Cellar Scribblings

[CellarDweller]

Oh, freezing rain yesterday for the morning and afternoon, but it stopped later and melted.  Laundry is done and I'm ready for the week.

[CellarDweller]

Hiya BetterMost friends.

how is everyone doing today?

Happy Valentine's Day!

Trying to do something silly at work!   Looking for large pics of classic Super Friends Valentine's, and giving them out as a joke.

How is everyone else?

[serious crayons]

Proper spelling: Usch då. 

In Minnesota, where it's a common but kind of folksy term, we spell it uff-da.

I can see why you don't think Marge Gunderson sounds Swedish. She's from northeastern Minnesota, a mining area where the accent is influenced by people from Serbia and Croatia, so it's a little different -- not that people there sound like Marge, either. Really, hardly anybody does.

But people in Northwestern Minnesota, a farming area a long way from big cities, sound just faintly Swedish. You might not pick up on it, though, because you'd have less of a regular American-English base to compare it to, if that makes sense.

The Coen Brothers grew up in Minnesota, so I'm sure they know the Fargo accents are ridiculous. They even made people in Minneapolis talk like that. I think it's one of their little jokes.

But they made another movie called A Serious Man that's set in Minnesota -- the suburbs of Minneapolis. I don't know that they ever explicitly mention the location in the movie but that's where they filmed it, near where they grew up. And in that movie, nobody talks even remotely like that.

[Jeff Wrangler]

In Minnesota, where it's a common but kind of folksy term, we spell it uff-da.

I think that's the spelling used on the Web site oldlutheran.org. The site has entire separate sections on uff-da, lutefisk, and lefse. It also has a humor section featuring "Ole and Lena" jokes. (Personally I prefer the section on "You might be a Lutheran if," as in, "You might be a Lutheran if the only pew open is the front one, so you volunteer to shovel the sidewalk," or, "You might be a Lutheran if you forget to put water in the baptismal font, but not in the coffeemaker.")

I figure whoever runs the site must be from Minnesota and so feels free to make fun of Minnesota Swedes--because he probably is one.

[Sason]

In Minnesota, where it's a common but kind of folksy term, we spell it uff-da.

You mean that very Swedish expression is actually in use over there? That's interesting, I didn't know that. I wonder how y'all pronounce it?

But people in Northwestern Minnesota, a farming area a long way from big cities, sound just faintly Swedish. You might not pick up on it, though, because you'd have less of a regular American-English base to compare it to, if that makes sense.

Of course it makes sense.

[serious crayons]

I think that's the spelling used on the Web site oldlutheran.org. The site has entire separate sections on uff-da, lutefisk, and lefse. It also has a humor section featuring "Ole and Lena" jokes. (Personally I prefer the section on "You might be a Lutheran if," as in, "You might be a Lutheran if the only pew open is the front one, so you volunteer to shovel the sidewalk," or, "You might be a Lutheran if you forget to put water in the baptismal font, but not in the coffeemaker.")

I figure whoever runs the site must be from Minnesota and so feels free to make fun of Minnesota Swedes--because he probably is one.

Yeah, all of that sounds totally Minnesotan. It's an increasingly dated stereotype of Minnesota, which for example now has the highest population of Somalis outside Somalia. But it's the traditional one.

I wonder how y'all pronounce it?

OOF-duh.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Trying to do something silly at work!   Looking for large pics of classic Super Friends Valentine's, and giving them out as a joke.

Did you find any?

[CellarDweller]

Yeah, all of that sounds totally Minnesotan. It's an increasingly dated stereotype of Minnesota, which for example now has the highest population of Somalis outside Somalia. But it's the traditional one.


OOF-duh.

This was said on NYC Radio today,  one of the djs is originally from Wisconsin. 

[CellarDweller]

Did you find any?

Why, yes!  Yes I did!  ;laugh:

[CellarDweller]