'Do You Speak American?'Screenings Celebrate Language

class=""MsoNormal"">SALISBURY, MD---From sea to shining sea? Chances are you’ll hit a new dialect at every corner.

class=""MsoNormal"">Award-winning journalist Robert MacNeill explores those regional dialects in the three-part PBS documentary Do You Speak American?, shown 7 p.m. Mondays from September 26-October 10, in Caruthers Hall Auditorium as part of Salisbury University’s Year of Languages Fall Cultural Events Series. The documentary is screened a second time 7 p.m. Mondays from November 21-December 5.

class=""MsoNormal"">Filmed in 2004, the documentary highlights dialects and colloquialisms from Maine, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Ohio, South Carolina and Detroit, covering everything from the accents of Appalachia to the Spanish influence on language in Texas.

class=""MsoNormal"">MacNeil speaks about his love of American English and the documentary filming 7 p.m. Thursday, September 22, in Holloway Hall Auditorium.

class=""MsoNormal"">With a journalism career spanning more than four decades, MacNeil joined PBS in 1971. A collaboration with fellow reporter Jim Lehrer during gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Watergate hearings led to their partnership for The MacNeil/Lehrer Review, which, in 1983, became the nation’s first hour-long evening news program. His talk and the documentary screenings are free, and the public is invited. For information call 410-543-6271 or visit the SU Web site at www.salisbury.edu. "