Minnesota Three - Text
This white college-educated female was born in 1957 in Luverne, and raised in Monticello, Minnesota.
Recorded by telephone and contributed by Paul Meier, IDEA Founder and Director, October, 2005. Running time 00:05:00
TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH
I was born in Laverne, Minnesota, which is a tiny little town on the very southwest corner of the state, near South Dakota. My family didn’t live there long. The town that we actually lived in was called Beaver Creek, and the house that we lived in is no longer there. It’s-- a highway’s been put through. And… after that we moved to Wyebrook, Minnesota, and lived there till I was through Kindergarten. And my brother was born in that area also. My father was the high school principal in that town. Then we moved to Monticello, Minnesota, and I lived there most of my childhood till I graduated high school. After that I lived in Northfield, Minnesota, where I went to college at St. Olaf’s, graduated with a degree in Theatre from St. Olaf’s. At that point I moved to Minneapolis, and I have been living in Minneapolis ever since. When you talk about a Minnesota accent, the first thing I think of is the accent the people have who live up in the-- what we call ‘the Range,’ which is the Iron Range area of the state, it’s north (uh) central part of the state. There’s a lot of (uh) people whose families were originally immigrants (uh) from Scandinavian countries there, and they talk (uh) with real hard sounding THs, that sound like Ds, and kind of a Norwegian accent. A little bit. I also have been told that Minnesotans sometimes have real, what I would call, sort of bright vowels in their sounds, (uh) in their words, similar to what I think-- what people from Wisconsin sound like. (Um) They say things like ‘Wiscansin,’ that sort of thing. I, of course, don’t think I have any accent at all, but my brother told me differently. I’ve never really realized, or had anyone tell me, that the people in the southern part of the state, which is where Mankato is, have a different accent than people in the Metro area. But I don’t typically think of those people as having a different kind of accent than the people in this area. It’s only (um) couple hours away, so it’s not far.
UNSCRIPTED SPEECH TRANSCRIBED BY JACQUELINE BAKER, ASSOCIATE EDITOR FOR TRANSCRIPTIONS, June 28, 2008