Jonnie Robinson Presidential lecture “A Triumph”

The first lecture to be given by Jonnie Robinson following his appointment as President of the YDS took place at the Bradford Mechanics Institute.  As Lead Curator of Spoken English at the British Library, Jonnie is a man with every dialect at his fingertips – or should it be his ear-hoils, for he is custodian of thousands of recordings of spoken dialect, and a repository for swathes of information regarding the content, both ancient, and contemporary.

Jonnie Robinson lecturing “Mazed as a Sheep”

His talk, intriguingly entitled “Mazed as a Sheep” delved into a tiny part of our universal heritage of speech, leaving his audience debating the geography of whereabouts words are used, and what, exactly, is the difference between a snicket and a ginnel – and the other 73 words in use for these fascinating features of village, town, and city layouts.

The audience were very engaged in the topic, as judged by the volume, and depth, of the questions which followed, and all agreed that the presentation was hugely successful, and we look forward to inviting him back to his home county to hear more of his research findings and discover what happened to t’ sheep.