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http://www.startribune.com/politics/30454004.html
The GOP vice presidential candidate's hometown of Wasilla, Alaska, is in the middle of the valley where more than 200 broke families from the Midwest -- many of them from Minnesota -- relocated during the Great Depression.
Which means Palin grew up listening to the children and grandchildren of those Minnesotans and being fed a steady diet of "yahs" and "ya knows" and even "you betchas."
"When people settle a new area, there's not a set accent,'' said Joe Salmons, director of the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "And it takes several generations for a new accent to form. What that means is, she was raised in an environment where there were a lot of people who were new to Alaska, and those Upper Midwestern influences were going to be very strong."
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