The club is having Joseph Salmons, director of the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, give a basic overview of the different dialects of English that are found in Milwaukee.,”

• Joseph Salmons and Thomas Purnell of the Wisconsin Englishes Project will talk about dialects spoken in Wisconsin at the Marquette Linguistics Club's Monday meeting.
• The Linguistics Club is a recently formed student organization that explores questions about languages.
• Steven Keiser, the club's adviser, said there is much technical detail in speaking.

The recently formed Linguistics Club will host an event on regional dialects Monday at 8:30 p.m. in Lalumiere Language Hall.

Joseph Salmons, co-director of the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures and a professor of German at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will give an overview of different English dialects found in Wisconsin. Salmons refers to these dialects as "Englishes."

Thomas Purnell, an assistant professor of linguistics at UW-Madison, will join Salmons at the event. Salmons and Purnell are contributors to the Wisconsin Englishes Project, a group of linguists exploring dialects spoken throughout the state.

"American dialects are becoming more different rather than the assumption that they are disappearing," Salmons said.

He said many of the dialects in Wisconsin and other United States regions are due to the history of those regions. As communities change, the ways people speak change with them.

Recordings from the 1930s and 1940s show how people in particular regions spoke similarly to one another, Salmons said. Dialects are found in the pronunciation and usage of certain words, but can also be found in certain word orders in sentences. He said dialects are not an incorrect way of speaking English, but just show differences in the way people throughout the country speak.

"This is a very interesting part of the regional cultures," Salmons said.

He said there is a lot of richness in the way people speak in Wisconsin. The dialects found here are due to the influx of German and Polish immigrants to the region in the 1800s, Salmons said.

Steven Keiser, the club's adviser and an assistant professor of English at Marquette, said the dialect discussion is one of the topics the club has covered at meetings.

"People can be amazed by the technical detail that takes place to produce certain pronunciations and simple sounds," Keiser said.

The club officially came into existence at the end of last semester and held its first meeting in January, said Bradley Rentz, a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences who helped start the group and now serves as president.

He said the club has about 20 consistent members who show up to the biweekly meetings. The group has also discussed English dialects, taboo language and profanity.

Keiser said the purpose of the club is to provide students the opportunity to explore questions of languages. He suggested having Salmons and Purnell come to campus because they were instrumental in setting up the Wisconsin Englishes Project and they are experts in the field.

Keiser said future plans for the club include holding a regular guest series and maybe having a panel discussion on Gaelic language.

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