Ithaca College

Language changes.That simple, inevitable fact has rich implications for our lives, in ways that most people aren’t aware of. While some people believe that differences in regional speech are dying out today in the U.S., much evidence shows that dialects are becoming much stronger and new dialect features are emerging rapidly, including basic pronunciation of words like bad and bag, Don and Dawn, or his and hiss, and these tell us much about recent history, about contemporary society and our own identities.   Presentation is free and open to the public, on Wednesday, April 24th in the Klingenstein Lounge, from 6-7 pm. 

Dr. Joe Salmons is the Lester W.J. "Smoky" Seifert Professor of Germanic Linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His most recent book, "A History of German: What the past reveals about today’s language," was published by Oxford University Press in 2012.