Recently I happened to be out of state leading a lecture. Afterwards an audience member came up to me and said, "Ah kin tail yer from Minnesewta becowse yew shore deyew towk funneh."
Indeed, here on DailyKos the Minnesota "accent" has been good naturedly teased. But the Minnesota "accent" is actually in keeping with American phonetics more closely than any other regional manner. In fact, the Minnesota "accent" might be distinctive because, I submit, it is not an "accent".
This has become a point of contention ever since the film "Fargo" came out a few years back. People around these parts seemed mostly to hate it because it portrayed Minnesotans as a bunch of rubes who are comical laughing stocks simply by the way they talk. By the way, we don’t really talk that way.
Looking at the phonetic alphabet one can see and hear that the vowel sounds distinctive to Minnesotan speech patterns are the closest match to so called standardized American English.
Take the diphthong, for instance. A diphthong is a combined vowel sound. Like the "Eew!" exclaimed when a teenage girl is asked out by the captain of the chess club J.V squad. It is an "ee" sound and an "oo" sound put together. Standardized American English has a lot fewer diphthongs than most regional accents of the country would lead us to believe. Most vowel sounds are either pure short or pure long.
The Minnesotan tendency to make pure short or pure long vowel sounds is what catches the notice of our diphthong wielding countrymen.
The word "food" is a good example. Most regional accents pronounce it like "feud" to varying degrees of distinction. Some pronounce a strong "fyood" and some give it a little bit of an extra syllable by inserting a subtle schwa before the last consonant sound. But it is a long "oo" sound and clearly only one syllable.
A much used word in Minnesota is "boat." Single syllable, long "o". If anyone knows how properly to say "boat" I think it would be Minnesotans. However when we say it we seem to evoke laughter from the very people who pronounce it with a quirky but endearing diphthong, "beh-oot".
Granted, Minnesotans tend to call the thing on top of our house a "roof" with the same vowel sound as "look" rather than a long "oo" sound. But that is equally acceptable phonetically and it beats sticking that precious and charming diphthong in there again.
Lord knows other regions suffer their teasing stereotypes: "Garsh, Mickey!", "Yo, Adrianne!", "I can see Russia from here!" I just wonder why the Minnesota so called "accent" is considered so comical.