"soda" in Minneapolis

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Sun Aug 11 00:28:26 UTC 2002


At 1:21 AM -0500 8/10/02, Millie Webb wrote:
>I still "slip up" and say "string beans" a lot.  I usually say green beans
>though, because I assume no one will understand me.  To us growing up,
>string beans were usually green beans cut differently, I guess.  Do they
>call it "French cut green beans", maybe?  The long, stringy way...

They do in the frozen food dept.  French cut (long and skinny) vs.
Italian cut (flat and fat).

>  And St Paul and
>Minneapolis in Minnesota are VERY different in terms of socio-economics, and
>dialectology, in my humble opinion.  People from Mpls still said "pop" when
>I was growing up, but also tended to be more aware of how they sounded to
>others, and therefore, more likely to switch to "soda" as more outsiders (as
>in, from out-of-state) moved into the Cities.  St Paul has many more native
>Minnesotans in my experience, and even a lot of stability in terms of which
>neighborhood people lived in most of their lives.  I tell people that
>overall, Mpls feels more white collar and upper middle class, while St Paul
>feels more blue collar, working-to-middle class.  Not that all the residents
>of both fit into those two categories, mind you!

That is definitely the impression one gets from Garrison Keillor's
Prairie Home Companion.  Nice to know he's not making it all up!

larry



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