"Authentic pronunciation"

[Paul Johnston]

Joel,
Minnesota is reputed to speak quite distinctively, as the characters in the movies Fargo and North Country do.  Michiganders claim this (and often believe it to their souls), and so do northern Ohioans.  Wasn't a study done that said that the dialects with the least that was localized to them and the most shared with others (which would make them appear "neutral" were actually Northern Iowa for vocabulary and Southern Iowa for pronunciation.

Paul Johnston


On Oct 3, 2010, at 10:14 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: "Authentic pronunciation"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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
>
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