, I use it all the time.
Practice the long o sound. Also, the a in words like bag and wag is a long a. In the “wanna go with?” thing, with is a synonym for along. I know, it isn’t in the rest of the world, but it is in MN.
The “wanna go with” thing is all over North Dakota too. Even more so is the “Oh for funny!” or “Oh for silly!” which, we all know what it means, but it’s just a weird way to say it. 
Tripler
But, when in Rome [sub]or Bismarck[/sub]. . .
Hmmm. Here in WI I say “Wanna come with?” May not be just a MN thing.
I guess everyone knows about the long-o sound, which is critical, but some other differences from my reference accent (middle of the east coast) are that “un” can sound more like “on” (“overdone” becomes “Overdawn”), and in general the short-u sounds more like “aw”.
“Up” becomes “Awp”, but “Ugly” doesn’t really change much.
The short-a sound (as in “happy” and “crap”) often gets stretched into one-and-a-half syllables, if something goes poorly for you, you might say “ThXXt’s crXXp.” and use the vowel sound from an East-coast “yeah” (sort of an Ay-uh) for the XX’s. Of course, you don’t ever say “yeah” in Minnesota, you say “yah” or “Oh shore” (different from the Texan’s “Well, sher!”).
The “ah” sound as in “bother” and “pop” becomes a long, stretched out “Ah” in some words, but an “aw” sound in others. Again, you need to listen closely to someone who lives there to learn how it goes.
“Milk” is pronounced “melk”, “both” is occasionally “bolth”.
So, to recap:
I ayasked her ef she waanted some pawp, and she said she’d be just as hayappy with a glayass of melk. I said “Oh shore, we’ve gaat bolth.”
Well, this is kinda true. Most people in the twin cities don’t have much of an accent. But they can name at least three people they know who do.
yah-shoor-yew-betcha, donja-know.
Is your goal to sound like a Minnesotan or to be able to talk and act like a Minnesotan? You should learn at least a half dozen Sven and Ollie jokes. Remember that ketchup is ‘Minnesota Hot Sauce’.
You must practice your accent while drunk. Nothing funnier than a slurred Minnesota accent.
It’s a parody, but I think we should at least mention Howard Mohr’s How to Talk Minnesotan.
Hate to break it to you, but “wanna come with?” is actually not a regionalism. My mom says it all the time and she’s lived in California her whole life.