U3A Bury St Edmunds Monthly Talk - Charlie Haylock

Today I joined the audience at The APEX for this month's U3A lecture, given by Charlie Haylock.

This is what was advertised.

It turned out this would be last time he would address us he is retiring at the end of this year and has begun cutting back on his engagements. His talk today was indeed very informative and highly entertaining.

I had a seat on the balcony so had an excellent view. Here are a couple of my photos of Charlie in action.

He got 10% of the audience to stand up to illustrate the proportion of people who spoke English when French was the language of the nobility.

I liked his examples of words who's pronunciation changed over time.

Clerc become clorc which became clerk and then the name changed the e to an A and the poncey ones added an 'e' to become Clarke.... that'll be you and David, Kirsty. Lol.

Charlie also explained that the split between pronouncing the letter 'h' as 'aitch' or 'haitch' began in the time of King James I - aitch was Protestant, haitch was Catholic. In Northern Ireland, he said, the RUC asked people they arrested to spell HAT so they knew whether to put them in prison with other catholics or protestants.

Charlie finished with a great poem based on the meanings of 'up' and phrases that used it. 

Thank-you Charlie and may you have a long and fruitful retirement.