Charlie Haylock – The History of Spoken English

This is not a talk on split infinitives, and what the differences are between the past participle and the past tense. Definitely not!

Charlie will show us how the seeds of spoken English were first set.

He will also show us how each invading force affected the English language, and the different sounds they brought; from the Angles and Saxons to the Vikings and Normans.

How Shakespeare was really spoken . . . the effect of the Italian Renaissance on the English language . . . how England, by being an international trading nation, adopted words from across the globe.

Charlie will include a dialect tour of the British Isles and further afield, and demonstrate the different facial expressions of each dialect . . . and how a deaf person he knows can tell what dialect a person has . . . just by lip reading.

Recent review

” If a history of our spoken language doesn’t sound like your idea of a fun night out, then I have to assume you’ve never spent time in the company of Charlie Haylock. Combining an encyclopaedic knowledge of the roots and development of our native tongue with a rakish wit, Haylock had the audience captivated with his explanation of how the English language was first established and why it’s become the dominant linguist force in the world.
. . . . . Using nothing more than a lo-fi flip chart, Haylock demonstrated how language is inexorably entwined with history and the movement of people. Far from being set in stone, the English language owes much of its ubiquity to its fluidity. Using the building blocks of Old English, it voraciously gobbled up words from all over the world, building a vocabulary twice the size of French, the next in line when it comes to world count.”

Doors Open 6.45pm for 7.30pm start

This is a fundraising event to support The Pennoyer Centre Charity Registered Charity No. 1135788