"Authentic pronunciation"

[Laurence Horn]

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
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org