Charlie D wrote: Wed Jul 06, 2022 10:09 am
The stretch from North Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin is said to be where you'll hear the term "oof dah" or "uff da" or any similar spelling. You see somebody slip ans fall on the ice? That gets an oof dah. Catch a whiff of the baby's diaper? There's an oof dah.
They're proud of this exclamation, they even put it on billboards, politicians will say it while campaigning to appear more folksy, you go to some mom & pop greasy spoon and they'll have something on the menu called The Widowmaker and the description starts "Oof dah! This 96oz sirloin..." but the thing is that I have never heard one person genuinely utter an oof dah.
I live in the Twin Cities, I've been to Duluth, I've been to Fargo, my Wisconsin time was just at Interstate State Park up at Saint Croix Falls, and there've been a handful of smaller places, too, so I've been to a mix of large and small urban areas in these three states and never once have I heard a genuine oof dah.
My first ex was from North Dakota and she said oof dah only when making fun of the rural northern exaggerated long O accent. My fifth ex claimed she grew up country as a chicken coop up north a ways. Never once did this non-hyphenated compound slip out of her mouth. So it's not a country thing, either.
I don't think the word actually exists as part of common speech but it's part of the regional identity.
I'm from Ohio, though, maybe that's why I don't get it. I've heard / read that the colloquialism in my home state, that
nobody else anywhere ever does, is we declare distance in units of time, eg: "Toledo is a half hour from Bowling Green."
I guarantee you this is horseshit. Yeah, Ohioans do that. So does everybody else I've ever met.