Member Reviews

How to Talk Minnesota largely replicates the PBS video done, I don't know, mid-80s? The linguistic observations are usually dead on, even 30 years later. Like, I had never noticed the difference between "could have been better" -- which indicates something completely terrible -- and "could have been worse" -- which is high praise. The parts of the book that deal with Lutheran church basements and lemon bars are dated and don't reflect the ethnic makeup of the state anymore. Although when I say that, I realize I grew up in an ethnically mixed neighborhood of Minneapolis -- the kind of area that tends to house new immigrant populations so there's always someone new coming in -- so I maybe have a skewed view. Since I've moved to Duluth, I've been kinda thrown by how freaking white this city is.

That said, I still think some of the Scandinavianisms are overstated in How to Talk Minnesota, more applicable to my grandparents' generation than mine. I'll throw out the odd Uff Da now and then -- an expression of mild dismay -- but I can't imagine that coming out of the mouths of my children. I don't think I've ever had to correct them when they used borrow to mean lend -- "Can you borrow me a pencil?" -- something I did to my non-Minnesota native mother when I was a kid. She reacted with horror, but then she was an English professor. A Dutch friend who's been living here for 25 years or so did use 'borrow' that way just this weekend, which totally made me smile.

Anyway, cute little diversion of a book.

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Fun Minnesota stuff. I recognized a lot of it as typical Minnesotan stores and culture

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