English as She is Spoke!

Autumn/Winter Session

Our Autumn/Winter session began with the AGM. Listening to our chairperson’s report of last year’s talks and activities one realised what a good job Irene had done in organising the programme.

All the officers were re-elected and the main decision taken was that we would pay our £5.00 membership in September and then pay another £5.00 in January. This was voted through unanimously as it would give the club more income for our charity donations and speakers.

Our first speaker was John Richardson who gave a talk on the annoying use of English. John is a retired special needs teacher who has an interest in the theatre as well as the English language.

Having taught English to adult foreign students he was well aware of the idiosyncrasies of our language giving the word “ought” as an example of something that can be pronounced in six different ways depending on the word.

John spoke to us about the importance of correct grammar and how this is no longer taught in schools. As language is continually evolving new words are being introduced some of which John found particularly meaningless. Listening to Radio 4 was obviously one of John’s passions and he pointed out phrases that are frequently used but have no logical meaning such as “very unique”

Spoken English can vary from region to region and we learnt that this is due to the difference in the pronunciation of vowels. Also people have different ways of speaking depending on the situation.

After giving us examples of frequently used clichés John gave an amusing account of things he had overheard on buses.

This was a very thought provoking talk and I am sure we will all be listening out for examples of bad English when we are listening to the radio/television.