My friends have told me I don’t
seem like I’m from Michigan. I was
born and raised in a quiet town
on Lake Michigan and both of my
parents are natives of the western
side of the state. I’m not sure what
it even means to “seem like” I’m
from Michigan, but there are a few
things about me that are distinctly
Midwestern.
The most obvious tell is how I
say certain words. Bagel is baahg-el
not bay-gul. Milk is melk. Bag, like
bagel, also gets an eh sound inserted
into it.
My boyfriend, who is from New
York, takes particular issue with
how I say bagel. Over and over he’ll
instruct me to say “bay-gul, like
the water feature and the bird.” I’ll
entertain him and try to pronounce
bagel “correctly,” but the truth is,
I can’t even hear the difference
between baahg-el and bay-gul.
Linguists
sometimes
call
Midwestern
accents,
formally
known as the Inland North accent,
“general English” or the “neutral
English” accent. But this notion
is increasingly untrue. Since the
1950s, the Great Lakes Region of
the Midwest has been experiencing
what linguists have dubbed the
“Northern
Cities
vowel
shift,”
giving rise to a new and distinct
Midwestern
accent.
Before,
it
would’ve been difficult to hear
someone speak and immediately
identify
that
they
were
from
Michigan or Wisconsin or Indiana.
But now, depending on the speaker,
it can be quite obvious. If current
trends continue, Midwest accents
may no longer be the desired
“neutral English.”
This isn’t the first time English
speakers
have
shifted
their
pronunciation of vowels: between
1400 and 1700, the English language
underwent what’s known as The
Great Vowel Shift, a linguistic event
that radically altered the way words
were pronounced.
The most distinct characteristic
of the Northern Cities vowel shift
is the lengthening and lifting of
certain sounds: the short A sound
turns into a vaguely Canadian ah.
Speakers with particularly strong
Midwest accents will pronounce
job like jab, for example. Californian
and Canadian accents are also both
the result of vowel shifts. In the
California vowel shift, ‘u’ is moving
towards a ‘y’ or ‘e’ sound, so that
rude begins to sound like reed.
Canadian accents are also the result
of lengthening and the eh and ah
sounds becoming more prominent
in speakers’ pronunciation. This is
why Canadian accents sound very
similar to the “Yooper Accent” found
in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
But the Midwest accent may
prove to be short-lived. Regional
dialects as a whole are declining,
demonstrative of a larger, inherently
problematic,
aim
towards
a
“neutral’’ accent. In 1980, 80% of
Texans had a Southern accent. In
2013, that number had declined to
just one-third of Texas’ population.
In cities across the country known
for their distinctive accents —
Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago,
among others — local varieties of
English are fading in favor of generic
“newscaster” accents, a voice that
exists without a sense of place or
time, that could be spoken by any
American, anywhere.
The Midwest accent has emerged
at an unlikely time, where regional
accents are fading and linguistic
heterogeneity
threatens
the
development of new ones. What
does it mean for the Midwest accent
to lose its status as the “standard”
American accent? And what do the
speaker’s regional flourishes — or
lack thereof — actually tell us about
them?
S T A T E M E N T
guff. noun. Trivial or foolish talk or
ideas. Synonyms include: nonsense,
humbug, malarky. /g f/
“Tyra, having sat through hours
of Zoom meetings, was completely
disinterested in the guff coming
out of Martin’s mouth.”
If you look in any official
English dictionary and search the
word “guff,” the above noun will
appear with its condescending
connotations and old-timey air. It’s
not the most common word of the
present day; I know I haven’t once
in my entire life heard it used in this
sense. But there it stands, asserting
its seal of approval in all its official
glory. Now, I don’t know where the
general public stands on respecting
the authority of published, mostly
printed dictionaries, but I tend
to take the royal lexicon of the
English language as more of a
suggestion. To me, the word “guff”
is no exception.
For decades, this term has
meant
something
much
more
meaningful to the students of
Ann Arbor living in Cooperative
Housing across campus. At some
point between the establishment of
the first housing co-op in 1932 and
present day, “guff” was adopted by
co-op housing and turned into an
acronym. Then, as language tends
to, it continued morphing to adopt
new uses and meanings. First, an
adjective, sometimes a verb and
always a shorthand for the core
philosophy a co-oper learns to
adapt as they live in a community
founded to uplift.
Ann Arbor is unique when it
comes to student housing co-ops,
which
the
Inter-Cooperative
Council defines on its website as
“organizations
and
businesses
that are owned and operated
collectively, for the mutual benefit
of their members.” There are 16
individual housing co-ops under
the ICC, an entirely student-
founded and student-run non-
profit organization, making it
one of the largest student housing
co-ops in the United States.
But I had no idea about any of
this history when I first moved
into a co-op during my second ever
semester of college. The year was
2020, and I had just spent a handful
of months getting accustomed
to living alone in a dorm built for
two and finally mustering up the
courage to talk to my neighbors.
In November of the same year,
the University sent out an email
informing all undergraduates that
their dorm contracts had been
promptly canceled, and that if we
wanted to continue staying on
campus, we had to figure out what
the hell to do about it — on our own.
It was exactly the type of situation
I did not want to be navigating as
a teenage quasi-adult. I heard a
handful of my hall mates talking
about moving to a building called
Escher co-op. I had no idea where
it was located or what a co-op
was, but these hall mates were
the only people around me I had
grown semi-familiar with. I didn’t
know them very well, but I knew I
wanted to get to know them better.
So I decided to follow suit in taking
the opportunity to get out of the
dorms.
Nestled in a secluded corner of an
already woodsy and isolated North
Campus, right on the outskirts of
the Baits-Bursley conglomerate,
rests a building in the shape of a
misshapen horseshoe: M.C. Escher
Cooperative House. It wears trees
like the sleeves of a turtleneck as it
hugs a grassy hill with a campfire
and picnic table. Once you walk up
this small hill to get to the center
of Escher’s courtyard, you’ll be
surrounded by nine evenly spaced
doors with their own individual
mailboxes and set of stairs. Oh, and
one other thing: Each entrance has
its own elaborate mural, inspired
by a uniquely given name, spanning
the entire door. From left to right
proudly stand the passages to
Trantor Mir, Walden, Sinclair, Bag
End (yes, this is after “The Lord
of the Rings”), Zapata, Valhalla,
Russell, Karma and Falstaff, like
knights at the round table. Over
the river and through the woods, to
Escher house we go.
When I first arrived with my
moving van of luggage to unload,
I was greeted by Escher’s house
president.
His
demeanor
was
immediately friendly, if a bit
awkward. He sent his personal
phone number out to contact when
arriving to move in. There was no
fanfare of a front desk or a check-
in process, like when moving into
Bursley. He just showed me to my
room, helped me move my stuff,
remembered he had a key to give
me, and my co-op journey began.
All new members are given a
comprehensive tour of Escher’s
three floors and I quickly learned
that the quirks of the building
extended beyond the paintings
on its doors. Here’s the general
layout: The aforementioned nine
doors belong to nine sections that
an Escher co-oper can choose to
move into. For example, I moved
into a large single on the first floor
of Walden, named after the book
by Henry David Thoreau. Each
section then has two floors of
rooms and two common spaces, a
lounge room on the upper floor and
a kitchen on the lower floor. Every
lounge room and kitchen come
with their own unique appliances:
Russell kitchen has a toaster oven
and a wall of origami cranes, while
Trantor Mir lounge has Settlers of
Catan and a Nintendo Wii.
Escher’s basement contains an
even greater assortment of common
spaces. There’s a large living room
with couches, a projector, a pool
table, two pianos, a functioning
stripper pole and multicolored
scribblings of general nonsense all
over the walls. There’s also a music
room with three more pianos of
varying quality, three-fifths of
a drum set, a handful of guitar
amps, some microphones, and a
ukulele. The biggest and probably
most important room in Escher
is the massive industrial kitchen
connected to a bona fide cafeteria,
affectionately named “O’Keeffe,”
after the painter. Escher technically
has two cafeterias for house
dinners, O’Keeffe and Renaissance,
but Renaissance was put out of
commission
during
COVID-19
while I lived there.
It’s in the O’Keeffe cafeteria that
I first learned this term:
G.U.F.F.
acronym.
Generally
Unrestricted Free Food.
I was standing in a group with
the rest of the new members,
masks and eyebrow raise of mild
disbelief on all our faces, as the
president of Escher spoke in a clear
and practiced way about how we
would be feeding ourselves. The
three fridges and pantry are kept
stocked with G.U.F.F. items like
eggs, bagels, apples, sandwich
bread, Eggo waffles, dairy and
non-dairy milk, flour, cucumbers,
cereal and many other basic food
items that can be used for making
meals. A portion of everyone’s
rent goes toward the budget for
stocking G.U.F.F. foods for every
member. My favorites soon became
the variety of G.U.F.F. coffee beans
and the two barrels of G.U.F.F. ice
cream diligently kept in the freezer.
I grew to realize during the
first few weeks at Escher that I
hadn’t just moved into a building
on the grounds of my university, I
had moved into a culture. A co-op,
I came to learn, is a microcosm
of democracy on campus, where
policies are proposed and voted
on every month, and members are
elected to be in charge of planning
events and taking minutes at
meetings. It’s also a community
where every member is meant to
chip in, an attitude that’s embedded
in the house culture and the system
of the co-op itself. Within the first
two weeks I lived at Escher, I was
assigned three distinct chores: I
had to clean the bathroom in my
hallway once a week, vacuum the
floors of Walden twice a week,
and help the chef make dinner on
Mondays. Oh yeah, Escher pays
a private chef to cook dinner for
the whole house every weekday.
I think what I miss most about
Escher is the G.U.F.F. espresso.
The machine they have down in
O’Keeffe is top notch: A one stop
shop for grinding coffee beans
fresh, brewing one or two shots in
your mug and stemming milk for
the latte of your dreams. I made a
cafe miel every day I lived there.
I only stayed in Escher for
one semester, but in following
some of the same friends that
first brought me to the co-ops,
I moved right to Michminnies
co-op for my whole sophomore
year. Located in Kerrytown and
featuring a facade of bright blue
and purple, Michminnies was an
entirely different experience from
the quiet often found at Escher.
Living in Escher felt like being at
summer camp. Michminnies felt
like the Airbnb Ms. Frizzle would
start running when she inevitably
got
bored
after
retirement.
Michminies is the hoarder house of
the oldest lesbian you know, whose
only possessions come from yard
sales and art fairs. Michminnies
has the alternative, truly eccentric
atmosphere that college town
coffee shops try to go for but are
scared to fully commit to because
they don’t want to lose commercial
value. Michminnies is the house
that the Property Brothers would
design
if
their
only
creative
direction was the Pinterest board of
a stoned Beatles enthusiast and the
word “maximalism.” Michminnies
has the walls your parents kept
you from painting when you were
old enough to start having agency
over your room but too young
to put practicality over creative
expression. It has more nooks than
an Animal Crossing game and more
crannies than a Crayola box. And I
say all this with utmost pride and
affection. There is nowhere else
like it, besides maybe other co-ops.
I arrived at Michminnies the
same way I arrived at Escher,
with boxes of stuff to unload and
no idea what I was getting myself
into. Living at Michminnies made
me realize Escher is the odd one
out when it comes to Ann Arbor
student co-ops. Rather than being
a large building made to house over
100 people, the average co-op is
just a regular-looking house with
space for around 25, give or take.
Escher is also the only co-op on
North Campus, and the only co-op
with a hired chef to cook for so
many people. Being in charge of
making dinner is one of the chores
at Michminnies and all other
co-ops. The democracy remains
the same in every co-op, but the
policies
and
elected
officials
between can be as unique as the
co-ops themselves. Michminnies
has two presidents, three “Flight
Attendants” (in charge of planning
house
events),
an
“Ordering
Steward” (in charge of placing the
food order), two “Maintenance
Managers” (in charge of house
upkeep), two “Work Managers” (in
charge of delegating chores), two
“Groundskeepers” (shovel snow in
winter, take care of gardens in front
of house, etc), two “Sin Stewards”
(curate house alcohol) and more.
Even Michminnies is different
from most co-ops because it’s two
houses in one, which is why many
of the standard co-op positions are
doubled. At Michminnes, I started
to see the evolution of G.U.F.F. into
more than just food:
guff. adjective. Denoting any food
item, article of clothing, kitchen
utensil, furniture item or object
for giving away that ownership is
relinquished on a first come first
serve basis. Synonyms include:
communal, free, up-for-grabs. /gǝf/
“Sarah was incredibly happy
to come home to a plate of guff
cookies.”
“Dalton asked if the stickers on
the table were guff.”
“After not having worn it for
months, Emily threw her sweater
in the guff closet for others to take.”
With
the
introduction
of
more than just guff food came
subsections of how things were
shared, and to what degree they
were shared:
partial-guff. adjective. Denoting
any food item, article of clothing,
kitchen utensil, furniture item or
object that the owner is willing
to share but not indiscriminately.
Usually used in reference to
inorganic appliances, like a gaming
computer or a coffee machine.
DANI CANAN
Statement Correspondent
Guff etymology
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Wednesday, February 22, 2023— 5
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Say eh: Deconstructing the Midwestern accent
Design by Grace Filbin
HALEY JOHNSON
Statement Correspondent
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
e
From top to bottom: Esher House’s Waden Lounge, study room and music room.
Jeremy Weine/DAILY
Jeremy Weine/DAILY
Jeremy Weine/DAILY
e
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Mich house’s pantry, laundry room shelves and basement living room.