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Dat dere vas Minnesooota speak..don't cha know.

How To Talk Minnesotan
By Howard Mohr
http://minneapolis.about.com/cs/books/a/aa072799.htm

Howard Mohr teaches more than just the regional dialect. He also sets you straight on Minnesota etiquette.

Friends back East used to rib me about the covered wagons we lived in out here. That wasn't even thirty years ago. Today, thanks largely to popular media and major league sports, the Twin Cities are a world-class metropolis -- albeit, still in the Europeans' fly-over zone. Provincialism dies hard though, so despite all our best efforts to explain "Fargo" as a cartoon, visitors still expect that dulcet droning.
Of course they'll be disappointed in the Twin Cities. Tourists won't hear the uninflected "Ee-ah, sure." On the other hand, there are plenty of speech oddities to amuse the visitor and frustrate the transplant.

That's where How to Talk Minnesotan comes in handy.

If you've relocated here from beyond the five-state area, I urge you to watch the televised version when it airs during a PBS pledge drive. While you're waiting, you could do worse than to buy yourself a copy of the book. It should be in the foreign language section of your local bookstore, but you're more likely to find it under humor.
They may not know it, but the underlying motive for Minnesotans' behavior is the need to blend in, to be inconspicuous. While not everything is as uniform as a Minneapolis alley lined with giant, gray-green government-issue garbage receptacles, Minnesotans avoid drawing attention. Blending affects most aspects of life. If you've ever been frustrated by local drivers not using lane change signals, now you know why. Likewise, in outward appearance you may have trouble distinguishing executive from clerk. Even stranger, however, are the ways Minnesotans blur the boundary between staying and leaving.

Howard Mohr devotes a chapter to a real local custom, the "long good-bye." In case you think it's far-fetched, let me warn you, it's not. It's also one of the easiest habits to pick up. For practice, next time your guests mutter to themselves about how late it's getting, rush into the kitchen and brew up a fresh pot or pop open a few beers. Whatever. In this way your friends will be obliged to prolong their departure and you'll have been polite.

Strong reactions are frowned upon, although Howard Mohr rightly points out that a strong negative is better than a strong positive. Somehow natives, like my son, master this early without sounding like whiners. It's trickier for the rest of us and, frankly, that's not Howard Mohr's concern. What he is concerned with is explaining how to interpret the bland, neutral sounding comment of a native.

Positive expressions that avoid the sin of jinxing one's luck include:

It could be worse

Not too bad

Not so bad, and

Can't complain.
These are perfectly suited to describing those one or two days of perfect weather annually or as answers to "how are you?" after you've just received the Pulitzer.
The most important lesson Howard Mohr teaches comes near the beginning. Three expressions:

You bet,

That's different, and

Whatever
have a multitude of nuances, from agreement, through resignation, to disappointment. Howard Mohr provides plenty of sample dialogues for you to practice with a friend.
In addition to being a useful manual for transplants and visitors, it provides dry humor for everyone in the area.