Ratching Through Kintle For Bobby-dazzlers

Spoken English curator Jonnie Robinson journeys through the British Library’s Wordbank

'‘Me mam’ – it means ‘your mum’ or summat like that'. These are the words of a 12-year-old girl from Hull recorded at the British Library’s Evolving English exhibition in 2010. Evolving English: One Language, Many Voices explored the evolution of the English Language over 1,500 years through the Library’s extensive collection of manuscripts, printed books, newspapers, sound recordings, digital media and ephemera, and celebrated historic and contemporary diversity by presenting examples of English usage across time and space.

As visitors left the gallery they were invited to contribute a voice recording to create a snapshot of spoken English at the start of the 21st century. They could either submit a word or phrase they felt was somehow ‘special’ in their variety of English (the ‘WordBank’) or recite a reading passage designed to capture their accent (the ‘VoiceBank’).

The public and media response to the exhibition confirmed enormous enthusiasm for debate about many aspects of the English Language, but above all demonstrated our fascination with, and affection for, features of English with which we connect on a personal level – the dialect, slang and nonce-words that express our sense of individual and shared identities.

The exhibition attracted over 147,000 visitors, approximately 15,000 of whom – like the contributor from Hull – submitted recordings that resulted in a substantial audio archive. Jonnie Robinson will explore a selection of contributions and reflect on what the WordBank tells us about the state and status of vernacular English in the UK and worldwide.

Please bring your packed lunch. Tea, coffee and cake is provided.

This event is part of the Feed the Mind series of lunchtime research talks.