Personally I'm a bit skeptical to that "Ya"-sound (perhaps someone from Minnesota can confirm?) because it wouldn't apply to all Scandinavs. To assume all Scandinavs are alike is almost as wrong as to assume they're 'alike' to the Germans.
Not really. Germans are High German or Low German speakers; both High and Low German are West Germanic languages like English and are extremely different from North Germanic languages (in fact North and West Germanic speakers are not particularly "related" going as far back to prehistoric times when what would become North Germanic speakers were part of the Nordic Bronze Age culture, corresponding with the boarders of Southern Norway, Sweden and Denmark down to roughly the Slesvig/Holstein border, while the ancestors of West Germanic languages were part of the Jastorf culture, corresponding to modern North Germany; the dialects spoken by these groups however became a sprachbund due to contact between the groups). AKA the West and North groups started as very separate groups but merged linguistically through close contact early in the Indo-European linguistic era (however Germanic languages, especially Nordic ones have much influence from a non-Indo-European source or sources in their substratum). So yes Nordic peoples are different culturally, physically and linguistically from West Germanic peoples such as the Germans, Dutch or English.
This is not the same with Nordic peoples (at least those from Sweden, Swedish-speaking areas of Finland, Denmark and Norway) who are all speakers of North Germanic or "Nordic" languages and do (especially to non-Nordic language speakers) have many similarities in intonation, syntax and accent.
Icelandic and Faroese speakers are more separate however due to them splitting from Norwegian varieties of the Norse language (aka West Norse) in the Early Medieval era.
But you are right that there are differences in the various Nordic languages and myself can tell which part of the Nordic countries an individual is from by their accent, syntax, lexicon and tone.
In fact, the sound of broken English is quite different depending on wheather it's spoken by a Norwegian, a Swede, or a Dane, not to mention the Icelanders. Since most of the Minnesota-immigrants were, in fact, from Sweden, they would more probably say something like "Yoo".
I'd describe it more as "YOR" pronounced in a non-rhotic fashion (that is with the "r" unpronounced like in Standard British English). However the "yah" in Minnesota is more a combination of the Swedes and Norwegians pronouncing the Midwestern and Canadian pronunciation of "yeah" as well as well having influence from the German "ja" ("yaah" or "yar");Not them just using a Scandinavian word. Although, saying that, the Norwegian pronunciation is not too dissimilar from the Minnesotan one (just with a slightly more rounded "a"):
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ja#NorwegianAlthough Swedes seem to be the most famous these days, Norwegians were the bigger group of Scandinavian emigrants to the Upper Midwest.
The best depiction of early LHOTP-era immigrants, and the trouble they had mastering English, is the one in Jan Troell's film "Nybyggarna" (aka The New Land, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069035/) - see it if you can find it, it's a masterpiece!
The first of them was great as well. It is funny that Liv Ullmann though a Swede in the films is actually a Norwegian.
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