Monday, November 28, 2016

My Native Tongue


Let's see, I was born in Colorado but relocated to North Dakota while I was still pre-verbal. Then had a very short stint in Mississippi only to return to North Dakota until I was seven. Then back to Colorado for a couple years, Las Vegas, Nevada for thirteen months, then North Dakota once more til I was eighteen. With me so far? Good. I dabbled with higher education in Minnesota for close to two years followed by a brief regrouping effort in North Dakota and then off to South Dakota for the next four decades. Consider also that along the way I have been heavily influenced by Norwegian-Americans, American Southerners, Midwestern flat-speakers, and the Fargo-esque dialect leaking across the border from Minnesota. And I was married to a Dutch/Swedish husband to boot! All of these earlier speech-isms have, according to my Facebook vocab, been over-ridden by a mere six months in Colorado. Maybe I was born with it. Maybe I'm a natural mimic. Uff da, pass the lefse. Or cornbread. I'm not confused.

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