Mr. Verb

Nice article about Wil Rankinen's research on English in the UP … here.

Nice piece about Minnesota English by Andy Rathbun available here. Looks like he talked to about everybody you could on the subject, including some nice on-the-ground stories from speakers.

People like to compare Minnesota and Wisconsin, it seems like. Minnesota's thriving economically while Wisconsin sinks into oblivion these days and they're vastly better than Wisconsin at college hockey right now, but they don't have much going on this year in the NFL. But they're keep pace dialect-wise.

The Wisconsin Englishes Project folks are said to have something new in the works about vowels in Wisconsin and Minnesota ... stay tuned for that.

Just noted by a set of people: The word "Illinoisian", mildly disparaging term for people from the Land of Flat, south of Wisconsin, is pretty rich in connections, containing the right strings of sounds for:

• ill
• annoy
• noisy

Question: Which one inspired the term? Or could it be more than one?

Sorry, it was a loooooong week. On a happier note, somebody alerted me to a notable attestation of Wisco, adj. 'from/of/in Wisconsin': The Volebeats' 1997 album, Sky and the Ocean, has a nice tune on it "Two seconds", which opens with this:

Just a guy from a Wisco town …

They were from Detroit, but I don't know what Sconnie connections they had. The /t/ in town is virtually unaspirated, something you can get from certain speakers from here, but the pronunciation is pretty much shot through with things that presumably aren't regional, like reminisce with an /o/ like middle vowel. But it's a really nice song, as you can hear for yourself here.

Details here. But the key is figuring out when it is:

In case you've forgotten the rule for the date, it is the day of the first Packer home game after the opening of Wisconsin's deer gun hunt season.

All the blaze orange around the state will stand out nice against the mountains of snow we're supposed to get today and tonight (check it out here).

Image from here — what says 'Upper Midwest' louder and clearer than blaze orange duct/duck tape?

We've long heard the phrase 'Minnesota nice' up here, but word is out that Wisconsin earns a place at that table. See here.

One of the class-based insults being hurled at Sarah Palin now is snowbilly. Urban Dictionary has a definition of the term (here; see here for a tie-in to Obama):

The select population in the colder, upper Midwest who are poor, uneducated, sheltered, and close[d]-minded. The hillbilly far away from the South.

"Those cheap ass snowbillys don't know how to tip. If you can't afford to tip, then you can't afford to go out to eat..."

Synchronically, snowbilly is a blend (or maybe backformation, whatevs) from hillbilly. The latter is an Americanism, dating to the turn of the 20th c., judging from the Dictionary of American Regional English and the OED. (Hill-william is also attested!) I don't think it's very productive, but rockabilly springs from hillbilly music.

While it's not transparent to American English speakers today, billy actually exists as a free form, namely a Scots/northern English word for 'fellow, mate', etc. (See the OED.)

The term has long since moved beyond people with ties to southern culture, let alone the mountain South. But I guess it doesn't feel quite right in the far north, like the Upper Midwest or Alaska. The fine historian of the American South James Cobb wrote this (in Away Down South: A history of Southern identity):

The national embrace of so many of the activities and traits once deemed distinctly southern raises questions about how much longer they can be legitimately identified with the South.

He exemplifies this precisely with the kinds of values and associations that Palin was intended to bring to the Republican ticket: fundamentalist christianity, showing "Americanness … through ostentatious professions of patriotism", and so on. (He discusses things like the post-regional popularity of country music and NASCAR as well.)

I've noted reports that the soon-to-be father of Palin's grandchild is a self-described "fuckin' redneck". That term is older, dated back to the early 19th c. Here's the OED definition:

A member of the white rural labouring class of the southern States; one whose attitudes are considered characteristic of this class; freq., a reactionary. Originally, and still often, derogatory, but now also used with more sympathy for the aspirations of the rural American.

But it goes farther, I only discovered this morning (here):

… former alcoholic turned conservative talk show host Glen Beck referred to himself as "White trash" and argued that there are many "white trash families" in America and Sarah Palin should be vice president because she represents those "White trash" family values … .

Wow. Not that long ago, I suspect, associating a national political figure with being white trash would have gotten you fired from CNN.

… so says the headline of this story. I'm tempted to go just for the song "Dead Spread," about funeral food. And can you believe that they're offering 'pastor discounts' on tix? Check out the images, esp. the one of the audience members.

While we're at it, Al Franken has a classic 'talking bass' ad here. I'm glad to see him being himself (indirectly).

This was passed along by a contributor, who got it from a colleague.

WE ARE PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE LUTHERAN AIRLINES IS NOW OPERATING IN MINNYSOTA! ALSO SERVING VISCONSIN, NORDERN MITCHIGEN, NORT & SOUT DAKOTA

If you are travelin soon, consider Lutran Air, the no-frills airline.

You're all in da same boat on Lutran Air, here flyin is a upliftin experience.

Dair is no first class on any Lutran Air flight.

Meals are potluck. Rows 1 tru 6, bring rolls; 7 tru 15, bring a salad; 16 tru 21, a hot dish, and 22-30, a dessert.

Basses and tenors please sit in da rear of da aircraft.

Everyone is responsible for his or her own baggage.

All fares are by free will offering, and da plane will not land til da budget is met.

Now, Pay attention to your flight attendant, who vill acquaint you wit da safety system aboard dis Lutran Air.

Okay den, listen up; I'm only gonna say dis vonce:
In da event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, I am frankly gonna be real surprised and so vill Captain Olson, because ve fly right around two tousand feet, so loss of cabin pressure would probably mean da Second Coming or someting of dat nature, and I wouldn't bodder with doze liddle masks on da rubber tubes--you're gonna have bigger tings to worry about den dat. Just stuff doze back up in dair liddle holes.
Probably da masks fell out because of turbulence which, to be honest wit you, we're gonna have quite a bit of at two tousand feet, sorta like driving across a plowed field, but after a while you get used to it.

In da event of a water landing, I'd say forget it. Start saying da Lord's Prayer and just hope you get to da part about forgive us our sins as we forgive dose who sin against us, which some people say 'trespass against us,' which isn't right, but what can you do?

Da use of cell phones on da plane is strictly forbidden, not because day may confuse da plane's navigation system, which is by da pants all da way. No, it's because cell phones are a pain in da wazoo, and if God had meant you to use a cell phone, He wudda put your mout on da side of your head.

We start lunch right about noon and it's buffet style wit da coffeepot up front.

Den we'll have da hymn sing; hymnals are in da seat pockets in front of you. Don't take yours wit you when you go or I am gonna be real upset and I am not kiddin!

Right now I'll say Grace:

Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest
and let deze gifts to us be blessed.
Fader, Son, and Holy Ghost,
May we land in Dulut or pretty close.

Garrison Keillor made these kinds of stereotypes famous nationally for the Upper Midwest, Norwegians, Lutherans, and Fargo certainly promoted some pieces of the picture.

But note what social association the particular linguistic features have here. The key feature is the 'stopping' or use of d or t for interdental fricatives (the 'th sounds' in words like this or thing.) Depending on where you are in the Upper Midwest, this feature is taken to be a clear sign of German ethnicity (Mary Rose's Stanford dissertation treats such a case in Wisconsin), a sign of Polish identity (you can hear that view in Milwaukee, or find it performed on Saturday Night Live in the da Bears skits that our Wisconsin Englishes folks like so much.) Here, it's religion, with immigrant identity obviously lurking in the background.

By the way, the v for w thing would be characteristic of various immigrant communities, but seems to have passed out of even folk stereotype for most of Wisconsin, as far as I know.

I felt pretty dumb the other day when a regular reader of this blog started telling me about something they'd found in the Google newsfeed (to your right on this blog) that I hadn't seen:

Becky Roeder, who did an MA in linguistics here a few years ago and her PhD at Michigan State in sociolinguistics, is now working at the University of Toronto. She's still remembered fondly here, and now she's come home in some sense: She's working on English in Thunder Bay, Ontario, surely part of the Upper Midwest under any reasonable definition. Here's the article from the Thunder Bay paper on her fieldwork. The word on the street around here is that the Wisconsin Englishes guys are cooking up something with Kate Remlinger, known for her work on Yooper. Heck, we could have a whole network covering the region if Becky runs with this topic.

Of course, after missing that important story, I felt obligated to start checking the newsfeed and stumbled immediately across this story on Kim Tu-bong, one-time leader of North Korea and notable historical linguist.

Me and the missus, after a long day and a fine dinner (all from the grill), kicked back in front of the TV. No cage death match stuff and none of those chick shows she's so wild about on the Oxygen Network, so we went surfing. What do we find: Fargo. OK, it's not the definitive movie of our region, but it's the Coen Brothers and I frankly worship the ground they film on. And just so you know, the city of Fargo plays a pretty small role in the movie — it's basically set in Minnesota, mostly in Brainerd.

Entertainment value aside (Is it funnier to see Steve Buscemi shot in the jaw and walking around with bloody paper stuck to his face or to see his white-socked foot sticking up out of the wood chipper? I can never decide.), the film gets a lot of attention for the regional English used. The Coen Brothers are Minnesotans and they are hamming it up big-time. For some people, it's all they know about Upper Midwestern English; for many here, it's Gomer Pyle or Hee Haw imposed on their region.

So, I listened a little, when I wasn't laughing so hard I was crying, to how they talked. A few things just screamed 'parody' — there are a couple of exchanges that consist basically of Yah? Oh, Yah. So, yah. OK, then, yah. Generally, the discourse marking and 'Minnesota nice' cliches are over the top, including good old you betcha. And they get a few salient constructions in that you might hear but that don't say much to me structurally or sociolinguistically, beyond rank stereotyping, like somebody being up from Brainerd when they're in the Twin Cities (south of Brainerd).

When it comes to real structural features, though, it seems less overplayed: There's a fair bit of 'devoicing' (or fortition, as the local phonologists call it) of final stops and especially fricatives — in fact, we get the phrase Go Bears! (for the White Lake Bears high school team) with a clear [s], like da Bears on Saturday Night Live, and a screaming Upper Midwestern long /o:/ in go. A few characters have stops for interdental fricatives a lot of the time and various folks have them occasionally (what the Wisconsin Englishes folks call dem dere dose [= them, there, those]). I don't hang out with Minnesota State Troopers, but could imagine this as a relatively slight exaggeration for Brainerd speech. And we get the distinctively Upper Midwestern use of yet, for still: "You're here yet."

But there are a few things that are real and don't seem to be on the stereotype radar screen. One such example is the frequent lack of aspiration on initial /p, t, k/. A trooper uses tags like this strikingly for example, sounding almost like dags.

When the Wisconsin Englishes guys get around to media representations of English up here, they've got some fodder here.

Doff of the tuque to T.P. for alerting me to this post on a fine regional game. And the image is from sheepshead.org.