"Authentic pronunciation"

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Mon Oct 4 12:54:59 UTC 2010


"Mrs. Looper" was the character's name. Not "Yooper."

JL

On Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 9:45 PM, Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "Authentic pronunciation"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Typo for "yooper"?  "Youper" gets about 135k raw googits and out of
> the first four pages only two, both spelled "yoope,r" refer to folks
> from da UP.  "Yooper" gets about a million hits, most of the first 40
> referring to UPers.
>
> One of my favorite bumper stickers:  Say ya tuh duh U. P.
>
> Herb
>
> On Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 1:15 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> > Subject:      Re: "Authentic pronunciation"
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > At 12:16 PM -0400 10/3/10, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> >>At 10/3/2010 10:31 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> >>>The stereotypical Minnesota pronunciation is that of the Coen
> >>>Brothers' "Fargo", as e.g. in the speech of Sheriff Gunderson
> >>>(Frances McDormand).  Hardly among the "least-accented"!  (Garrison
> >>>Keillor also portrays various lexical and phonological idiosyncracies
> >>>of Minnesota English on his Prairie Home Companion, and at one point
> >>>a semi-serious spin-off book appeared, Howard Mohr's _How to Speak
> >>>Minnesotan_.  Could be worse, you betcha!
> >>
> >>I'll have to rent and re-view the movie.
> >
> > One feature associated with "Minnesotan" as popularly portrayed is
> > the "clear", i.e. non-offglided vowels presumably influenced by the
> > Scandinavian substrate of (some of) the speakers in the upper Midwest
> > (as with the Finnish influence on Youper (U. P. Michigan) vowels).
> > You'll hear it in some of the speech portrayed in "Fargo".
> >
> > LH
> >
> >>(Keillor I discounted as
> >>adopting various odd local dialects, as does Rose on "Golden
> >>Girls".)  I seem to have moved the center of unaccented American
> >>English too far north and west.
> >>
> >>Joel
> >>
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> >
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