Friday, August 31, 2007

Frederic Cassidy: Cause for celebration

Yesterday, the CapTimes' Doug Moe (he writes a local-interest column called "The Talk") published this about the UW's "legendary linguist", Frederick Cassidy, and the upcoming celebration of the centennial of his birth, to be held on Oct. 10.

Wisconsin has been home to many legendary linguists (especially structuralists and people of that era, like Bloomfield and Haugen), but Cassidy, founder of the Dictionary of American Regional English, is the one with the greatest impact and visibility today.

Image from PBS (here), with Cassidy on the right, talking to fieldworkers for the Dictionary of American Regional English.

2 comments:

Grant Barrett said...

In June the day was officially proclaimed by the Dictionary Society of North America as "Frederic G. Cassidy Day." The recommended mode of celebration is by drinking Jamaican rum with the toast “On to Z!"

Mr. Verb said...

My calendar is marked! (And an egregious typo has been fixed.) Anybody know what brand of rum he preferred?