***image4*** Evolving English at the British Library

A man’s home is his castle, pad, dig, shack, roost, gaff, sock, crib, hame, place…

Can you think of any other words in the English language that mean home? With over 900,000 different words in the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary I am sure you could!

Just before half term Years 7 & 8 spent the day exploring the hugely exciting and diverse exhibition Evolving English at the British Library. This exhibition is a first and unlikely to be mounted again in our lifetime so all Dolphin parents should go. 

The British Library holds approximately 12 million books below ground, on display and in vast store houses up in Yorkshire.  The question is how on earth do you decide which manuscripts, books, artifacts should be on display for this exhibition?  Not easy.  David Crystal, a highly respected writer, lecturer and broadcaster on language and linguistics was faced with this challenge.  It is impossible to present the vast history of the English language without representing the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Beowulf, the King James Bible, Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary, the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Dickens, Caxton’s achievements in printing, and so on.  At the same time, Crystal points out, it is important to recognise that literature is but the tip of a linguistic iceberg whose bulk is made up of the books, journals, newspapers, letters, advertisements and other ephemera, both spoken and written, that give the language a daily presence in our lives.  They needed to be and were represented in the story of English too.

On arrival all the students took part in a workshop led by British Library education staff exploring the building itself and subsequently specific exhibits in the exhibition.  We marvelled at King George lll’s extensive library, permanently displayed in large glass cases as you enter the building.  Many of these books were actually used by Samuel Johnson in compiling his famous dictionary.  We peered through various large rooms housing books on a specific subject and observed individuals studying hard.  Some of us even spotted Jane Austen’s original writing desk with her glasses and pen sat patiently waiting for her return.  The British Library is a treasure trove of not only books but so many other fascinating artifacts.

Perhaps some of the highlights of the exhibition include the following: the only remaining fragment from the Tyndale’s New Testament sitting alongside Wycliffe’s English Bible dating from the late 14^th century, the Book of Common Prayer (1549) and a copy of the very heavy King James Bible (1611) – again this is a first, never before have these important books been displayed together in one place!  It was fascinating to note the fluidity of spelling in these books and realise that if only spelling hadn’t been standardised in the 18^th century we would still be spelling as we speak today.  Many of us liked that idea very much!

There is also an audio dimension to the exhibition – we listened to a variety of poets, the voice of Florence Nightingale, how Beowulf, the longest epic poem in Old English, probably sounded and we had the opportunity to record our own voices reading an extract from Mr Tickle.  Famous speeches can be heard booming through the galleries, such as Martin Luther King’s I have a Dream and Churchill’s We will fight them on the beaches.

Finally, the curators at the British Library have arranged this diverse exhibition in an original and fascinating manner.  To give you one example of how this has been done in the Conversation and Correspondence exhibit, the first recorded message dating from approximately 1000-50 from Aelfric, the Abbot of Eynsham, sits next to one of the last conversations Harold Pinter had with his wife.  Pinter captures the cliches, hesitations and false starts we hear so often in daily conversation.  What is remarkable is that Aelfric’s message from so many years earlier isn’t all that different…

Teacher: What do you want to say?   

Student: What do we care what we say, as long as the speech is correct and useful, not idle and base?

Years 7 & 8 spent just one day exploring the British Library and we realise as we drove away that we only touched the tip of the history of English Language.  It is a special place and the English department will be returning on a regular basis with Dolphin students for many years to come.