Whether you’re a transplant to Minnesota or a vacationer or an intern who’s visiting just for the summer, you may have run into a cross-cultural misunderstanding or two in our provincial state.
You’ve heard the obvious references to “ope” (whoops) and “you betcha” (you’re welcome) and “uff da” (oh dear, oops or whoa). But real life isn’t a caricature or an episode of “Fargo.” The Minnesota lexicon contains artful subtlety that requires a sophisticated level of discernment and awareness of context clues.
Entire books have been written about it, most famously in 1987 by the late Howard Mohr, author of the book “How to Talk Minnesotan.” Layered into the vernacular is the concept of “Minnesota Nice,” an ethos that prioritizes politeness over directness, sometimes to the annoyance of outsiders.
With some help from my colleagues at the Minnesota Star Tribune, here’s a short guide to regionalisms you may hear in our state and the Upper Midwest. Hopefully, native speakers will find this attempt at translation at least a notch above “not too bad.”
- “I suppose” (or “I s’pose.“) The speaker is not sure about what you just said. Sometimes it means “I haven’t thought about it that way” or “I agree,” but just as often it means “I don’t agree,” so you need to read the situation.
- “Yeah, no,” “No, yeah,” or “No, yeah, no.” So do Midwesterners mean yes or no? This construction isn’t intended to trip you up. “It’s a politer way of saying yes or no,” Wisconsin-based comedian Charlie Berens once told me. Berens likened the construction to a mathematical equation. Listen for the last word in the series (“yeah” or “no”) to discern the speaker’s intent.
- “Not too bad” or “It could be worse.” Things are, in fact, very bad. If you text your babysitter to ask how things are going and she answers with “could be worse,” it means your child has blown out his diapers several times, broke out into hives, smeared poop on the walls and started a small house fire. But it could be worse.
- “Jeet?” Did you eat?
- “Oh, fer cute.” Mohr wrote in his book: “The oh, for construction is used mostly by women to describe a person, thing, or animal, including oneself. For example, if a kitten climbs into somebody’s shoe, you would say Oh, for cute."
- “Parking ramp.” This is an important term to know while driving. If a Minnesota native in your car tells you to “turn into this ramp,” do not keep driving as you search for an elusive slope or incline off the side of the road. They’re talking about a multi-story parking garage. My colleagues with Curious Minnesota dug into possible theories for this anomaly.
- “Gray duck.” Another term unique to Minnesota, “Duck, Duck, Gray Duck” is how our children play the game known just about everywhere else in the United States as “Duck, Duck, Goose.” Linguist Anatoly Liberman from the University of Minnesota says theories abound as to why Minnesota has been the outlier, but the truth is, “nobody knows why.” He does acknowledge that Swedish immigrants played a version of the game known as “Anka Anka Grå Anka,” which translates into “Duck, Duck, Gray Duck.” Says Liberman, “Our variant is rare, one of the rarest.” Perhaps Minnesotans have embraced usage of “gray duck” because they take pride in being different. Which brings us to ...
- “That’s different” or “that’s interesting.” Minnesotans do not like things to be too different. If someone tastes your casserole with anchovies and habanero peppers and tells you it’s interesting, that is not a compliment. It is the Northern equivalent of the South’s passive-aggressive swipe “bless your heart.” Minnesotans are noticing that you’ve unnecessarily deviated from the norm, leading to disastrous results.
- “Hot dish.” Oh, and if you say “casserole,” Minnesotans will know you’re not from here. It’s “hot dish,” a comforting baked medley of processed food that often includes a can of cream of mushroom soup, ground beef, canned beans or corn, and best of all, tater tots. But Minnesotans can be won over if other ingredients are used, so long as it’s done right. A sushi bake won my newsroom’s hot dish contest last year.
- "Bags." This is the Minnesota term for the game commonly known as cornhole. Pronounced “baygs.”
- “That’s funny.” Speaker acknowledges your attempt at humor, but does not find it amusing enough to laugh.
- Inviting you without really inviting you. If your in-laws tell you they’ll be spending Saturday at the antique car show at the county fairgrounds but do not take the step of actually asking, “Wanna come with?” don’t be offended. It’s implied that you are welcome; they just don’t want to put it out there only to be rejected.
- Ending a sentence on the preposition “with.” When I was working as a reporter in Kentucky, a city official stopped our interview to ask if I was from the Midwest. She said the way I finished a question, with “go with‚” was an immediate tell. (She was from Wisconsin; I was from Illinois.) Liberman said the construction is directly borrowed from northern European immigrants who spoke in the same way. “They said so in German and Swedish, and they continue to say so in English,” at least in parts of the Midwest.
- “Gonna scoot right past ya." Speaker is trying to politely signal when you’re in the way, but there’s no need to adjust your position unless you’re blatantly obstructing their path. The correct response is, “Ope, sorry! Didn’t see ya dere.”
- “Spendy.” Expensive and perhaps not “reasonable,” which is an important value in Minnesota.
- Using “borrow” interchangeably with “lend” or “loan.” (Example: “Can you borrow me a pen?”) Now, how can the term used to describe allowing somebody to temporarily take and use a thing be the same word as taking and using that thing? It could be traced to our state’s Norwegian and Swedish immigrants, who generally used the same word for both “borrow” and “lend” in their native languages. But Jenna Coughlin, a professor of Norwegian at St. Olaf College, isn’t convinced that this is the reason Minnesotans overuse “borrow.” She explains, “The Scandinavian word [låne in Norwegian and låna in Swedish] is much closer to ‘loan’ than borrow, so you’d think they would tend to use ‘loan’ all the time instead."
- “Going to the lake.” There is not one particular lake that Minnesotans are talking about. It is any lake. But it is probably a lake that has special meaning to them, perhaps where the family cabin is located or where they plan to vacation.
- “Up north.” Another general term that exudes more of a sense of place than an actual location. The speaker’s point of reference is likely the Twin Cities and “up north” probably refers to somewhere north of Lake Mille Lacs. But do not, I repeat, do not publish a column professing to know where the boundary of “up north” begins. Readers are sure to give you a piece of their mind, even going as far as telling you, “That’s interesting.”
