Welcome to the new Wisconsin Languages website!
This project was originally started in 2006 as the Wisconsin Englishes Project, with a focus on the varieties of English spoken in Wisconsin. As time went on, our scope widened to include Indigenous, immigrant, and refugee languages spoken in Wisconsin. Our new name, Wisconsin Languages, reflects this broader focus.
We’re now doing monthly featured articles — you can see the current one just to the right here and there’s a link to other featured articles in the top menu. If you have a question about language and dialect in Wisconsin, ask away … it could become a featured article and we’ll do our best to answer it, either way.
We’re on Twitter and FB, and are announcing updates and giving a little other relevant news.
The heavy lifting on our redesign was done by Cris Font-Santiago and Sarah Holmstrom, both doctoral students here at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Thanks, Cris and Sarah. We owe you!
Disparities in Access to Bilingual Education in Milwaukee
by Alyssa DeZeeuw
Wisconsin’s largest city is ranked as the most racially segregated city in the entire United States according to the Brookings Institution (2018). The causes and patterns of segregation in Milwaukee have been widely researched and generally accepted as a product of years of redlining…
Upcoming Articles
- Sound Change under the Radar in Wisconsin
by Sarah Holmstrom - Mapping Wisconsin English
by Lauren R. Kelly
Wisconsin Languages (WL) is a project of the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures (CSUMC).
WL began in 2006, exploring various aspects of English dialects spoken in Wisconsin, and our work has grown to include other languages spoken in Wisconsin, past and present, including the following issues:
Regional Variation
Regional differences in English across the state and the Upper Midwest—its distinct vocabulary, pronunciations, and influences, and how they change over time.
Our work has been supported by the Wisconsin Humanities Council, the Ira and Ineva Reilly Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment, the University of Wisconsin – Madison Graduate School, the Kemper Knapp Bequest and others.
