"Authentic pronunciation"

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:14 AM -0400 10/3/10, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>At 10/3/2010 12:52 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>Back at the '72 Summer LSA (remember those days, Ron?), friends who
>>weren't native speakers of English continually asked me whether a
>>friend of mine was a native speaker of U.S. English. My friend was
>>from Minnesota and I didn't notice anything particularly distinctive,
>>let alone non-native, about her speech. Yet, to those foreigners, she
>>sounded like a foreigner!
>
>Isn't Minnesota (stereo)typically supposed to be in the region of the
>best, least-accented American English, the Mid-West?  Or am I
>ignorant or confused?
>
>Joel
>
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!

LH

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