How to Talk Posh

When mingling with the crowd at Ascot or Henley, do you want people to think you are an aristocrat? Why not talk like posh people:

Crikey, righty-ho, tiffin, yah, rah. Good show, old chep! How absolutely ghastly for you, old bean! You, sir, are a cad and a bounder! Rather, old thing, by George!

Do posh people talk like this?

No! No one has talked like this since the days of P.G. Wodehouse (circa 1920).

The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 1: No.1

Posh people talk like this…

People like the Stow Crats use overstatement and understatement. When talking about trivia, they exaggerate, using their well-known drawl. “We live in the wiiiiiilds of Sussex” or “daaaaaarkest Lincolnshire”. Oh no and exactly come out as “Eeeow neeeow!” and “Egzeakly!”

But when it really matters they understate. If they don’t like something they say “I’m not terribly keen on it ”. And if your mother was appalled: “Mummy wasn’t exactly thrilled.”

Everything is terribly, awfully frightful or ghastly. But if someone’s severely ill he’s “feeling a little sorry for himself”.

Some letters by the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire (the last of the Mitford girls) were published recently. A reviewer noted: “Their language - beastly, umpteenth, bags I, maddening, tiresome, conked out, 'killing' to mean 'funny', 'frightfully' to mean 'very' and so on - has a charm all of its own, but will soon seem as outmoded as 'gadzooks' or 'pshaw'.”

Brian Sewell, the art critic, gets his video retuned (and shows his aristocratic disdain for technology):
“A man came into my house the other day in order to fiddle about for an hour and a half. He utterly failed to understand either my standard video recorder or television. I finally produced the instructions and he still couldn’t make any sense of them. He kept getting on the phone to C5 and describing my machinery. Eventually, he felt compelled to put some little black box on the back of the video and told me that he’d done this in order to protect my present reception, but that under no circumstances would I be ever able to receive their undiluted crap. So I heaved a great sigh of relief and said “There you are, then. Off you go!”

Posh people don’t use modern slang. They don’t really notice fashion, and ignore popular culture. And they’re very (surprise, surprise) conservative, so their language doesn’t change very much. They’re fond of archaisms like whereby, thus, therefore and hence. But they also go in for baby talk: It was awfully expenny, I'll do a recce, have a dekko, a bit iffy, Seen my piccies? Was it a Chrissy pressy? Mind you don’t get wetty! See you soonsies!

More later...

How to Talk Posh I
How to Talk Posh II
How to Talk Posh III
How to Talk Posh IV

How to Talk Posh is now an ebook available here. 

The Stow-Crats

“A few rich people, many of them aristocrats, own 69% of the land in Britain” says the New Statesman (20 Sept 2004). Americans call anyone who’s got a lot of money and a big house an “aristocrat”, but in Britain they have titles given to them by royalty way back in the mists of – about 500 years ago. A lot of British “heritage” only goes back to the Tudors.

Stow-Crats are more likely to condemn people and things as “vulgar” than denigrate them as “common”. They have their do’s and don’ts, but they codify them and talk about them, unlike the upper middles, who have to follow an Unwritten Law. Stow-Crats turn out to support Covent Garden and Glyndebourne, but the oddest people are going there nowadays. They prefer Grange Park, where you can hire an Indian pavilion, and a separate one for your servants, and everyone wears black tie (men) or floorlength midnight blue or oxblood taffeta with a pale pashmina.

They have their own chapel on their estate. This is nearly always Church of England, but it’s really, really grand to have been Catholic since before the Reformation.