if i hear one more person call "pizza" "'za" . . .

[datasuspect]

grrrrr

[Amerigo Vespucci]

1. Back in the 70s, Jimmy McNichol...

...was on a TV series...don't remember the name...where they rode around in a van and had adventures, and pretty much every scene was set up so that Jimmy could flip his hair and say "Let's JAM" or "Let's BOOGIE," but I remember one show in which he clearly said "Let's BOOG," which bothered me a hell of a lot more than "'za" will probably ever bother you...

:rofl:

:toast:

[gmoney]

29. sure he didn't say "book"?

I recall back in the day that "book" was a semi-popular term for going someplace in a hurry. "Man, I gotta book if I'm going to make it to gym class."

[Amerigo Vespucci]

33. You're probably right, now that I think of it...

He'd do the thumb over his shoulder and hair-flip move...it was like some kind of sick trademark.

:rofl:

[gmoney]

34. Sounds like a case of "California Fever" to me

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078581/episodes

"Vince and Ross are suburban Los Angeles teenagers enjoying disco, surfing, cars and the rest of the Southern California lifestyle. Musical Vince runs an underground radio station and mechanical Ross is into custom cars."

Or try this on for size: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3WbVM-Wejc

[Amerigo Vespucci]

36. Yeah, that was it...

...according to IMDB he's now 47 years old and his last gig was on two episodes of "V.R. Troopers" in 1995. I cannot imagine to be in a position where you'd have to tell people "I used to be Jimmy McNichol"...

:rofl:

[gmoney]

40. Same for Kristy McNichol

The last thing I remember seeing her in was "Two Moon Junction" in 1988 where she did a topless scene, I guess in an attempt to extend her career in that direction.

I'm sure it did fulfull (or disappoint) a lot of fantasies when she did that scene.

Not Safe For Work: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2948584476026609951

[mitchum]

38. That was a fantastically horrible show...

I tried to never miss it during its deservedly short run

[Twillig]

2. I wanted to start a fistfight with the state of Minnesota

my first year when I went to the U over the use of 'za.'
That and the natives pronouncing the name of the state that I had come from as
Or-uh-GONE. :grr: (and most of these people were my uncles, aunt's and cousins!)

The 'pop' and 'soda' thing never bothered me.

[Odin2005]

3. I've never heard "za" used here in Fargo. Must be a Twin Cities thing.

And I say "OR-i-guhn"

[MineralMan]

5. Ya, well...I hear they still speak Norsky up there,

you know.

Don't they?

"Oh, yah...is this the pizza store? Ok, then, I want one a them lefse pizzas, with lutefisk and sylte. Yah...this is Ole Swenson. Yah...still the same address. Ok, then."

[Odin2005]

10. Us younger folks don't have much in the way of the Scandinavian-influenced accent anymore.

Much of Minnesota has fallen into a accent region around the Great Lakes in which the short vowels have been shifting. so "bat" is BEH-uht and bought and bot are both "baaat",

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Central_American_English

Vowels

* Monopthongization occurs in words such as boat, so, etc. such that /oʊ/ is often pronounced as a nearly pure close-mid back rounded vowel . Monopthongization also occurs in /eɪ/, bringing its pronunciation closer to a pure in words such as day, play, etc.

* The words roof and root may be variously pronounced with either /ʊ/ or /u/; that is, with the vowel of foot or boot, respectively. This is highly variable, however, and these words are pronounced both ways in other parts of the country.

* The Mary-marry-merry merger: Words containing /æ/, /ɛ/, or /eɪ/ before an "r" and a vowel are all pronounced "/eɪ/-r-vowel," so that Mary, marry, and merry all rhyme with each other, and have the same first vowel as Sharon, Sarah, and bearing. This merger is widespread throughout the Midwest, West, and Canada.

* The words cot and caught are distinct in some areas of this region, and are the same in other parts; see cot-caught merger for more information.

* The pin-pen merger does not occur.

* For some people, /æ/ merges with /eɪ/ before /g/, so that flag rhymes with plague; both words are pronounced with the vowel sound of the word face. Even in speakers that do not have the merger, there is noticeable raising of /æ/ before g, such that bag and bat have different vowel sounds.

* Canadian raising can be found in the speech of some people in this area. This means that the word like can have a different diphthong than the word line, and (although less commonly in this region) about can have a different diphthong than the word loud. The former offers distinction between the pronunciation of "writer" and "rider," as well as between "hire" and "higher."

* The Northern cities vowel shift has an influence over much of this region. Accents in which /ʌ/ is more retracted than /ɑ/ (whether by backing of /ʌ/, fronting of /ɑ/, or both) can be found in southeastern North Dakota, northeastern South Dakota, much of northern Iowa, much of Minnesota, and the vast majority (if not all) of Wisconsin. The diphthongization of /æ/ before oral consonants is found in parts of Minnesota (St. James to the south, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Brainerd to the north). Indeed, Labov et al. introduced a narrower definition of the "North Central" region as a residual region distinct from both the West and the North, thus excluding the area affected by the Northern Cities Shift.

* The conservative character of the region is best exemplified by the speakers of northern Iowa, who come as close to Labov's initial position as any in the country. The more northerly parts of this region show the well-known monophthongal character of the long high and mid vowels. The stereotype of Minnesota speech, for example, is expressed in the pronunciation of Minnesota with a long, monophthongal o: <ˌmɪnəˈsoːɾə>.


Consonants

* North Central speech is rhotic.
* Final devoicing of consonants sometimes occurs.

[MineralMan]

20. I know...I was just funnin' ya.

There is still some of that accent around, though, even though Fargo exaggerated it a lot. As a transplanted Californian, I hear it a little more clearly than a lot of native Minnesotans do, I think.

OTOH, I also hear typical teenage girl accents here...about the same as back home, except for one thing. People refer to California as "Cali," an expression I have heard nowhere else. I hope they don't do that when they get there.

[Lucian]

13. I've never heard "za" used here in the St. Cloud region either.

And I pronounce it "OR-i-gone". :P

[Twillig]

35. Well, the U was infested with a lot of god damn

Green Bay Packer-loving Wisconsonites too( tuition reciprocity) , Maybe I should blame them for all the times I heard 'za'.

Probably not as many of them in St. Clod. :-)

[Left Is Write]

45. Not that I know of. I spent over 30 years living in the Twin Cities and didn't hear people saying za

Most of us know how to pronounce Oregon also. :D

[Danger Mouse]

4. People who say that wouldn't know a good slice of pizza if it bit them on the ass.

NY Style FTW.

[Chan790]

7. The only good pizza I've ever had in NY...

I brought with me on the train from New Haven. :P

Elm city represent!!

[Danger Mouse]

9. Please. NYC has the best pizza there is.

Unless you prefer the chicago deep-dish style.

[Beer Snob-50]

11. the best pizza is actually

from my own kitchen. carmelized onions and hot sausage.

[Chan790]

15. Oh please...

Pepe's better than anything in the five boroughs.

[Danger Mouse]

24. Impossible.

[Chan790]

31. Pepe's tomato pie is the best pizza on Earth...I mock NYC's derivative inferior pizza.

Between my pizza-partisanship and Red Sox fandom I'm going to be really popular living in Brooklyn. I can already tell. :rofl:

[Danger Mouse]

41. Popular? You're going to be floating face down in the East River within a week.

You don't insult NY Pizza to a NYer and expect to live to tell of it.

[WinkyDink]

42. Back in the day, I had the best pizza, and it was in NY. Slices so thin they'd flop from the weight

of the mozzarel' (as "we" call it), so you'd have to roll them up before you could take a bite, and then the "grease" would run down your hands.

Good times!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

43. This former Yale graduate student agrees with you

And Louie's has the best hamburgers on earth, made with those cool little toaster things.

[Deep13]

27. Ouch!

What the hell is this cheezy, crusty thing on my ass?!

[Odin2005]

54. authentic NY-type pizza is too thin and not crispy enough, IMO.

Ya have to fold the damn thing so it doesn't fall apart.

Now, my home-made Chicago-style deep-dish pizza is total pwnage.

[last_texas_dem]

6. I'm happy to say that I've never heard that particular expression

(or perhaps I've heard it and just don't remember due to having no idea what they were talking about. haha)

[GoneOffShore]

8. Don't read "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson then.

Who has become incredibly annoying, btw.

[Orrex]

53. Don't say that!

He's the most bestest most importantist most brilliantest writer who ever wrote!


Haven't you heard?!?

[Beer Snob-50]

12. in my opinion even worse than this

and yes i hate za also, is when people call you bro. i hate when one calls his own brother bro. it sounds so, mentally unstable in my mind.

[Chan790]

16. Reminds me of the article in GQ...

entitled "Don't call me "bro", bro." by Russ Spencer. (Gentleman's Quarterly. May 2008)

Other words say the same thing as bro but don't stimulate the same level of derision. The king of slang pronouns, of course, is dude, which now competes with the F-word for its sheer number of meanings and uses. ... You can get away with man, but steer clear of my man. Careful with pal and partner, you could sound like you walked off the set of Mayberry RFD. The word guy sounds precious. Buddy can be smarmy... If you coach high school football, go ahead and use chief. Otherwise, no.

http://issuu.com/justplainmat/docs/may2008gqdontcallmebro

[Beer Snob-50]

23. I think this sums it up perfectly...

just call the person by his real name

right bro???? lol

[Wapsie B]

14. I have never heard the term in my experiences in Minny Soda.

Don't even hear the "Fargo" thing in the voices all that often. Maybe that's due to the Iowegians moving up there diluting the native culture or something.

[Odin2005]

17. The "Fargo" thing is an exageration of the speech of older speakers influenced by...

German and the Scandinavian languages. us younger speakers don't really have the "dat vas sure svell" way of talking anymore, instead the main distinguishing feature of our accent are recent shifts in vowel pronouncation

[Wapsie B]

21. Yes, and I'll even hear that in Iowa from time to time

from people of Scandinavian heritage. Then too I can go to southern Iowa and hear natives there talk and you'd swear they were from the Deep South.

[TZ]

48. I dunno.

To me, when I visited MN last year, the accent was VERY pronounced and sounded very much like Fargo..Interestingly enough, the accents were slightly less noticeable to me in Minneapolis then they were in Rochester....

[Odin2005]

52. I didn't say we had no accent. what I ment was that in younger folks our accent is not based on...

how Scandinavian and German immigrants spoke, the exception being the "sing-song-like" intonation inherited from Norwegian and Swedish (which is what I think you are hearing). For example, the way we pronounce the vowel in "day" and the "O" in Minnesota, widely stereotyped, is a native development, not a Scandinavianism or a Germanism. As is our pronunciation of A before G and NG (so "bag" is "bayg").

I get a lot of grief because I supposedly sound like Jesse Ventura. :rofl:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

46. The stereotypical Minnesota accent is largely a generational thing

My mother and her relatives all have it, which means that I probably had it at one time, too. One brother has it, the other doesn't. The one who doesn't have it is the one who has lived outside the Minnesota-Wisconsin area.

I moved to the East Coast for language programs and grad school when I was 22. When I first arrived, people with New York and Boston accents used to look at me in astonishment and ask, "Wheah de hell ah you from? I've nevah hide yoa accent befoa" (This was YEARS before "Fargo" came out.)

After nine years on the East Coast, I moved back to Minnesota for three years, and when I first arrived, people asked me, "Arr you from Noo Yorrk orr oud East some place?"

I still slip into an Eastern-tinged accent when I'm irritated. The New Haven accent is a great one for expressing irritation.

Then I spent 19 years in the Pacific Northwest, where the accent is about as close to Canadian as you will find in the U.S., with softer consonants and shorter vowels.

Coming back here to Minnesota in 2003, I clearly didn't have a standard Minnesota accent. To my astonishment, several people asked me if I was from England. (Haven't they ever heard a real English person talk? What was funny was that some of these people were at my church, which is full of REAL English people with a regular catalogue of English accents) I think they were reacting to my more lightly-articulated consonants, especially the "r's" and "l's." Minnesotans of all generations tend to pronounce them quite strongly.

Younger people, like my nieces and nephews, are more heavily influenced by TV. For a while, at the age of around 11 or 12, one of my nieces had a Valley Girl accent, which she must have picked up from TV, but now they all seem to speak Generalized Northern American.

The first time I went to visit my great-aunt, who was getting quite deaf, she couldn't understand what I was saying until I switched to the stereotypical Minnesota accent, complete with heavily articulated "r's" and "l's" and the raised and lengthened vowels, and then we communicated just fine.

One Minnesotan peculiarity that remains in my speech is pronouncing "leg" and "egg" (but not "beg" or "keg" or "peg") to rhyme with "Haig." I think that's because I learned the first two words at home as a small child and didn't learn the other words till later.

[TZ]

49. Interesting...

That explains why you didn't seem to have as strong an accent as I expected. As I said upthread, the accents to me where MUCH stronger in Rochester. And yes, I got asked ALOT where I was from because it was quite obvious I was not er, local! :rofl:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

50. The outlying areas of Minnesota have preserved the accent better

The Twin Cities have so many people from all over that the accent has been diluted. That wasn't the case when I was a kid.

[Odin2005]

57. I've noticed that many Minnesotans, myself included, have a German/French-type Uvular R

It's especially noticeable when the R is between two back vowels, as in "tomorrow"

The thing about your great aunt is hilarious! :D

And, actually, recent research has proven for a fact that the mass media has had no effect on our accents. if anything, they are growing more distinct.

When I was in high school we had a teachers aide who was from Boston and everyone liked to give her a bad time about her strong Boston accent, complete with R-dropping.

[KamaAina]

18. "'za" is used properly only in the phrase

"brewski(s) and 'za". :beer:

[Chan790]

19. Might suprise you that brewski also annoys me greatly.

Or not. Is "pizza and beer" really that hard to say.

I'm all about pizza and beer. I think I shall have pizza and beer for dinner.

[KamaAina]

28. I never said it wasn't annoying

only that it wasn't supposed to be used (or eaten, for that matter) alone, without "brewski".

Do they still have Elm City beer? That'd go nicely with your New Haven (a)pizza! :beer:

[Chan790]

32. I have no idea...

I live outside Hartford. (For the next week? several days? I'm waiting on a phone call on when I start the new job.)

I like my pizza with Hooker IPA.

[ElboRuum]

25. No, actually.

It is used properly in no phrase whatsoever. It should be stricken from our collective consciousness. Brewski, too. Where did I put that neuralizer?

[ElboRuum]

22. What? Who says this?

What, are 2 syllables too much such that they have to shorten it?

Moreover, don't people realize that when you say "za" you sound like a jerk trying too hard to sound like a hipster?

It's not peet-ZAH anyway, if it were, it might make "za" remotely plausible.

But it isn't. It's PEET-zuh, but I don't hear anyone saying, "I need to get a slice of zuh."

Now I'm pissed off, thank you very much for this post!!! :sarcasm: :grr:

[Fire Walk With Me]

26. I'm more interested in za than the pee which precedes it.

[Oeditpus Rex]

30. Humans are rarely as pathetic

as when they're trying to be cool by using something that hasn't been cool for more than 10 years or stopped being cool about 23 minutes after it was introduced.

[mitchum]

37. It's stupid baby talk on the level of "veggies"

[Tikki]

39. My family and friends have always called pizza...

"pie" for a nickname...Like "whatcha want on your pie?"


Tikki

[Lydia Leftcoast]

44. I first heard "za" in the 1970s in New Haven from someone who had moved up from

South Carolina and graduated from Dartmouth.

I've NEVER heard it in Minnesota, and I grew up here, despite living half my life elsewhere.

[driver8]

47. I fucking hate that. You can use "za" in Scrabble, now. WTF? n/t

[SeattleGirl]

51. I recently discovered that, after I bought a SCRABBLE game for my

computer. Za? Really?

And "zine" for magazine.

:crazy:

[ghostsofgiants]

55. Sounds like something fratboy douchebags would say.

Hey bro, let's tap the keg and get some 'za!

[Pierre.Suave]

56. I have never once heard anyone in MN use the word

"za"