The following is a typical conversation that might be heard all over campus:

"Dude, are you gonna chill tonight?"

"Yeah, I'm chillin, then I'm gonna hit up some sick parties."

Penn State is the home to many students from all over the state and country, and with the representation of all these different people, there is bound to be a clash in language and a wide variety of slang words.

"When students go to college, they create their own community," said Paula Golombek, senior lecturer of linguistics and language studies at Penn State. "Language marks that community."

Golombek said there are social reasons why people cling to their language.

"The way people speak is part of their identity and a way of representing someone as inside your group," she said.

Meredith Doran, assistant professor of French, said a group has an identity that is specific to it and its language reinforces the group.

"Every culture has its own terms," Doran said, pointing out that these terms change very quickly.

"There's always something new and using the right word shows that you are keeping up with what's cool," she said.

Penn State is collectively a large group with its own language that also combines ways of speaking from all over the world.

Within this larger group, smaller groups with their own dialogues also form.

"Many groups of friends take normal words and make them specific to their own little world that only they know," Doran added.

Jen Brant (junior-marketing) said her group of friends share many inside phrases to which only they know the meaning.

Brant also said many times they make up words based on certain incidents, like nicknaming someone.

That word then has a new meaning and creates new phrases.

Some words she noticed people using around campus are the words "dude" for either gender and "hook-up" to mean different things for different people.

"Another word we use is 'tool.' We use that one a lot," Brant said.

Brant said when meeting new people, the conversation often reverts back to where you are from and the right way to say things.

"Depending on where people are from, they say things differently, and eventually, they start to combine phrases, but there is always the Pittsburgh/Philly divide," she said.

The issue of slang is so large, not only at Penn State but around the rest of the country, that it has sparked a national survey.

Bert Vaux, professor of linguistics at Harvard, studied dialects across the country with an online survey.

The survey, which consisted of 122 words and sayings, questioned the pronunciation and word choice of different areas. His results are shown with color-coded dots showing which dialects are used in which parts of the country.

Some examples of surveyed words and phrases are "to stand 'on line' or 'in line,' " "soda or pop," "sneakers or tennis shoes," and "water fountain or bubbler."