Belatedly made it to the excellent Evolving English exhibition at the British Library. When I arrived, I found a curator talking to a large group of inner-city London teenagers who'd come with their school.
"How do you spell Butters?" he was asking them.
The kids volunteered different spellings of the slang term. Museum man then posed another question.
"But you don't actually say it like that, do you?"
He was referring, I think, to the glottal stop that replaces the t in London English, although phonetics isn't my strong point.
The youth were sent off to record slang in a booth for posterity and my attention was drawn to another class. This group was much younger and seemed to attend an exclusive private school.
"Joanna! Come over here and listen to a bit of Romeo and Juliet!"
The precocious little kids ran hither and thither, listening to samples of regional dialects on a superb interactive display or speeches from statesmen such as JFK and Nelson Mandela.
On my way out, I read excerpts from Mr Tickle by Roger Hargreaves into a phone. I was told that my dulcet middle-class London tones would be studied by scholars for generations to come.
All in all, a very well staged exhibition with a great range of relevant books for sale outside. One that caught my eye was Das Krapital - the definitive compendium of Viz magazine's Roger's Profanisaurus. I was like bare impressed.
"How do you spell Butters?" he was asking them.
The kids volunteered different spellings of the slang term. Museum man then posed another question.
"But you don't actually say it like that, do you?"
He was referring, I think, to the glottal stop that replaces the t in London English, although phonetics isn't my strong point.
The youth were sent off to record slang in a booth for posterity and my attention was drawn to another class. This group was much younger and seemed to attend an exclusive private school.
"Joanna! Come over here and listen to a bit of Romeo and Juliet!"
The precocious little kids ran hither and thither, listening to samples of regional dialects on a superb interactive display or speeches from statesmen such as JFK and Nelson Mandela.
On my way out, I read excerpts from Mr Tickle by Roger Hargreaves into a phone. I was told that my dulcet middle-class London tones would be studied by scholars for generations to come.
All in all, a very well staged exhibition with a great range of relevant books for sale outside. One that caught my eye was Das Krapital - the definitive compendium of Viz magazine's Roger's Profanisaurus. I was like bare impressed.
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