The Yooper Accent

If ya don’t knooo, now ya knooo

I absolutely love a good accent, and I have a theory that ugly accents don’t exist, and it always depends on the person it’s coming out of. A radiant, physically beautiful human speaking calmly or a warm grandmother cheerfully explaining something in any accent is pleasant, no matter the language or how thick and broken the English. 

It’s always lovely. 

Similarly, whichever accents are typically deemed attractive—Italian, French, Spanish, etc—when spoken by a shallow a**hole is never attractive even if the syllables sound nice. 

It’s the energy of the speaker that makes the accent; that’s my theory. But beyond anecdotally at parties with friends and acquaintances from across the world, I haven’t tested it rigorously. 

Obviously, some languages are more melodic, others more guttural, and personal preference is a thing, but I swear it’s attached to the person speaking. 

All that is to say, I love accents: all of them. 

Because I love language, and I could easily let this post drift into my love for how much they’re ever-changing forms of communication that are never static with each generation and new technology and how, if we listen to an interview with a college student speaking from a sit-in from the 1960s, we can immediately hear that it’s someone from a different era because of the intonation and word choice. All of that fascinates me to a level that’s hard to explain. 

Maybe I love it so much because I was born in a place with a great accent. 

As a teen, I remember driving a few hours south into Wisconsin and having people ask, “Where on earth are you from?” And I wasn’t embarrassed in the slightest and quite proud that my friends and I were bringing something unique to the suburban Madison get-together. 

America has a lot of great diversity in accents, cadence, and pronunciation, but because we’re such a sparsely populated region and have yet to have our own show on The Discovery Channel, Hulu, or Netflix, the Upper Peninsula, U.P. or “Yooper” accent hasn’t gotten much recognition.

The Yooper dialect is rural America at its finest, but turned up to eleven with that Northern Midwestern twist, like the movie Fargo…ish. And everyone knows what really separates the accent up here from the rest of rural America is our deliciously droopy O’s. 

That’s why when you say you’re from the Upper Midwest, people give you an “Oooh yaa, dontcha knooo” or “you betcha.”

Like the face of a bloodhound, our O’s sag and melt, and then we hang onto them for a half-beat longer than necessary like those strands of slobber that defy gravity.

We say “snow” like we’re sliding the word underneath something in a vocal limbo competition with the rest of America. It’s not “snow,” it’s “snooow,” and it’s wonderful.

Of course, we have all of the unofficial and informal mushy contractions like anyone from rural America with the ain’ts, the gunnas, kindas, and dunnos. 

“I probably am not going to bait a deer stand this year” rushes out of the mouth and becomes “I pry ain’t e’en gunna bait this year,” the object of the sentence obvious and implied. 

In general, rural Americans typically break the no-double-negative rule I have been teaching English-as-a-Second-Language learners for nine years. I taught that saying “I don’t have NONE” is incorrect. 

But turn that “don’t” into an “ain’t,” and you’re fine across most of the country. 

So, while “I don’t have none” is grammatically incorrect, we often hear people say something like, “I ain't got none” or, more specifically, “ I ain’t got no time-ta watch tha Packers.”

Yoopers also do the “coulda, woulda, shoulda” like every good American from the sticks. And “I would have” gets sewed up tightly into an “Ida,” like “Ida pry went witch-ya but tha blower’s been actin’ up an’ I couldn’t get out-tha drive.” 

“Supposed to” gets squished into “spose-da” as in “How the heck ya spose-da know they’re outta roast beef when they ain’t e’en got ‘er posted nowhere?”

When you finish a project in Small Town USA, whether it’s changing the spark plugs on your Seadoo, getting a chewing tobacco stain out of a pair of church pants, or putting the finishing touches to decorative icing on a birthday cake, you gotta wipe your hands, start to roll down your sleeves, and confidently proclaim, “That’ll do ‘er.” 

Because we often swap out and feminize “it” with “she or her” and the “h” rarely gets vocalized. So, it wouldn’t be out of place to hear, “Yeah, she’s a beaut, but she ain’t really got ‘er no more, ya know?” And without context, it’s impossible to know if they’re talking about a burger, snowmobile, VCR, old dog, or grandmother.

An old gentleman once hunkered down at the bar I was working at in Upper Michigan and asked, “Lauren work here yet?” It took him repeating it three times for me to realize that he meant “still,” and then it did dawn on me that we use it in that way, “I was gonna take off my winter tires, but we’ll pry get some snow yet.” 

What sets the U.P. apart from the rest of our Northern Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota compatriots is probably our Canadian “eh” that gets tacked onto the end of many sentences. 

Throughout the Yoop, there are bumper stickers and shirts that play on the accent and have the phrase, “Say ya to da UP, eh?” 

In one of the many restaurant kitchens I worked at over the years, we would joke that the world needed a Yooper motivational speaker with those Upper Midwest catchphrases. 

“In life, ya don’t create a new outcome wit-tha same actions. If ya wanna get ‘er done, ya gotta go get ‘er. Can I get a dontcha knooo?!” The audience would emphatically shout back, “Dontcha knooo!”

The speaker, who I imagine wearing tan Carhartt overalls and a Stormy Cromer, building on the energy would confidently walk to the other side of the stage, continuing with passion, “Oooh yaa, if you can get through a U.P. winter, you knooo you can make ‘er through this season of life. Can I get a you betcha!?” The crowd would repeat, “You betcha!” 

The Carhartt overalls with the mic wouldn’t like the lack of energy and would reply, “Oooh, now I knooo ya can do better’n that. I said, can I get a you betcha!” 

“YOU BETCHA!” The crowd would scream. 

“CAN I GET A DONTCHA KNOOO!?” 

“DONTCHA KNOOO!!” the crowd now on its feet would shout back while clapping. 

“CAN I GET A HOLY WAH!?!?!” 

“HO-LY WAH!” would be heard for miles as the audience jumped in euphoria and the speaker took a bow. They would then exit stage left to a standing ovation, turn around, and rush back to center stage for another roar of the crowd and individual shouts of “You betcha!” and “We love ya, Bucko!”

They would then go sit at a table in the lobby to meet adoring fans and sign hundreds of copies of their best-selling self-help book, entitled, ‘You Got ‘Er, Dontcha Know?’

It’s a wonderful vision and a proper showcase for a glorious accent. 

But these days, once again surrounded by and using the vocal sounds of my upbringing after so many years abroad, my accent feels a bit fake.

More on that next week.

For now, that’ll do ‘er.

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