At this meeting a new member Allan Wood was welcomed into the club by Andrew Matthew who recalled Allan attending Waid Academy before taking up a career in the Royal Navy.
This was followed by speaker Andrew Lindsay who gave fellow Rotarians a fascinating insight into the development of the English language from the time of Beowulf to Barbados. By linking the early 9th century Anglo Saxon dialect as it developed to what we now know as English and its diversity into other dialects worldwide.
Andrew’s started his talk by reciting pure Anglo Saxon out of the saga of Beowulf, from which you could vaguely pick up some recognisable words and phrases. It was not until the 12th and 13th centuries that English evolved into its recognisable form and expanded its influence over the next 600 years across the world from British Empire and USA. Each nation having complex influences from migrating Africans, Asians and Europeans. In particular he focussed on the English tongue spoken in Guyana where Andrew has spent considerable time working and living within this Caribbean culture - which he pointed out is not only beaches and steel bands!
He referred to the highly influential book 'Caribbean English Usage Dictionary' by Richard Allsopp, which has 20,000 words and phrases from Guyana, Belize, Bahamas and other Carribean countries. Carribean Creole l is based on mostly English words superimposed on West African grammar which make for some very interesting combinations such as Dayclean for dawn, spranksious meaning good looking, do-flicky is a gadget or tool, suck meaning to experience hardship and kill to make ache with laughter - to name but a few. These are very different from official English but are essential components to everyday life and which defy the cultural imperialism which was imposed for centuries on these countries.
It is only recently that the BBC announced it would no longer broadcast its world service to the Carribean nations which Andrew felt will help to discard the straightjacket off these local dialects and allow them to develop and become true languages in their own right.
