The MI Diaries team hosted a special session at MSU's Grandparents University event this year, helping kids and their grandparents get involved with linguistics through the themes "Harry Potter and the Secrets of British English" and "Diary of a Michigan Kid." "Harry Potter and the Secrets of British English" included classes in Potions (ad libbing), Charms (International Phonetic Alphabet), Defense Against the Dark Arts (British accent features), and History of Magic (historical linguistics). Meanwhile, "Diary of a Michigan Kid" got folks to reflect on their experiences and start recording audio diaries, as well as thinking critically about the different types of language they use to express themselves. Kids' dance Grandparents' dance Sam Scroggins explaining dialect regions Betsy Sneller drawing Michigan Harry Kasper and Sam Scroggins in wizard swag Visitor receiving the sorting hat Circle activity Sabrina Ruiz laughing in front of the grandparents

The MI Diaries team set up at the STEAM Expo for MSU's 2024 science festival, spending a day giving Spartans and their loved ones a taste of sociolinguistic research, handing out treats, and recruiting new participants for the MI Diaries project! The team helped visitors run two little sociolinguistic experiments on themselves: 1) Do you call it Pop or Soda? in which visitors used stickers to plot their preferred term for fizzy drinks based on their birth year, allowing us to observe the gradual invasion of "soda" into Michigan; and 2) Do Cot and Caught rhyme for you? where we elicited the CAUGHT and COT vowels from visitors and similarly used stickers to plot by birth year, revealing the development of the CAUGHT/COT merger through apparent time. Lin Cabada helping visitors add their data to the Pop/Soda chart Betsy Sneller laughing with visitors Emily Duggan walking visitors through the COT/CAUGHT merger chart Betsy Sneller showing children how to record their stories on the MI Diaries app Caroline Zackerman showing a family some MI Diaries themed gifts they can take home Drake Howard talking to a visitor about the project Annan Kirk talking to visitors about the project Partial team photo: (from left to right) Jess Shepherd, Suzanne Wagner, Betsy Sneller, Lin Cabada, and Caroline Zackerman

Project lead Dr. Sneller sat down with Michigan State University's Alumni Office to talk about MI Diaries and how we are tracking real-time language change with our data. The event was live-streamed and included some really excellent questions from the audience. Click here to watch on Vimeo, or watch the video below to hear about the especially exciting findings from our Baby Boomer participants! https://vimeo.com/930699489