According to a press release published this week by whitehotpr.com, the majority of Michigan residents want to make “Michigander” an official dialect.

The poll, conducted by Writing Tips Institute, found that locals fear phrases and slang unique to Michigan risk dying out and that 54% said they would like for the local dialect to be protected by law.

According to “Do you speak American?” (www.pbs.org/speak/education/curriculum/college/regional/), regional dialects are the result of numerous factors, including patterns of settlement, subsequent migration and isolation.

The poll, Writing Tips Institute poll, as it applies to Michigan residents, should warrant further study, because dialects across the state are diverse, particularly when the dialect of the western Upper Peninsula is considered.

For instance, a common exclamation used throughout the U.P., “Voi Kauhea!” was once very common. It comes from the Finnish language, meaning: “how terrible.” As a result of the high number of Finnish immigrants to the U.P. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Finnish language significantly impacted what has come to be known as “Yooper dialect.”

For example, the Finnish language does not use prepositions to link nouns, pronouns, or phrases within sentences, Yooper dialect until recently, often used “Let’s go town.” rather than “Let’s go to town.”

Gradually, however, this type of grammar usage — including “I done it; I seen that” — has been in decline for years.

A once popular phrase that fell out of use in the Copper Country decades ago originated in the 19th and early 20th-century period copper mining culture, a phrase of which no one “south of the Bridge’ would quite know the origin: “That would take two men and a boy to lift!” It referred to something that was very heavy. It traced back to the pneumatic mining drills that preceded the “one-man drills.” The “two-man drills” were heavy enough to require two men to operate, while a boy tended necessary errands for the miners so they could remain on the drill.

Writing Tips Institute states that while many people across America still use phrases such as these, and speak in their region’s own dialect, recent studies have found that, as America becomes more diverse, regional accents and dialects are dying out — “and the more we move around, the more the rough edges of our conversation style get whittled down.”

In the United Kingdom, Cornwall and Wales are experiencing the same declines. To counter the decline, the UK has begun to take steps to protect not only dialect, but entire languages, whitehotpr.com says:

“Just a few years ago, the British government acted to protect Welsh by making it an official language, thereby preserving its use.”

A Dec. 4, 2019 article, published online at cornwalllive.com was titled “The Cornish accent is slowly dying but this is how to save it.” The cause of the change is the result of migration patterns.

“Basically, it means that with more and more people moving into Cornwall over the years,” the article states, “those characteristics which make the Cornish accent have been diluted.”

And as with the Welsh and Cornish, the gradual linguistic changes occurring in Michigan are being noticed.

The majority of Michigan residents have indicated in the poll that they understand the significance of regional dialect. According to studysmarter.us, regional dialect is a variation in language use based on geographical area.

“A regional dialect is an interesting reflection of life in particular geographical areas,” studysmarter.us states. “Parents pass down their way of speaking to their children who live in that region, and those children eventually pass down their way of speaking.”

What makes dialect significant, studysmarter.us points out, is that migration between and within regions has also led to the development and segmentation of distinct regional dialects. Therefore, analyzing regional dialects can provide insight into rich histories of human geography.

A journal article published online by degruyter.com points out the significance of local dialect, stating a large body of academic literature claims that language is one of the most significant markers of ethnic identification and that it plays a crucial role not only in the external perception of an ethnic group by outsiders but also in the self-identification of an ethnic group.

The whitehotpr.com press release says that Michigan residents do not want phrases such as Downstate’s ‘a Michigan Left’ (a u-turn everywhere else), ‘a Yooper’ (a loving term for someone who resides in the U.P), ‘party store’ (convenience store), or ‘Jeet?’ (did you eat?) to disappear from the local lexicon, the Writing Tips Institute poll found.