Choose Your Words Carefully: 9 (in Quotes)

People like to say that class is no more, and regional dialects have disappeared.

My husband and I have raised our kids to be pretty precise about grammar, because both of us grew up in poverty, and our studies helped us become much more financially stable as adults than we ever were as children. We especially stress the difference between good and well, number and amount, I and me, etc. (slate.com. Presumably they don’t like: “How’s X?” “Oh, he’s doing good.” These are clearly class markers.)

We weren’t allowed to say “shut up”, “what?” or “yeah” (always “pardon” and “yes”), or to shout to each other from another room. (Via Twitter)

We used to house-sit in the 70s for a classical pianist, and my mother’s voice went up several levels of gentility whenever she answered their phone. (Via Twitter)

My mum and grandma used to put on a sort of Hyacinth Bucket telephone voice. (@BardneyBoy)

My first wife's mother – at home, Looe variety Cornish accepted. Speaking to anyone she considered 'posh', she tried to speak posh herself – still Cornish but a bit higher pitch. (KD)

My wife speaks with great circumspection—'proper pride,' she calls it—to our neighbour the tradesman's lady. (WM Thackeray, The Book of Snobs)

I watched and listened to Jacob Rees-Mogg yesterday. He may be an arrogant anachronism, but you have to admire his eloquence and command of the English language. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to him. It is a pity that more do not talk like him. (Via Facebook)

The expression 'y'all' is among the most revolting, cursed things I've ever heard. Why are Americans so relentlessly, unwaveringly vulgar? (@CapelLofft)

'Y'all' is horrible, but I feel just as irritated when British people say "We were sat..." instead of "We were sitting." (@Lord_Steerforth)

When I lived in England, my mother used to tell me that I needed to put my Tennessee accent back on when I was coming home for a visit... When I left Oak Ridge, I started developing a distinctly Southern accent. My dear mother equated Southern regional accents with lack of class and education. She really was quite the social climber. She was raised in poverty, in rural Texas, and wanted better for her children. (MKI)

I was hoping changing your accent had been dumped. When I was a very young woman I was turned down for a job because I 'didn't speak well enough'. I think it was one of the first times I'd encountered snobbery. Never forgotten it – never lost my accent! (@Kibalchich1)

The requirement for ‘a pleasant speaking voice’ ensured that only higher-class girls with flawless Received Pronunciation would apply. (Sarah Shaw, Short Skirts and Shorthand. It was sometimes called “a good telephone manner”. She also points out that the girls who became Personal Assistants were slim and pretty, with straight blonde hair, blue eyes and button noses.)

Dear Dr Katie Edwards
Subject: Yorkshire dialect
I’ve just listened to your programme on Radio 4. My feedback is that I was sure the BBC wouldn’t impose their diversity agenda on the listener. You’ve been chosen because of the way you speak and you’ve obviously done well for yourself despite your evidently difficult background. Good for you! While you have my admiration for making something of yourself, I want to hear a presenter who speaks correctly. From time to time we are treated to a broadcaster with a ridiculous sounding regional accent and if the rest of the listeners are anything like me, then it’s an unwelcome addition to the programming. I’m astonished that you continue to speak with such a strong accent and use dialect, after Genesis 11, 1-9. Congratulations on your (I’m sure very many) achievements but you do not belong on Radio 4. (The Biblical reference is to the Tower of Babel.)


Kimberley Chambers appeared on BBC Breakfast in 2019 to plug her new thriller, The Sting. Twitter responded: Who on earth was that Cockney women on BBC Breakfast this morning. Couldn't bear to listen to her, had to turn the TV off! Poor Charlie and Naga. (@darryljb75) This book will be interesting reading if written the same as she speaks. (@mazarati33) Oh look, a plastic Cockney. (@marti6118) Can we please have subtitles from the BBC with regard to this Cockney? It’s like hearing the entire cast of Eastenders on steroids! (@IanBrownuk)

(And then the BBC broadcasts a radio programme claiming that the Cockney accent has disappeared. I'm sure the two incidents are not related.)

More recently, some have complained about people who say "communi'y". Is the northern "commewniteh" any better - or worse?

I really like Jess Phillips but I genuinely think (and I say this as a proud West Midlander) that her Brummie accent will put people off. The prejudice against certain accents is horrendous. (Via FB.)


In 2020, The Guardian ran a piece on students having their accents mocked at university:

It sounds ridiculous, but I only realised I had what people regarded as a strong regional accent when I began my undergraduate studies. Mocking of my accent was immediate.

A constant barrage of abuse from students and staff who were verbally disapproving of my mild but noticeable Black Country accent... Staff on more than one occasion said ‘we don’t normally get your type here’ or ‘perhaps you could try and fit in’... “I am gay and if anyone makes homophobic remarks towards me it is considered illegal, but if someone is classist I can’t say anything because it is not a protected characteristic – yet it is still abuse.”

“‘You’ll never get anywhere talking like that, it makes you sound stupid. You need to try and flatten your Yorkshire accent.’ That was a member of staff in my third year of university. [She was told:] When you use “like” in sentences, you sound like a teenager. My accent completely changed during my four years at university, flattening back immediately when I was welcomed home.

One girl from Tyneside went to Durham – but was the only student there with a northern accent.

Since moving down south a month ago I can think of at least 10 occasions when my accent, being a relatively strong one from Birmingham, has been brought up and mocked in conversation.” (She was told she ought speak more “eloquently”.)

I’ve had people make assumptions about my intelligence, family background and financial situation based on nothing but the way I speak.

Horticultural snobs frequently correct other people’s Latin pronunciation as a weird power move. (James Wong) He says he was turned down by a newspaper for not being “British” enough. They wanted someone “less international”. Someone responded: You have THE most British of accents and talk more posh (sorry that sounds snobby) than most people I know.

I don’t sound the same as the rest of my family and it often makes me feel sad. But also makes me feel like a bit of a fraud. Like, over time I’ve subconsciously lost the ‘heavy’ parts of my Chester accent. (@RebeccaRideal)

I'm Scouse. How do you think I'm treated? 1. We are only 'acceptable' if we are famous. Otherwise, the only way I'm welcome at a table is if I'm holding a tray. 2. People think its OK to do our accent back to us, repeating what we have just said. 3. People think it's OK to do stereotypical jokes. 4. The look of surprise when someone with a Liverpudlian accent and a boxer's nose can talk about Byzantine icons and Constructivism. (@ChrisFarrelly)

My mum was always telling me off for sounding ‘Too Cardiff’. She was Cardiff born and bred. (@villi63)

I had a fairly standard Cheshire accent when I started uni darn sarf, and somehow managed to collect an entire circle of friends who were from the Midlands or North. And we did get mocked for our accents by the posh southerners! (@ThorhallaBjorg)

Several people from Dublin have pointed out that Moriarty does have a Dublin accent but it is an exaggerated middle-class south Dublin accent. It is locally known as the “D4 accent” after a postcode in south Dublin... Where I grew up anyone who didn’t have a regional accent was “posh”. After coming to University in the South, I have realised that BBC pronunciation is not considered “posh” but “standard”. Posh was defined as the rather over-exaggerated accent people often use to pantomime the rich. (Blogger welllingtongoose, wellingtongoose.livejournal.com)

I've taught in Essex, Norfolk, Yorkshire and Cornwall. Children are dead proud of their accents and their dialect words. But they also know they have to "posh" themselves up if they want to get on. So sad. (@owen_jermy)

My family always said I spoke posher than them but going to university I realised I really didn’t speak posh. (Via Twitter)

I thought I’d poshed up my accent when I went to Cambridge. But then I joined the FT, and I realised that I really hadn’t. (Beth Rigby, political editor at Sky News)

I grew up poor with a very distinctive working-class accent. In England in the 1980s and 1990s, this would have impeded my professional advancement. (Former National Security Council official Fiona Hill)

I'm lucky enough to have a pretty soft Yorkshire accent and still get some judgement. My wife, whose accent is much stronger, is more readily written off at times and it's annoying. (@DrRichFG)

I was born and raised on benefits and from a housing estate. I was told by my PhD supervisor to "speak properly" just before presenting at my first international conference. Years later I'm so glad I've never lost my thick Derry accent! (@KitanaValentine)

One of those strange 1960s pop English voices that you don’t hear any more, like the guy out of the Monkees, or Cliff Richard in Summer Holiday. (Hugo Rifkind, Times 2020. Davy Jones of the Monkees came from Manchester, but when he moved to the States he was given an American’s idea of Cockney. Judy Carne from Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, and Geraldine Chaplin in Nashville also adopted the accent.)

“The industry is still hugely dominated by class,” says actor James McArdle. He said he heard complaints in the industry about difficulty in understanding Scottish accents “all the time”. (Scotsman.com. A reviewer recently talked about “whining Scottish accents”.)

Scots face insidious racism in the West End. (Alan Cumming)

Class is profitably marketed online by creepy coaching companies offering “diction, charm and social grace”. (Libby Purves in the Times)


But is it really such an advantage to talk like Jacob Rees-Mogg?

Radio 4 – I hate that poetry-reading middle-class voice they put on. (@sufiboy)

People assuming I grew up rich with upper-class parents because I know some long words and occasionally sound close to articulate in videos is a form of classism. That’s my TED talk. (@shaun_vids)

I feel for you, Shaun. And someone else adds that RP "just simpers".

More here, and links to the rest.

Choose Your Words Carefully 7

Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, was interviewed on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show this week. She said afterwards that online trolls watching the programme had been “attacking my accent again saying I am thick etc. I will reiterate I am proud of my accent and will not change!” Ms Rayner comes from Stockport in Greater Manchester. (Oliver Kamm Times July 2017)

I've had that sort of nonsense all my life. Regional = thick. Try dialect on top of accent & watch them do the Python Northerners sketch. (Maggie Atkinson‏ @matkinson956)


I was ushered over to some lecturers with the handful of fellow scholarship kids to meet some senior members of faculty. One asked me a few questions about my background, then said “A word of advice – lose the accent, it’ll only hold you back.” (huckmagazine.com)

Binky Felstead is too posh to be able to say words like “most” and “going” (“meeohst”, “gaying”). Her husband answers the phone with “Bon soir!” because he doesn’t know what it means. Posh voices are amazing, aren’t they? I mean the proper ones, where every noise sounds a bit like “waah” or “falafel”. (Hugo Rifkind on the TV programme Binky and JP’s Baby, Times July 2017)

Caroline Stow-Crat is donating to the relief effort, but she can't help flinching slightly when newscasters talk about "hurry-canes": "It's like calling porcelain 'porcellayne'. 'Hurricane' rhymes with 'Milligan'. Almost."

Samantha Upward has been trying for years to shorten the A in Glastonbury. Should she apply this theory to plasticene as well? And Elastoplast? And does sloth rhyme with cloth or growth? But she can’t bring herself to call a biro a “ball-point”, or simply a “pen”. Pens are fountain pens.

Whichever way you pronounce "scone", the other way sounds posh. (GH)

She had the slightly common vowel sounds of the truly upper class. (Falling, Elizabeth Jane Howard)

More here, and links to the rest.

Classy Quotes 19

Stockbroker belt

Everything in the environment I grew up in seemed to suggest that making a fuss would be a bad idea. (Washington Post on reporting rape)

That's what you get from middle-class conformity. That crime victims are told "not to make a fuss". (M. v. Aufschnaiter ‏@mva_1000)


It's a shame but most ppl in the UK are snobs would hate to be thought of as working class. (Kevin Ryan ‏@RyanLinandkevin in a discussion of "hardworking families")

I love being told people can't be working class as soon as they have a decent job. Not patronising at all. (@salihughes)


Notions of class/posh/status are all relative and often unknown beyond your own. (Mr The Boy ‏@knitboy Someone told him “You’re better than me – you’re posh”.)

Folk have an odd concept around "poshness" don't they. Often preconceived and wide of the mark in reality. (Ed Chadwick ‏@photo_ed)

The whining, hypocritical, know-nothing wing of the middle class who can never admit that they are fortunate and must always pretend to be put upon. (Guardian on Nigel Farage March 29, 2015)

That strange class that straddles the awkward divide between the English petite and haute bourgeoisie... in-betweeners. (Will Self on Nigel Farage)


bougie: Aspiring to be a higher class than one is. Derived from bourgeois - meaning middle/upper class, traditionally despised by communists.  (Urban Dictionary – not for those of a nervous disposition. Nothing to do with the French for “candle”.)

Domestic servants who know their place and are not foolishly "above it" are respected and not "looked down on". (Girl’s Own, late 19th century)

I’m in practice at Churchford. You know, stockbrokers pretending to be farmers and expense-account executives pretending to be gentlemen. (Richard Gordon, Dr Gordon’s Casebook)

The only reason anyone listens to opera is because it's bad form to wear a hat saying "I went to private school". (Comment is Free commenter)

My problem with Mother’s Day is I just don’t know the form. It is essentially, an alien ritual, one I struggle to take seriously. We never kept Mother’s Day in my family. We dismissed is as a capitalist plot, a scheme imported from America to encourage the downtrodden proletariat (as well as the undowntrodden middle class to which we belonged) to part with their hard-earned money. (Robert Crampton, Times March 28, 2015 He grew up in the 80s, when practically everything was a capitalist plot.)

To counter being too 'middle class', the @nationaltrust will take art out of its stately homes. Really. (Bendor Grosvenor ‏@arthistorynews)

Simultaneously most bourgeois AND most bookselly thing I will say today "Oh no I dropped labneh on the book-token printer". (@lucyfishwife)

"I think the broadcasters are getting above their station." (Tory MP Philip Davies tells Radio 4, March 2015, not 1915 Or was it a joke? Radio? Station? You kill me!)

I was asked how old I was, what school I’d gone to and - when the recruiter hadn’t heard of it - whether it was fee paying. She enquired what my boyfriend and my parents did, and then finally told me that I’d be easy to place because I had a “nice accent” and a “nice face.” She “popped” me on to a job working for De Beers because “they can’t have someone with an accent answering the phone.” (Daily Telegraph on temping, March 2015 (not 1975)

The pedants’ complaints are not about real rules of grammar: they are a means of keeping divisions sharp. Their cause is not about culture but about class. (Times language expert Oliver Kamm)

Place settings are measured to perfection with a ruler, the footmen’s buttons absolutely correct, yet everything important is absolutely wrong... Modern capitalism promotes the myth that we are all masters of our fate. (Polly Toynbee in the Guardian on Downton Abbey, and the way it leaves out the gruelling toil of servants’ lives, their job insecurity, and the rudeness and inhumanity of their employers.)

I’d like to be very British about it but I can’t. It’s been horrendous. (Woman flooded out last year in Somerset apologises for being upset about it.)

She was terribly middle-class and ordinary and respected the establishment enormously. She virtually curtsied when the Queen came on television. She used to curtsey before the royal children, for goodness sake. (Margaret Thatcher's adviser Tim Bell, Times Dec 14, sticks a stiletto into his old boss)

Under the levelling process of college, it had been possible to ignore the differences in their upbringing. (Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot)

The posh, quite swiftly, have become a hell of a lot more like everybody else. As in, when they aren’t riding side-saddle to hounds, they’re watching Doctor Who and going to Topshop. (Hugo Rifkind Nov 2014)

"Talking about class has become a proxy for doing anything about it" Guardian editorial in the week of the "plebgate" verdict (AdamNathanielFurman ‏@Furmadamadam)

He even made a suggestion for a feature about how the middle class becoming rich “had ruined everything”. “They have ruined taste in Britain,” he moaned. (Tatler editor Matthew Bell in Posh People: Inside Tatler. He himself is middle class, the article pointed out.)

This is a splendid satire of what happened when the counter culture began to trickle down the affluent middle classes in the 1970s. Kate and Harvey are a typical Marin County couple. They've dropped their previous square lifestyle (where Kate got off on baking cookies and starching the kitchen curtains) to get in touch with their real selves. This involves scream therapy, encounter groups, consciousness raising sessions, dope and granola. The book follows an uneventful year in their lives when they experiment with an open marriage, life on a commune, and a series of new and ultimately disastrous partners. It's pretty tough on their daughter Joan (who joins the Moonies) and their pets, Donald Barthelme (an Afghan, who doesn't survive his mistress' affair with a poodle-groomer) and Kat Vonnegut Jr (a cat). The book was originally written in short weekly episodes, like Bridget Jones’s Diary, and the style of humour is very like The Diary of a Nobody or the Mapp and Lucia books: lots of bathos and a series of mini-sagas that overlap. Despite everything Kate and Harvey are quite sympathetic (they both secretly hanker after their old lifestyle). I thought it was very funny and prescient. The truth is that nowadays we ALL live in Marin County! (Amazon review of Cyra McFadyen’s The Serial, written in the 70s)

"An honest John Bull would only laugh at the knavish fool whom he saw blubbering and groaning over a grave stuck with daffadowndillies." (Victorian quoted in Dirty Old London, Lee Jackson. And you thought "the Dianafication of society" was a new thing?)

[Edwin Chadwick, architect of the infamous 1834 Poor Law] would not be considered for a post as one of the three Poor Law Commissioners, due to his ‘station in society’ – such berths were reserved for the well-connected elite. (Dirty Old London, Lee Jackson)

A classic Telegraph obit: "Trendell, known to his friends as Trixie, enjoyed entertaining at the Athenaeum."  (Andrew Brown ‏@seatrout. The Athenaeum is an expensive London gentleman's club.) 

Anthropologist Kate Fox writes in the New Statesman about the perils of meeting your grand friends for lunch at the weekend: your belt and shoes look too new and shiny; your wristwatch is too big and flashy; black labrador Monty’s collar has his name on it in inverted commas; you are sitting with your legs too far apart... (Oct 2014-10-15)

It's not the quality of the photo but the signifiers it includes - messages about race, class and educational background - that is most likely to influence [success on Tinder]. (BBC News)


According to Nicky Haslam in the Daily Mail, the following are common in 2014. (He says “It’s nothing to do with snobbery.” He also damns "relaxing" and "talking about kitchens".)

Talking about being ill – “just ghastly”.
Organic food.
Calling yourself an “intensely private person”.
Not owning up to having had “work” done – “everyone can tell at a glance”.
Wearing shirts with your initials on the cuff.
Wearing a bikini top with a skirt.
Saying “gardern” and “portrayte” instead of gard’n and portritt.
Flying somewhere hot for Christmas.
Saying “Louis Vuitton” (it’s just “Vuitton”).
Being a DJ at a party.
Mouthing the words to a song when dancing.
Living statues.
Drinking vodka and tonic (instead of gin).
Oxfordshire.
Harvey Nichols.
New Mini Coopers (they ruined the design, apparently).
Young royals – dull, apart from Harry.
Polo.
Avoiding carbs.
Foodie restaurants like Noma.
Personal trainers.
Going to the gym.
Ibiza.
Bellinis (the cocktails, not the paintings).
Claiming that where you live “has its own micro-climate”.
Glass or polished wood fruit in a bowl.
Dress codes on party invitations (apart from “black tie”).
Putting “carriages at....” on party invitations.
Gourmet canapes.
Saying that something is “a nonsense”.
Serving both sparkling and still water in a private house – it should be a jug of tap water.
“Cuff links and shirt studs. The Queen’s dressmaker Hardy Amies told me that they should only ever be worn with a starched evening shirt with cuffs too stiff to be buttoned.”
Richard Branson.
Elaborate coffee, milk in coffee.
Conservatories (become a children’s playroom).
Wearing airline pyjamas.
Dog walking.
Garrick club ties.
Collapsible umbrellas.
Ultra-expensive bikes.
Skiing in France (apparently Courchevel is full of Russians!).
Speeches at weddings and office leaving dos.
Minding about smoking.
Farm shops, and especially meeting for coffee at one.
Enormous bath towels.
Saying “uz” for us.
Knocking easyJet.
Telling everyone that your blood sugar is low, or that you’re wheat intolerant. Or “I can’t eat dairy.”
Art and design – too ubiquitous.
Miniature trees in window boxes (too tasteful).
The hymn “Lord of the Dance” – so happy-clappy. (It’s a 17th century Shaker hymn.)
Cheese boards with too many cheeses – means the host is insecure.
Long-running TV shows and plays (Downton, Phantom, The Woman in Black).
Box sets.
Talking back to the Satnav.
Saying “bye-bye” instead of goodbye.
Scottish accents.
Saying “All the vegetables came from our garden.”
Tiramisu. James Bond. My Way. Jazz.
And “It’s terribly common to be confident.”
More here, and links to the rest.

Choose Your Words Carefully 4

Steph McGovern

It turns out that what's fine for Alan Titchmarsh, just doesn't go for women in academia. We can't be taken seriously and have working class regional accents at the same time... It turns out that very few people like to think they have a discernible accent and instead believe they speak in a neutral voice, one that doesn't betray the region in which they grew up, or, more to point, the socio-economic status of the region in which they grew up. Because that's what it's really all about, isn't it? I frequently hear friends, students, colleagues, teachers and parents talk about 'rough' or 'common' accents. Or correcting school kids out of their accents because it sounds 'ignorant' and it's not 'proper' English. (A university lecturer in the Daily Telegraph explains how her regional accent draws ridicule in academia, Jan 2015 )

Most users of English habitually distinguish between two types of people whose linguistic habits they deplore... Berks are careless, crass, gross and [in] what anybody would agree is a lower class than one’s own. They speak in a slipshod way with dropped Hs, intruded glottal stops and many mistakes of grammar. Left to them the English language would die of impurity, like late Latin. W*nkers are prissy, fussy, priggish, prim and of what they would probably misrepresent as a higher social class than one’s own. They speak in an over-precise way with much pedantic insistence on letters not generally sounded, especially Hs. Left to them the language would die of purity, like medieval Latin. (Kingsley Amis, The King’s English)

Mum says I sound a bit too common. (F Stavrakopoulou ‏@ProfFrancesca of her appearance on The Infinite Monkey Cage.)

Georgette Heyer, writing in the 30s, mentions a character whose voice “cast into shocking relief the light, metallic tones of her contemporaries, with their clipped vowels, and the oddly common inflections they so carefully cultivated”.

French was for the academic kids, Spanish for those who were seen as fodder for the vocational training stream. Probably a reflection of the rather fixed views as to where each set would holiday, when older. (GC I had some posh friends who wanted their kids taught French at two "for skiing". They learned to ski at two, too. Somehow we lost touch.)

Hearing me speak, someone once asked me why I wasn't living in Fulham with a barrister. (What could I have said? “Why aren’t you living in Stepney with a woman you call ‘me old Dutch’?”)

Singer Davey Jones (from Manchester) adopted a weird kind of Mockney when he became an “English” star in the States. Judy Carne had the same voice, and Geraldine Chaplin adopted it for Nashville. Nobody ever talked like that.

In the 50s, 60s and 70s, across most of the class spectrum, people communicated in a kind of knee-jerk sarcasm. Which made being a naïve 16-year-old really difficult. I think it's gone out – people are much politer and friendlier now, despite Weybridges complaining that nobody says “Please” or “Thankyou” any more and that manners are a thing of the past. Perhaps they miss “inferiors” kowtowing and calling them “sir” and “madam”.

Upwards and Weybridges have conniption fits over “can I get”. “It’s ‘may I have’,” they rave. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody say “may I have”. It’s just something middle-class people invented to annoy their children. If you hover at a coffee-shop counter you’ll hear most people saying “could I have”.

Eileen pronounces Protestant as “Prodestant”, and says “within” for “in”. Upwards insist that antiques have PAT-ina not pa-TEE-na, but pa-TEE-na is winning. Upwards and Stow-Crats used to insist on saying patent with a short A. Everybody says “paytent” now, as in “patently obvious”, which is a favourite phrase of theirs. But it is fearfully infra dig to say “lather” to rhyme with father rather than gather.

Stow Crats have their own pronunciations, not just of stately homes (Althrop for Althorp, Annick for Alnwick), but of names like Walter Raleigh (Rawley not Rahly), Halley’s comet (Hawley or Haley). Are they the ones who insist on Katherine Hebburn and Barbara Stannick? And watch out for Cholmondeley and Marjoribanks and Featherstonehaugh (Chumley, Marchbanks and Fawston).

Samantha Upward is trying very hard to cure herself of calling the living room or sitting room the “drawing room”, as her parents did. It was the “withdrawing room”, whither the ladies withdrew after dinner.

More here, and links to the rest.

With an English Accent

The English always used to be obsessed with accents. They still are – they just pretend not to be.

“It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman… despise him.” George Bernard Shaw

People who aspire to speak well are, insofar as there any still left, the targets of satire. Andrew Martin, Guardian July 29, 2008

In the same week, poll results published by mobile technology company SpinVox showed that 73% of respondents didn’t like their accent and aspired to speak like the Queen. Meanwhile, those who have been to public school are desperately trying to dumb down their accents. They were raised on “Received Pronunciation”, RP – the traditional language of the boss class. It’s supposed to open doors, but it can also make people bully you, because they think you live a life of pampered privilege and have somehow strayed into the wrong dimension.

Caroline Stow Crat and Samantha Upward speak RP, though Sam is trying to rub the sharp edges off her accent because she's afraid of people laughing at her. She struggles to say "old" with a short O. Eileen Weybridge speaks RP too, but if she’s from the north she rhymes one with on and worry with sorry. She rhymes the u in cushion and butcher with the southern u in fuss, unless she comes from Solihell and calls it a keshion. She says “eether” and “onvelope” and “room” with a long vowel, though oddly she says “toothpaste” and “broom” with a short one (the way the Stow Crats say groom).

Eileen rhymes the first syllable of the noun “project” with “throw”. She says “cannot” for can’t (I simply cannot understand...). She doesn’t voice the th in with, pronounces the h in white and which, and says pezzimistic and crezzent. She calls midweek Weddensday.

Howard and Bryan call it “Shropsheer”, Harry and Gideon say “Shropshah”. Bryan says “Edinburra”, Harry and Gideon “Edimbra”.

Howard says “commentairy”, Harry says “comment’ry”. Bryan says “inDUStrial estate”, Harry says “industrial esTATE”. Howard calls people styuppid with a short vowel, Mr DD says stoopid, Sharon says shchewpid.

Jen says per-fect with equal stresses, Sam and Caro stress the first syllable.

Jen says goose berry (like the bird), Sam calls it a guzberry and Caro a guzbri.

Sam eats a samwidge, Jen a sand-witch, Sharon a sarney.

The nuts Sam calls armonds, Jen calls all-monds.

Gideon says litch-en, Howard calls it lyeken.

Sam puts a statchoo in a nitch, Bryan markets neesh producks, Jen admires a statyoo and blows her nose on a tissyou.

Howard rhymes Quark with walk and aquatic with exotic, and says athalete and parlyament.

How do you conjugate the place you keep your car? GARahzh, GARardzh, garAHZH, garridge.

The girl in the picture above is trying too hard. She's got a bottle of ready-made Buck's Fizz (orange juice and champagne), instead of making her own. And you don't drink it with dinner. She's also drinking tea with dinner, which is beans on toast. There's a lit candle, even though it's still daylight. The candle should be in the middle of the table. She's holding her knife and fork in her fists, pointing straight up. And she's wearing way too much clanking jewellery. (Of course, there's nothing really wrong with any of this, except perhaps for pointing your knife and fork at people and letting your jewellery fall in the soup.)