Wisconsin Talk is a wonderful book written by three UW-Madison professors that, as the title suggests, explores the linguistic diversity of the state. It inspired much of the content on the history pages, and is well worth the read.

Check out the book here

Disclaimers

Please understand that the motivation behind creating this section, while not always directly relevant to language education, was to serve as a resource for individuals to learn more about non-English languages and speakers living in our state. While I have cited all my sources and run this information by people who do have a cultural/heritage tie to these languages and groups of people, I do not claim to be an expert on Finnish, for example. In the timeline-based section of each page specifically, I do rely heavily on quoted material to avoid any misrepresentations, but please let me know if there is anything that needs to be changed.

While I have tried to limit my use of America/American as much as possible, there were certain sentence structures where I couldn’t find a way around it. Unlike the convenient Spanish estadounidense, we don’t have the term United Statesian. If you happen to notice any of these and have a better term I could substitute in, please let me know. I know that America refers to land beyond the United States and that it contributes to settler-colonialism and imperialistic attitudes, and my intention is never to offend. Learn more here.

Finally, I know that not every language in the state is represented. While I would love to accomplish this, I am also a full-time student and knew I would have to sacrifice quality if I went in with that aim. In the future, I am happy to create additional pages if there are languages that you think are important to include. Just let me know!