(Oh) for ____!

When I was living in North Dakota I heard the phrase 'for cute!' alot. (Never in reference to me of course.) I understood it to be close in meaning to 'that's (so) cute!' or 'how cute!' or something along those lines. I heard it from teenagers to forty-somethings. From the Dakotas and Minnesota. I was going to write about this a while ago, but I'm glad I put it off.

Since I don't remember hearing 'for ____' with anything other than cute filling the blank, I was thinking that it was a single idiomatic phrase and not a productive construction. The only variation I heard was the occasional 'Oh!' introducing the exclamation. Not relevant.

That's why programs like Antiques Roadshow are so wonderful.

A couple weeks ago I was watching, enjoying all the Northern Prairie/Upper Midwestern dialect features from the show's stopover in Bismarck. Plenty of open Os, defricated dentals, raised pre-velars, and yah you betchas. Unfortunately I didn't hear any ufdahs. That was one of my favorites.

But during the closing credits two treasure hopers were whooping about the good time they had. For fun! said one. For neat! said the other. And earlier today, when I mentioned elsewhere that I want to be recycled when I die, a North Dakotan friend commented That's icky. For gross.

So if we know that 'for ____' is productive, the next step is to find out what constraints there are on productivity. It looks like adjectives fit in the blank. But all adjectives? Semantically it looks like the adjectives are more likely to be those of judgement and quality. It's not very likely that someone would say 'Oh, how pleated!' unless they find pleats particularly exciting. Similarly I wouldn't expect to hear something like 'for transparent!' or 'for polished!' even though there's really no syntactic constraint. But for all you Northern Prairie/Upper Midwest speakers: are there any adjectives that wouldn't fit in the blank?

The hotdishes make up for the cold weather

Some perfect timing while on the drive to Minnesota: The route from Indiana of course takes us through Wisconsin. And playing on the iPod during that stretch of road were the 6 amusing and informative episodes of the Wisconsin Englishes Podcast with Tom Purnell and Joe Salmons. Very accessible. Worth listening to at least once. I hope they put up a new one soon.

On Christmas day in St. Cloud Minnesota I was able to inform a roomful of Minnesotans that golden birthdays are not observed nationwide. Buffy has never believed me on that one for some reason.

The golden birthday is the birthday when you turn the same age as the day of the month on which you were born.

That's as odd to me as duck, duck, grey duck.

Leaving our words behind

I have no idea what a treasure trove I'm living with.

Prompted by Mr. Verb's post today I just asked Buffy as she walked past me: You know that game kids play where you walk around a circle patting people on the head... Here she interrupted me: Yeah. Duck Duck Grey-duck... Why?

I was so sure she wouldn't say that. And she had no idea why my eyes grew big and my jaw dropped. She remembers hearing about duck-duck-goose but she was shocked to learn that the grey duck variation is largely a Minnesota thing.

I say the study of children's terminology is especially interesting because those are often lexical items that are learned from other children. Adults often leave their first nest but they don't spread the terms too quickly because you don't often find a bunch of adults sitting around playing duck-duck-anything. And those that do probably don't have much influence over children.

So we use our childhood argot then leave it behind as we pick up our new lingo acquired at a different time in a different place.

For this to be true we need to grant that kids learn language from kids. Makes sense. I never heard my parents call the woodlouse a potato bug. But that's what I learned as a child splitting time between Worthington Ohio and Beltsville Maryland. A few years ago that I saw an episode of Fear Factor refer to the Jerusalem cricket as a potato bug and my childhood died a little. Mostly from watching that horrible show.

Do we have a language full of lexical items abandoned on the playground waiting for the next pair of grubby little hands to pick them up?

Honey I'm home.

I had to go dark. In the north country. The last opportunity for the internet was while driving through Iowa where the rest areas have wireless access. But Buffy gets anxious to keep moving so I didn't go rummaging for my laptop.

While in Minnesota I only talked to a few people so I didn't get a lot of data to comment on. But I did some reading and listened to the radio and took some notes.



You might notice that the writing is quite faded. That's proof that I wash my hands at every pit stop. I think I'll start taking notes higher on my arm where they're less likely to get scrubbed. I was able to get some of those entered into the computer as sketches and early drafts.

I'm happy to be back.

Over the river and through the woods

Back in December Buffy and I visited her family in Minnesota. We always have a chance to visit her grandmother for a few hours to hear her tell her favorite stories. She's a dear woman. Intense, honest and quickly jubilant. She laughs loudly at every joke with a tickled Oh you rascal! Every time we visit she scurries over to the fridge to pull out her recycled Country Crock container filled with spritz cookies and crispy peanut butter bars. And our conversation is always at the little kitchen table where she offers Buffy a mug of delicious Folgers Crystals instant coffee while I get my fill of summer sausage with mild colby on a roll.

She's 82 years old. 80 of those years lived in MN. Every time when we remind her that Buffy's studying renaissance and comparative literature and I'm studying linguistics Grandmom makes the connection to her own studies. Ohh!? she exclaims You know spelling was my best subject.

During the last visit she saw me scribbling something on my hand. What are you writing there? she asked. Buffy knew immediately that I had heard her grandmother say something noteworthy. Of course I couldn't tell her that. She's dear but she's also a little sensitive. Oh I'm just writing down some ideas for how to teach my class I said. So here's what I was really writing down:

• She was speaking of having recently moved to a new house. Of the old house and its new tenant she said
  
  "I won't go there after he once moves in."
  
  Looks like a shuffled blend of after he moves in and once he moves in? It's almost like he splits up the slot that would normally be held by either after or once and the both sprouted up -- one on each side. Of course that's not an actual theory.



• Telling us that her husband forbade something (I can't remember what):
  
  "Him told me I couldn't"
  
  Buffy insists she does this knowingly in order to sound endearing and childlike. That may be. The context supports the possibility. I've heard her use it several times so I'm going to start listening for this accusative in a non-coordinated structure.



• While telling us a story about an event that tried her patience and confused her and made her feel like she was losing her mind:
  
  "I was ready for the fox farm."
  
  I found 3 Google™ hits for "ready for the fox farm."
  
  One hit from Dan Small OUTDOORS for a story by George E Wamser who says he "has turned the corner towards fall in life, but is not ready for the fox farm yet!" He lives in Oconto, Wisconsin.
  
  
  One Google™ Book Search result from Beyond the Freeway: Stories of Fascinating Times that Have Faded Away by Peter Benzoni who writes "The mules that pulled the cars out to the station were getting old. They were ready for the fox farm." Google™ provides a map of "places mentioned" for the book and there's a clear cluster of mentions in northern Wisconsin spreading into northeastern Minnesota and the western Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Benzoni attended high school in Hurley, Wis.
  
  The third hit takes us to Bookreporter.com for an excerpt from a book by Margo Howard who collected letters from her mother Esther Pauline Friedman Lederer. On 21 October 1960 Esther wrote "The Jaguar in the meantime is ready for the fox-farm. Damned thing is the worst car mechanically we have ever owned. It is in the garage again . . . stopped dead on me."
  
  Among the stories Esther tells her daughter are several anecdotes about her good friend Hubert H Humphrey. Humphrey was then senator from Minnesota and became a friend when they were living in Eau Claire Wisconsin. Margo writes:
  
  

  Hubert Humphrey, from Minnesota, became a family friend when we lived in Wisconsin and Mother was a player in Democratic politics. They first met when she was in the Senate gallery listening to him deliver a speech and sent down a note asking to meet him.

  
  
  When Margo was applying to colleges she found herself with fewer options than she had expected. Even her safety school didn't accept her. Of course it was Pennsylvania. Not a very safe net. Humphrey sent Margo's mother a note saying
  
  

  Tell Margo that I have written a recommendation for her to Brandeis University. She will not only be permitted to enter as a result of that recommendation, but most likely become the Dean of Women or Campus Queen on the day of registration. When Humphrey recommends they are recommended.

  
  
  Margo was of course accepted.
  
  I'm sure several of you know Friedman Lederer's famous alias. The name of the book is Ann Landers in her own words: Personal Letters to Her Daughter.
  
  Three hits are a thin example of a regional expression. But I'm not sure what else to think. Has anyone else heard this phrase? As Grandmom used it the phrase it was akin to "ready for the loony bin." But the other examples sound more like "ready to head out to pasture." Can anyone connect it (with these or any other meanings) to Wiscon-sota? Mr Verb?

Where the women are strong

Mr Verb has posted on the representation of Minnesota Dialect in the Cohen brothers' film Fargo. He does a very nice job describing the features as heard in the film comparing them to the features as they occur in the actual dialect. Go read it.

It reminded me of my post from last September about Buffy's pre-velar raising. Dialectal phonological variation is one of my favorite linguistic areas. To learn a little more about the various AmE dialects take a look also at a couple of sites that I've added to my Resources link list.

Linguists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are doing a lot of research on the "Skonnie" dialect and they've put up a website providing a lot of information.

More generally--the Harvard Dialect Survey has produced some fascinating dot maps from its huge lot of data.

Now go watch Fargo. It's my favourite film by the Cohen brothers. It's disturbing. It's hilarious. It's ridiculous. It's heartwarming.

Or just go listen to some Garrison Keillor. He paints a picture of Minnesota true to all of those qualities without subjecting us to a wood-chipper scene.

[Update:
I see that the Harvard survey site isn't loading up. The link is correct and it was working fine just a couple of days ago. We'll wait a while and see what's up.
]

Oyah -- Good Fox Up Dare

Buffy speaks with a Minnesotan accent but she swears she sounds nothing like Marge Gunderson or Jerry Lundegaard. And she's right. She doesn't have the classic Fargo markers. The most commonly cited pronunciation is probably the un-diphthongized "o". Some Minnesotans pronounce words like "boat" "don't" and "lone" with an [o] similar to the first vowel in "foreign".¹ Buffy does this very rarely. It's usually when she's upset excited tired or nervous.

But it's the front vowels that have gotten my attention lately. I was surprised to find that not only does Buffy pronounce "bag" [beg] (when I would say [bæg]) she still makes the distinction between /e/ and /æ/. When asked to say "wagon" she says [wegən] but when asked to syllabify it she says [wey - gən]. She claims the first vowel is identical to the vowel in ray gun. And it's a true rhyme with "Reagan" she offers.

So I asked her to group together the words that have the same stressed vowel sound. In the first group she put the following:
banger cater wager rag rake dragon drag wagon rage bagging bang blank flank range rang brag hang rank plague clang lagging crag crane dragging flagged flake gangly hanger plank lag fanged deranged plagued crank rank gauge.

She contrasted these with the following:
ladder badger branch match tragic magic tragedy gas backing hag rack plaque ran flange blacken cat

So apparently before a voiced velar stop or nasal (either [g] or [ŋ]) she raises /æ/ to /e/. Adding the [i]/[j] diphthongisation is probably just a natural effect when a coda is lost and the following onset is noticeably suspended.

Even though she hears and says these vowels differently I haven't thought of a way to test the actual phonemic quality of them. Does she see /æ/ and /e/ as a minimal pair or are they allophones?

She did offer some fun information. Her friend from Maryland heard her say "flag" and teased her, claiming she pronounced it [flIg] rhyming with "big." Her friends from Nebraska heard her ask "do you want a bag?" and thought she had asked "do you want to beg?" (the "want to" probably pronounced "wanna"). So I wonder: did the Nebraskans and Marylanders perceive the [e] differently? And how would they perceive that nasal "Michigan/Indiana" /æ/ that comes out [iæ]? (Think of saying "yeah" as the vowel in "flat.")

And what about that weird presence of "hag" in the second group? She told me that she never heard the word growing up and since she has become aware of the [æ/e] alternation she finds herself getting confused about the distribution -- sometimes she asks for a baggle with cream cheese then gets a vag (instead of "vague") sense that something wasn't right about it.

1. I know -- not all of them. But I have heard it everywhere from Minneapolis up to Detroit Lakes and over to Mille Lacs. Also in both North and South Dakota where I heard it in every city. In North Dakota I encountered the strongest examples in the northern and eastern regions and in South Dakota in the eastern part. I spoke with maybe four people who spoke with an accent as strong as that of the characters in the Coens' fine film.