Understanding what a Twin Cities accent is


I grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and have lived in Arizona and California for all of my adult life, and it has recently occurred to me that no one ever has said to me, "Brad, that's an interesting accent you have, where are you from?" And it's because I don't have an accent (unless of course I were to be outside of the USA), I have a Twin Cities accent. And everybody all over the U.S. is used to hearing it, on TV, and on the radio. I'll see if I can explain.

Please don't ask me why, but for some reason the United States decided that the most neutral, and understandable, pronuncian was based on two cities in Minnesota: Minneapolis and St. Paul. And there is a distinction between the accents that are common there, and the accents you hear elsewhere in Minnesota. So it's a Minnesota accent, but not a non-Minneapolis/St. Paul accent. Well, you can include the greater metro area, so I just call it the "Twin Cities accent".

OK, calm down there, I know - no one has an accent, that's just how they talk there. But listen to the radio, listen to a newscaster on TV, they all have the same accent - mine. Some of them, like me, just grew up talking that way, and some learned it. It's actually kind of funny to listen to someone switch from their normal speaking voice to their broadcasting voice. For me, of course, it would be the same.

Of course, how we speak is influenced by our parents, and I'm no exception. My mom grew up in the Iron Range area of Northern Minnesota (think of a comedian doing a very exaggerated Minnesota accent, ya shure, and you have it), but she obviously became aware of it, and after moving to Minneapolis, it faded away. She always had a touch of it, but not much. My dad also grew up in northern Minnesota, but other than saying "ooff-dah" sometimes I never heard much of an accent from him. Of course my teachers were a very strong influence on me, and they spoke with the Twin Cities accent.

I think that it surprises some people that I just naturally talk the way that I do. You know, like someone on the radio. It does sound a bit stiff, and even affected, so when I started teaching I intentionally threw in some blurring, just to sound a bit more human. I still do this, and it's a conscious effort, and I can adjust it for the person, or group, that I'm addressing. It's actually easier for me to not intentionally blur, because it's just easier to speak with your normal accent.

Chances are very slim that I will be ever leaving the country, but I sometimes wonder what I would sound like in London, or Paris. Would the Parissene girls think that my accent was dreamy, or would I sound flat and stupid? I really don't know, and I suppose I never will.

Hang on, I think I can figure out how to upload a video from TikTok, so you can hear my accent. I have no idea if this will work here on Blogger. If it does, you'll hear a Twin Cities accent!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more