How to Talk Minnesotan: The Power of the Negative

it's okay to feel good about things here but there's no sense running down the street telling people about it at the top of your voice Minnesotans prefer to express their positive feelings through the use of negatives because it naturally levels things out this will be one of your hardest lessons so you just got married or bought a late-model pickup under book price with low mileage and hardly any rust the Minnesotan would say I wouldn't want you to think I'm not happy that's a strong statement here if somebody asked you how's it going and you're feeling average or okay which is about all a guy can expect really you say not too bad but if you're feeling better than average and the ill winds haven't started to blow your way yet you say can't complain which means you could complain but you won't because you feel good now but of course you have no illusions that it's permanent but if you say it could be worse you mean it exactly because think can always be worse they can always be worse more often than they can always be better for practice with the Minnesota negative try translating these foreign phrases into Minnesota I'm so excited I can't believe it the guy could almost be happy today if he wasn't careful that's the best movie I've seen in 20 years well it's an improvement on that other stuff we paid nine bucks to watch and have people dump Pepsi down her necks and talk through the whole thing oh darling this is our 20th anniversary not too bad pass the butter please one last note not too good and not so good or worse than not too bad and not so bad way worse in fact when somebody asked you how you slept on the guest bed with a bar that cuts across your back and gives you shooting pains down your legs you'll say not too bad because you don't want to hurt their feelings but how you really slept was not too good they'll probably notice you limping anyway you

Channel: Chris Menning

Views: 1,465,128

Keywords: minnesotan accent, howard mohr, how to talk minnesotan, negative, not too bad

Id: vm-MrkoJPC8

Length: 2min 12sec (132 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 19 2015