This Post Talks Too Much

Those of you who have never met me in person may not realize that I have a pronounced Minnesota accent. It is not as pronounced as say, Marge Gunderson's, but it's there. To a certain extent I can dial it down, but when I'm among family (particularly my mom's extended family) it gets pretty thick. The long Os, the low almost-chant when the topic is dull or distressing--it feels a bit like speaking from the shoulders rather than the diaphragm, which I realize makes no sense. When I am being a Serious Literary (or Academic) Person I unconsciously tone these things down, but one thing that never really goes away is the Uff da.

I'm not even really sure why I started saying it. Grandma said it all the time, but Mom never did it, and I rarely heard it growing up in the Cities. We visited Grandma and Grandpa often when I was young, but less as I got older. As I recall it wasn't until college, for some reason, that I started saying it habitually, perhaps around the time I started checking out some of the classes offered by the Scandinavian Studies department.

For those of you not familiar, "Uff da" is sort of the Norwegian-American equivalent of "Oy vey." It's a cultural fossil, a legacy of the wave of Norwegian immigration that disconnected thousands of families from their language and culture, and as such it's developed a meaning not quite recognizable to modern Norwegians. (Wikipedia claims that the term is still in common usage over there, but I never once heard it when I was there and in my Norwegian language classes I was told that it was more or less extinct in Norway itself.)

A few examples of ways Uff da can be used:

1. To express disgust. Sample translation: "Crap on a stick, that lutefisk smells rancid. The rest of the world has progressed beyond the Hanseatic age, can't we fry up some Walleye or something?"

2. To express exhaustion: "My dear, that was an exemplary bout of lovemaking, and an incredible orgasm. You are an extraordinary lover and the light of my life (or evening)."

3. To express satisfaction: "I don't know if it was the satay, the spring rolls, or the pad thai, but I couldn't eat another bite. More Sapporo, please!"

4. To express discomfort: "It is so hot that I just saw a hydrophobe standing in a sprinkler."

5. To express empathy: "Goodness me, it looks as though the Henderson boy has driven his jalopy through the Nylund's barbed-wire fence. I think the silo's on fire; I won't be surprised if they lose all their seed."

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but you get the idea.

As you can see, the beauty of it is that something you say without thinking can contain so many layers of meaning. Not that anyone knows what you're really saying, that is, which is why people find Minnesotans--perhaps particularly, Minnesotan men--so frustrating to interact with. We never use a paragraph when two words will do. I use "I guess" in the same way; it has multiple meanings, all of which are perfectly clear to me and no one else.

This is why I write, really. Because there are things I would like to say, but I am not so good at the verbal.

Someone who knew me only from online recently met me in person, and when she heard me talking she asked someone nearby, "Is he serious?" As in: does he seriously talk like that, or is he exaggerating for effect?** So this is just in case you meet me and you wonder, I guess. I am, in fact, serious.

*Especially the phone. Oh, god, I FAIL at the telephone; it is a miserable device and I am miserable with it.

**She didn't mean anything by it, and I didn't take offense.