Justifiable (I think) ranting

[terrie]

I can't for the life of me remember where I ran across this, and I haven't been able to find it on Google, so let me explain, rather than show you. I ran across someone's complaint about how people characterize Canadian accents. The writer apparently grew in Canada and pointed out that he/she grew up watching American television and so tends to sound like that. No biggie, right up until, by contrast, as an example of an "unusual" accent, we are offered... the "Minnesotian" accent. (People, it's "Minnesotan"). Now, I grew up in good ol' Minnesota. I hear the accent every day. I speak with the accent on those days I actually have something to say. No, we do not sound like the movie Fargo. Incidentally, the city of Fargo isn't even IN Minnesota. If you want to hear a good example of a Minnesota accent, I recommend listening to Richard Dean Anderson, or Garrison Keillor. Oh, and one other thing. Minnesota is IN the US. Which makes it, by default, more of an American accent than anything spoken by people in Canada.

Okay, this whole thing is pretty petty on my part. But I get tired of it. We've had a lot of visibility in the media in the last decade (for a state most people from the coast think of as being basically non-existent). But you'd never know from the way people refer to us.