"Our speech is as colorful and distinct from the rest of the country as any other region.”
You could consider author Edward MCClelland a bit of an expert on Midwestern speak, “I was born and raised in Lansing went to MSU."
In his book, "How to speak Midwestern," he gives the historical overview of how Michiganders got their accent.
Let's start with what McClelland means by Midwest.
It's this very large region divided into three parts. The North Central, The Midland and our region, the Inland North -- which and this may surprise you, does not get its accent from the Dutch.
"It comes from Western New England originally," McClelland said. "It was a Yankee accent. These people migrated along the Erie Canal and then they migrated west along the Great Lakes to Michigan."
Bringing with them the over exaggerated "a's" "r's" and nasal tone.
“That's a pretty Michigan nuance -- talk through your nose be nasal," he continued. "Talk as though your lower jaw doesn't exist.
"It's been said that the Michigan accent sounds like a pirate with a head cold. We say I'm going to go out to the garage and work on the car," McClelland said.
These new settlers also brought with them, a little something called Midwest Nice, which McClelland adds, really isn't very nice at all.
"Criticize things passive aggressively. Interesting is, 'well that's got some merit but I don't care for it,'" he said. "Then there's different, which means that just violates some kind of social norm."
In addition to our Michigan accent, there's also Michigan terms that no one outside of our beautiful state know the meaning, like “fudgie,” “trolls” and “party store."
Many outside our state also don’t understand our need to abbreviate everything like, "GR," "The D" and "A-squared."
McClelland profiles the entire Midwest, including Minnesota and Pittsburg accents and terms.
You can listen to his entire unedited interview here:
McClelland also recommends taking the New York Times dialect quiz, which he says is pretty accurate.
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