Author: Hean

Our July guest speaker, David Blair, was both interesting and entertaining. He was able
to elicit laughter at regular intervals throughout the talk. David Blair is a specialist researcher and teacher in Australian English. He is a lexicographer who was a founding member of theEditorial Board of the Macquarie Dictionary way back in 1969 at the Macquarie University.

He discussed how to find all the words in the real world and how many words are no longer
used. He reminisced about the days when he and his colleagues began editing the
Macquarie Dictionary.

Our June guest speaker, Susan Ackroyd, was very interesting. Susan spoke about her new second-edition book, “Rhyme and Reason”, which was launched on 1st May this year. It was eye-opening to learn the stories and events that formed the basis of these nursery rhymes, which have been told to generations of children throughout the ages.