Minnesota is one of a handful of states in America that I haven’t yet visited. I’ve planned on getting there at some point, but after seeing this video I think Minnesota’s just jumped North Dakota on my list of states to visit next. This might be the surliest man in America, but you wouldn’t know that because he’s here to teach you ‘how to speak Minnesotan’, and in Minnesota, you don’t share your miserable feelings with the world. I love these translations:
“I’m so excited, I can’t believe it!!!” translates to “A guy could almost be happy today if he wasn’t careful.” And “that’s the best movie I’ve seen in twenty years” gets translated to “well, it’s an improvement on that other stuff we paid nine bucks to watch and have people dump Pepsi down our necks and talk through the whole thing.”
While I love every single thing about this video, I think it’s important to note that style of speaking isn’t specific to only Minnesota. You’re going to find this country-style of not talking about just how fucking miserable life is anywhere that has a God awful Winter. You can hear this type of speech everywhere from Maine to upstate New York to Wyoming and on up to Alaska.
When life is miserable for a large chunk of the year it doesn’t do anybody any good to constantly harp on how shitty things are. That just brings everybody down, so you talk about it without ever talking about it just like this man above. As stated in the video, you speak Minnesotan by the use of negatives. (h/t Reddit’s r/videos)