How To Talk Minnesotan

[HondurasKeiser]

I stumbled upon this today and it's one of the funnier things I've seen in a long while.

[video][/video]

[temporal1]

a few days ago, checking out with groceries, the weary woman cashier distractedly asked,
“How are you?” i looked back and responded, “i’ve been worse.”

she looked at me, in a “knowingly” way and engaged, “you know, i’ve been worse, too.”
she seemed a bit uplifted. we smiled for a moment.

this tape is funny.

plus, i learned something useful: detailed instructions on the 1-finger wave.

[barnhart]

I have in-laws in MN and I must say that is accurate enough to be very funny.

[Neto]

Went to Bible college in Minnesota. Did 7 semesters there. Of course most of the students were from elsewhere, even far-flung places like Indonesia, or Africa. But my roommate the first year was from the Twin Cities, and what got me right from the start was not even mentioned in this video (unless it was in the food sections that I skipped). This is the thing they throw in when you pause a bit in what you're saying, or maybe just thrown in at intervals. "Probably." At first I thought it expressed doubt, or out-right disagreement, because of the intonation pattern. If 'Minnesotan' was a tonal language with 2 tones and both up-glides and down-glides, it would be an up glide from low tone to high tone on the 'prob', low tone on the 'bab', and an up glide immediately followed by a down glide on the 'le-e' (this last 'syllable' pronounced as two syllables). Coming from Oklahoma, that expresses skepticism, or down-right disbelief or disagreement.
Another is the is the expression "Ish", which they seemed to throw in all the time, and the meaning for which I have forgotten. (I haven't been back there since summer 1979, when I went back north to graduate with the senior class of that year.)

[Regarding the waving, we Okies waved at everyone we met on the road. And if we happened to see an Oklahoma car in some far-flung state like Montana or Idaho, we might likely follow them till they stop someplace, and go talk with them, and find out just where they're from. Of course my dad already knew what county they were from, because he knew all of the license prefixes for each county by heart. One furlough back from Brazil, I done the same when we saw someone from Ohio (Holmes County, actually) down in North Carolina, and my wife told me that "We don't do that." ]

[Joy]

a few days ago, checking out with groceries, the weary woman cashier distractedly asked,
“How are you?” i looked back and responded, “i’ve been worse.”

she looked at me, in a “knowingly” way and engaged, “you know, i’ve been worse, too.”
she seemed a bit uplifted. we smiled for a moment.

I have a couple of responses to the "How are you?" that I sometimes offer. The most accurate is, "Better than I deserve."

But if I want to see if they're even listening, I might say, "Better than I look." This elicits everything from, "You must be feeling wonderful!" to "I'm not touching that with a ten-foot pole." Or my brother might say something like, "Can I have your laptop when you're gone?"

[Neto]

a few days ago, checking out with groceries, the weary woman cashier distractedly asked,
“How are you?” i looked back and responded, “i’ve been worse.”

she looked at me, in a “knowingly” way and engaged, “you know, i’ve been worse, too.”
she seemed a bit uplifted. we smiled for a moment.

I have a couple of responses to the "How are you?" that I sometimes offer. The most accurate is, "Better than I deserve."

But if I want to see if they're even listening, I might say, "Better than I look." This elicits everything from, "You must be feeling wonderful!" to "I'm not touching that with a ten-foot pole." Or my brother might say something like, "Can I have your laptop when you're gone?"

An older man in the MB church back home (Oklahoma) would often answer the question of "How are you?" (which in Oklahoman was "How ya doin'?") with "I feel more like I did yesterday than I do now."