<p>
Um, I’ve lived in MN (suburbs though) since I was 5, and I don’t know what many of those are either…You northerners up there definitely have some weird phrases.</p>
<p>I go to school in the South, and no one can tell I have a Minnesotan accent unless I say “Minnesota” lol.</p>
<p>I have a slight Long Island accent and my parents grew up in Queens. I have a lot of sayings I use that my friends from my hometown don’t even remotely understand. I’m assuming its all stuff I picked up from my parents and the people they grew up with because they all understand. I think its an Irish-American/Queens thing.</p>
<p>“Um, I’ve lived in MN (suburbs though) since I was 5, and I don’t know what many of those are either…You northerners up there definitely have some weird phrases.”</p>
<p>How can you not know what hotdish is?</p>
<p>I know what THAT is. I was talking more about the lutefisk, Sven, Toivo, and Eino. I know what lefse and hotdishes are and what oofta is thanks to the millions of MN stereotypes. And if Ole has anything to do with St. Olaf, I know who that is…</p>
<p>I had a moderately strong Minnesotan accent that faded into a common “tv” accent once I moved to Texas. The south is actually pretty varied- you’d be surprised at how few people are actually “twangy” when they speak. Everyone says “fixin’ to” and “y’all”, but barely anyone under 40 has an actual drawl. So I say soda now, not pop.</p>
<p>Old people in MN joke about fictional Sven and Ole. Ole’s a Norwegian and Sven’s a Swede.
Toivo and Eino is the Finnish version. </p>
<p>The pastor at Sven and Ole’s church was giving a rousing heaven or hell sermon one Sunday. At the end, minister commands “Whoever wants to go to heaven, stand up.” Everyone except Sven and Ole stand. The pastor walks over to them, looks them directly in the eye and asks “Why don’t Sven and Ole want to go to heaven?”<br>
Sven answers, “Oh, ve vant to go to heaven. But ve taught you were taking a load up right now and ve aren’t ready yet.”</p>
<p>Lutefisk is fish
[Lutefisk</a> - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutefisk]Lutefisk”>Lutefisk - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>There’s an Ole and Lena (Ole’s wife) joke on the wikipedia page about lutefisk,</p>
<p>Well, we tried the lutefisk trick and the raccoons went away, but now we’ve got a family of Norwegians living under our house!</p>
<p>I apparently have a “snotty New England accent”. I maintain that everyone is just jealous of my superior enunciation.</p>
<p>I have a typical SoCal accent, with some traces of Cultivated Australian* (I spent my younger years in Sydney… I pronounce “been” as “bean” instead of as “bin”.)</p>
<p>*For most Americans, essentially the Queen’s English.</p>
<p>I am from Maryland, and I’m pretty sure I don’t have an accent. Maybe a little bit of the “small town girl” accent that I am trying to dump ASAP (that stuff sneaks up on you when you aren’t paying attention!). I can detect accents from New Jersey and the South, but I think the Mid-Atlantic is pretty accentless/commonly accented.</p>
<p>I had a boyfriend who literally had no accent. He was Phillippines –> Alaska –> California –> Mexico Beach –> Georgia –> Hawaii –> Ohio –> Florida. I think he just absorbed accents and ended up with none at all. Then again, I knew a guy from Canada who said “pasta” with the a sound in “at” instead of “pasta” with the a sound in “pa” as in father.</p>
<p>I’ve got a Mid-Atlantic accent, and I go to school in Georgia. My university doesn’t actually have that many Southern accents, mainly because so many people are from the Atlantic area and tend to have moved from somewhere else at least once in their lifetimes. That being said, I’ve definitely been told that I talk strangely before (either “like a northerner” or “like a smart person.” The latter is probably because I enunciate very strongly, after a childhood of being nagged by my mother to speak more clearly.)</p>
<p>What do you mean by “no accent”?? You might think you don’t have an accent, but ask someone from another country in the world, and you’ll be told you most definitely have an accent…</p>
<p>Anyone hear any Michigan accents, ore there are none?</p>
<p>new york, jersey, and boston accents are ridiculously annoying.</p>
<p>“pahhk the cah in the garahhge” instead of park the car in the garage. and “idear” instead of idea. you guys just don’t know how to use the letter r. one reason why new england sucks.</p>
<p>Okay. To set the record straight, 99.999999% of people don’t say “you betcha” in Alaska. We don’t have accents like Sarah Palin. In fact, we really don’t have any accents (similar to most of the Pacific Northwest). </p>
<p>One prevailing theory on why Sarah Palin has a Minnesotan-like accent is that she comes from the Mat-su valley in Alaska, where a population of Minnesotans settled in Alaska to start a farming community and do agricultural stuff around the 1930s. </p>
<p>And as far as Michigan accents, a couple people from the UP speak as if they have Canadian accents. But otherwise accents are not noticeable, as far as I’ve seen.</p>
<p>Ahem, Sarah Palin does NOT have a Minnesotan accent. We do NOT want her. =P</p>
<p>Michael Moore has a strong Michigan accent. It’s more noticeable in his early work.</p>
<p>Apparently there’s such thing as a Baltimore accent…never noticed it until I moved away for college. But it’s definitely there. Words I knew I never pronounced correctly like water (I say ‘wooter’ or ‘wuter’), wash (I say ‘warsh’). </p>
<p>Then there’s the ones I had no idea about…mainly three letter words ending in -eg. Instead of pronouncing an ‘e’ I say ‘a’ so words like beg and keg I pronounce baig and kaig more or less.</p>
<p>I’ve been asked if I hailed from GB because someone (mistakenly, I think) imagined that I have an British accent, and a couple of people have told me that I have a rather noticeable Russian accent.</p>
<p>Amusingly enough, I’ve been told that I have a strong American (Yankee) accent when speaking Russian, though others can’t detect so much as a hint of one in me.</p>
<p>to senor boombox:
new york and new jersey are NOTTTT in new england.
New england is NH VT Maine Connecticut and Rhode Island.</p>
<p>…and Massachusetts. Gotta rep’ Boston.
And yikes, harsh senor boombox! We like to do with our r’s what we please : )</p>
<p>Mr. Bojangles-I seem to be the opposite, and don’t know where it came from. I say words like tag and bag closer to teg and beg, but with kinda long e’s. </p>
<p>Around here, when people don’t really have a detectable accent, we say they speak Michigan English. Anyone else use that term?</p>