Roger Walshe, the library’s head of learning, said yesterday the result will be “a snapshot of English in the early 21st century.’’
Visitors to the Evolving English exhibition, which opens Nov.12, will be able to record themselves in sound booths, and others may submit audio clips on the library’s website, www.bl.uk. The results will be preserved for future researchers in the library’s sound archive.
The exhibition traces the development of English over more than 1,000 years, through displays that range from an original manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon epic “Beowulf’’ to the King James Bible and Victorian pamphlets on how to speak properly.
Just what constitutes “proper’’ pronunciation remains a thorny issue, especially in Britain, whose many accents can often pinpoint the speaker’s regional origin and class background. George Bernard Shaw’s observation in “Pygmalion’’ that “it is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him’’ still holds a large measure of truth.
Yet linguists say pronunciation is constantly evolving.
