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.

Zoom Etiquette

How not to Zoom

Technology enters our lives, and etiquette lags behind. We're all Zooming now, and we need to observe certain conventions.

"I don't want to Zoom – I just can't be bothered." This translates as "I think the technology will be too daunting. In fact I don't even know how to start."

You can download Zoom from the internet – Google "Zoom download" and follow the instructions. It takes a few minutes.

If someone has emailed you a Zoom link, click on it and Zoom will install itself and take you to the meeting (if you don't already have Zoom installed).

You can use Zoom on a computer (PC or Mac), laptop, tablet or phone. You can even join meetings through a landline, though you won't be able to see anybody.

SO, YOU'VE JOINED A ZOOM MEETING

Look at the edges of the screen for controls. Video and audio bottom left, gallery view top right, Leave Meeting bottom right. Chat and Share Screen bottom centre. If you can't see the controls, pass your mouse over the borders. Try top right - you'll find the very useful "Exit full screen".

You can increase or reduce the volume through the controls on the top row of your keyboard. Look for the megaphone symbol.

You can increase your own volume by clicking on audio (bottom left) and following instructions. You'll be asked to test your own microphone – it may be turned down very low. Or too high! (Shouting seems to cause "crackle".)

Look for your own image – is it flattering? Is it showing your best profile? Is it showing only the top of your head? While looking at your image, adjust the angle of your laptop screen accordingly. It helps to rest your laptop on a pile of books or monitor stand so that you are looking directly at the screen. It also helps to prop up your tablet rather than resting it on the table. If you put the tablet on a horizontal surface, you can still see everybody's face, but they can only see your ceiling. And if you're looking down at us, we're looking up at you – or more usually a close-up of your double-chin or earlobe.

If you're holding your phone in your hand, it's hard not to wave it around – which means that your image wobbles around distractingly.

Make sure the light is falling on your face – don't sit with your back to a window.

Remember that you can be seen!

VISION ON, SOUND ON
"I'm tired of Zoom meetings where everybody talks at once and interrupts each other." Translation: "My group hasn't discovered the mute function."

If two people talk at once on Zoom, the technology can't decide which is the "main speaker", so you just get bits of both and can't hear either person.

Once you've all said hi and introduced yourselves, the Admin needs to MUTE YOU ALL. If you want to speak, wave and the admin will unmute you. (You can also mute and unmute yourself. Look at the microphone symbol — does it have a red line through it? You're muted. Click on the three dots on your image and you'll see options to mute or unmute.)

You can always type side-conversations in Chat (see the bottom of the screen).

If you're unmuted, remember that the rest of the group can hear EVERY SOUND YOU MAKE. Sounds near the mike are amplified: it can pick up chewing or even breathing. If you're unmuted, you'll disturb the sound for the main speaker even if you say nothing.

If you decide to adjust the position of your laptop or tablet, please mute yourself. Again, you may not hear much but we can hear loud crashing sounds as you place your device. Position your device before the meeting starts.

If you're wearing headphones and a microphone, please keep still (or mute yourself when not speaking). Your movements can make loud sounds at our end. If you're using phone earbuds with a tiny microphone attached to the wire, make sure the mike isn't muffled against your clothes. Keep the "live" side facing outwards.

Please don't leave your mike on and wander off and have a conversation with someone else at home - we can hear you mumbling.

And conversations in the background are much louder to us than they are to you. You may be able to filter out the chat - we can't.

Remember that you can be heard!

SINGING ALONG
A group singing or speaking together on Zoom can result in cacophony – this is because some people are on a slight delay, due to internet speeds. If you're the leader, don't slow down, just keep going.

Zoom seems to pick out the loudest person and decide they are the leader. It then fades down the actual leader, making it harder to follow them – and they stay quiet for a few seconds afterwards. One solution is to select Original Sound in Audio Settings.

The better the device and broadband, the better the sound.

If people complain they can't hear you, adjust your volume or get an external microphone – they don't cost much. You might as well make life easier for your colleagues – this is the new normal, and it will be with us for some time.

Q I can’t see the zoom screen and my email.

A Top right of the Zoom screen click on the word View and Exit Full Screen. Resize your windows by grabbing a corner or side and using the mouse.

As with all manners, it's about consideration for others!

Footnote: When we started doing religious services via Zoom, we spent some time discussing how we would communicate with each other. How to replace real-life whispering, looks, nods etc? In the end we concluded we just had to talk to each other. Even so, I spent a whole service with my volume turned up too high and nobody told me.

More here, and links to the rest.

You Are What You Eat 14

Some kind of supper with cold meat and pink or white shape and stewed prunes. (Crewe Train, Rose Macaulay, written in the 20s. “Shape” was cornflour blancmange.)

Letters to the Editor (Times)
Sir, the correspondence on baked beans reminds me of an incident one morning at the Royal Marines officers’ mess in Poole years ago. I had barely taken my seat when. White-coated and white-gloved member of mess staff arrived silently at my side to take my order. “Good morning,” I said. “May I please have baked beans on fried bread.” I turned to read my newspaper when I realized that he had not moved. Believing that he had not heard, I repeated my order. “yes, Sir, I heard you the first time,” he said. When I asked if there was a problem he replied, very much Jeeves-like: The thing is, Sir, that baked beans are not really an officer’s vegetable.” (Simon De’Ath, Upper Basildon, Berkshire)

My background is working class but I would never try to pretend I’m not middle class now... But I heartily agree with a friend from similar stock who complains that the middle-class lifestyle creates much more washing-up. At dinner parties and even family meals food is put on the table in various serving bowls with spoons from which you help yourself, not all ready-portioned on the one plate as it was in my childhood. Crockery use is doubled. And... you don’t want to look greedy so you always take less than you really want. (Carol Midgley, Times)

Mum told Greggs vegan sausage rolls are “too posh for Kirby” (Liverpool Echo headline 2019)

Food is a pretty important and significant social activity, and dating is often centered around food. (Daniel Mallory Ortberg)

Per Mary Killen (pictured above by Hugo Bernand), common food includes:
Anything on an oval plate
Stacked towers of ingredients
Anything that’s too easy to eat
Anything microwaved
Quartered tomatoes
Potato croquettes
Lemon quarters are fine, but not if you call them “lemon wedges”.
Cheesecake and apple strudel are out because they’re “mucked-about food”.
Shaped portions of fish and chicken (fingers and nuggets)
She condemns “thick” marmalade – surely some mistake?
Taboo words are “cereal”, “meal” and “nibbles”. Be specific – cornflakes, lunch and nuts.

Mary would have a fit over tomatoes carved into flower shapes, wouldn’t she? Samantha doesn't like to admit that these days she microwaves side veg like mushrooms and carrots with a knob of butter in a container with a lid. She agrees about food that’s too easy – rice-like orzi pasta instead of spaghetti that you can just spoon into the cake’ole.

Mary's list of posh food includes:
Anything difficult to come by, difficult to cook, or repulsive: sweetbreads, oxtail. (I’d add brains, steak tartare and cold soup.)
Game in season
Hare
Gulls’ eggs
Turnips, swedes, parsnips, beetroot – but boiled, not pickled
Baked pears, home-made custard
Bread-and-butter pudding
The "cheese and biscuits" circuit? (March 2019) Whatever happened to cheese and biscuits – they used to end every middle-class dinner.

A vegan pie has sparked outrage after winning a top food award, with a leading chef branding the butternut squash creation “a disgrace”. (Daily Telegraph, March 2019) “The millennials have taken over,” opines chef Richard Corrigan. There’s an outbreak of really quite nasty “vegan jokes” among conservatives – vegan food, which has existed happily for years out of sight in health food shops, has now hit the supermarkets. And manufacturers are trying to cash in by producing special bars, nut mixes, protein balls with too much artificial flavouring and a ridiculously high price. Conservatives are furious to find these cranks given their own section – next to the Poles'.

In April 2018, the inhabitants of Giffnock in Scotland were furious that their Wholefoods was being replaced by a Lidl. It will “bring down the tone of the whole area”. “Stores like this... attract the degenerates of society. I understand that they need to shop somewhere, however you didn’t see benefit cheats and single mothers and their feral brood flock to Whole Foods. Discount stores allegedly save you pounds on your shopping but you could lose a lot more at the front door when your purse is stolen... It’s only going to attract vermin that do not belong in this prestigious area. Giffnock isn’t pretentious at all, it’s a middle-class area and that is the way it should remain.”

Others suggested that the “pretentious” could always shop in Newton Means, and one riposted: “Honestly what has happened to people. I grew up in Giffnock when that space was Presto and up the road was Gateway then Kwicksave and not an eye was batted.” (And I remember when the middle classes agonised over whether it was possible for them to shop in supermarkets at all.)


Britain is discovering the hot dog! Translation: Firms are making serious money selling upmarket, gentrified hot dogs to affluent gourmets. French President Emmanuel Macron told farmers to concentrate on upmarket products – and now they’re struggling. An area is “regenerated” and all the cafés and shops are too expensive for the people who live there. Where do the gentrifiers think the poor people are going to go? Perhaps they don’t care. In the US, it’s been suggested that cheap food shops should be closed – to encourage purveyors of “proper” food to move in. Because working class people eat unhealthy, processed fast food, don’t they?

Cheap food doesn’t need to be unhealthy: potatoes, cabbages, lentils, carrots are all cheap. And so are quinoa and avocado – so why are they middle-class signifiers? As a friend says, the hippies have basically won. We all eat brown rice and want to save the planet now.

Rowena has crowd-funded to turn her caff into a chain. Samantha suggested calling it “Scoff”, but Rowena went for “Lou’s Café”, in hand-painted red lettering on white, and had the fascias carefully distressed. The menu now includes: chops, greens, roast potatoes, steak pie, stew, mashed swedes, corned-beef hash, beetroot in white sauce, bubble and squeak, Spam fritters, cottage pie, pork pie, Scotch egg, jam roly poly, and local dishes like Manchester pie, gypsy tart, Bedfordshire clangers and barm cakes. She'll overboil your cabbage for you if you really like it like that. Sam disparages the menu by calling it "comfort food".

Rowena ripostes that her goals for 2019 include eating a burrito washed down with crème de menthe, and working her way through all those chocolate bars that people like us don’t buy.

Sam is rather tired of the “street food” fad. Former open spaces are cluttered up with smelly stalls selling food that all seems to be fried. And there’s nowhere to sit down and eat it. Really, what happened to farmers’ markets?

Howard Weybridge agrees. “Isn’t there any British street food? Er, fish and chips…?”

Sam checks with Henry Mayhew. “Men sold freshly baked muffins, and there were pudding shops – and isn’t there a bit in Little Dorrit where Flora and Amy chat over steak and kidney pies? Here’s more: shell-fish, pea-soup, baked potatoes, ham sandwiches, meat puddings, pigs’ and sheep’s trotters, hot eels, hot green peas, penny pies, plum duff, crumpets, Chelsea buns.”

Howard  says: “Haven’t had a good old steak and kidney pud for years. Used to come in pudding-shaped tins. Well, now we’re leaving the EU…”


“I dared to mention a superfood after it had gone out of fashion, and was put in my place by a friend who’d been all over it a couple of years before”, says Sam.

“All my friends are on some ridiculous exclusion diet – and meanwhile people are queueing up at food banks!” sighs Eileen Weybridge.

"As food becomes plentiful, not eating becomes virtuous," says Sam. "Except it has always been virtuous – look at Early Christian ascetics. Or even 60s crash diets."

“The trouble with vegan food,” says Harry Stow Crat, “Is that it takes such a darned long time to eat! And it’s all in little bits so it falls off your fork. Plus it tastes of nothing and after you've eaten it you're still hungry. Give me a bacon sandwich any day.”

But Harry earns enough to restore the orangery by selling over-priced vegan and gluten-free snacks made from oats and spinach grown on his estates. Caro gets the recipes out of Vegetables for Victory by Ambrose Heath.

"Shops at stately homes sell such ghastly wares," she explains. “Tea towels, novelty pencils and pot pourri, oven gloves in the shape of fish, and everything covered with weedy water-colours of flowers."

When I was at university in Norwich, I took a friend to a caff I often went to. It was always full of art students. She boggled slightly when I ate a cake with pink icing and shreds of desiccated coconut. Few of my fellow-students went to cafés in town (though they went to wine bars and ate a lot of ratatouille). But it was OK to go to a tearoom in a converted Tudor cloth hall.


We like to poke fun at the “mid-century menu” – everything suspended in gelatine, on a bed of lettuce. This cuisine wasn’t sold as “slimming”, but it can’t have contained many calories. The gelatine bulked out the ingredients, so you got a slice of something that only looked like food. Jellied chicken soup, anyone? From the 30s (and probably earlier) to the 70s, there was a trend for food that was mainly air or gelatine. Sorbets (water ices), soufflés, apple snow (apple puree and whipped egg white), strawberry mousse, savoury terrines. They were a debased version of Mrs Beeton-style posh food. Those Victorian banquets with endless courses probably needed dishes that didn’t have much food value. (You didn’t eat all the food, there was a menu and you could choose, and portions were small. It was more of a tasting menu, and if Giles Coren is to be believed, this idea lives on. I mean the idea that you eat food for its taste, or rarity, or exoticism, or unusual ingredients, or to admire its presentation – not because you are hungry.)


Theresa May scrapes mould off jam and eats it – this is very Stow-Crat. They may even say “It’s penicillin – it’s good for you”, or “Waste not, want not”.

Gingerbread Easter Bunnies are on sale at Costas just after Christmas. This means they have three months to sell the things. Creme Eggs on sale in the Coop, ditto. It happens every year and no amount of middle-class whingeing is going to change it. Do the Upwards really think they can persuade big firms like Costa and the Coop not to use strategies that make them money?


Some restaurants deliberately increase the noise! Microphones collect customer and kitchen noise and pipe it back into the dining area ("dial in the buzz"). (Via Twitter. It’s called “acoustic reflection”. Really great for anyone with hearing problems.)


More here, and links to the rest.

Classy Quotes Part Ten

She bought the home at a discount because the exterior was covered in pebbledash, unlike any other properties on the street. Now that it has been returned to the brick exterior the neighbourhood has breathed a collective sigh of relief. Times May 11, 2012

More than half of the current generation of young women, for instance, will choose a husband from their own social strata, according to figures last month from the Institute of Public Policy Research think-tank. Mail May 4, 2012

Throughout most of the movie the two leads go sight-seeing on the beach, at a rock quarry and other exciting locations. In between these adventures they talk endlessly about the environment, vegetarianism, fossil collecting, the duty of a proper citizen and proper diet, all things I want to see in a comedy. They bore anyone who will listen to them. imdb commenter on Nuts in May (1976) Ray and Candace-Marie are obviously Upwards.

We’ve kept the gym, the beauty salons, the bowling alley and the cinema. But we’ve only used the cinema once and I’ve never been in the pool. Petra Ecclestone, 23, Times April 2012

The 1950s were the end of the golden age of motoring. Suddenly the middle classes turned against cars… round about the time working class people could afford to drive. There’s a surprise. Simon Hoggart Guardian April 28 12

Chavs: the sort of people who live in two million pound houses with tar macadam'd drives, have neighbours and street lighting - just like the council house tenants they look down on upon. Commenter on Middle Class Handbook

Debrett’s latest guide to neighbourly etiquette draws a delicate but precise line when it suggests that neighbours should be invited only to “big parties” and “al fresco events”. In other words, you mustn’t allow them indoors by themselves and you shouldn’t know anyone who wouldn’t call a barbecue an al fresco event. Guardian March 2012

People from deprived areas visited both other deprived areas and prosperous areas … residents of better-off communities… tended to only visit other privileged neighbourhoods. New Scientist April 2012



Classy Quotes Part Nine.

Part Eight here.

More here, here, here, here and here. And here. And here.

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. 

Classy Quotes

England used to be famous for its class system. Then around 1970 people had the idea our society was now classless. A couple of decades later, John Major claimed "We are all middle class now." But the idea of class never went away, and research organisations like Acorn and Mosaic file us all in the right drawer.

Nobody can write about the English class system without acknowledging Jilly Cooper's Class, written in the early 70s. It's observant and funny and still relevant today.

Lynda Lee-Potter's Class Act: How to Beat the British Class System is not bad either (though it borrows a lot from Cooper).

So, has class gone away? Here are some opinions.

Some of [Prince] William's circle would even whisper "doors to manual" when Miss [Kate] Middleton arrived, in a jibe at her mother being a former airline stewardess. There were even worse social sins, such as using the word "toilet" not "lavatory", saying "pleased to meet you" rather than "how do you do?", and "pardon" rather than "what?". The Daily Telegraph, 2007 Mrs Middleton allegedly said "Pleased to meet you" when she met the Queen. But all these shibboleths are from Nancy Mitford's Noblesse Oblige, written just after World War II (now out of print), and it's highly unlikely that Mrs Middleton ever said any such thing.

“If Betjeman were writing today he would find plenty of class indicators. Where you go on holiday, for instance, or whether you use a camcorder at weddings.” Philip Howard, timesonline.co.uk

But, gosh, how powerfully the English upper middle classes, concentrated in one place, impinge. Like lemon barley, I prefer them diluted with a big jugful of the rest of England. So much calculated informality; so much just-less-than-overbearing command; so much slightly self-conscious good taste; so much discreet jockeying for social edge. Matthew Paris on the Scilly Isles, Times August 13, 2009

Sir, It is sad to see class being fingered, yet again, as the culprit for scholastic achievement or lack of it. It is the parental valuing of education, and the norms of self-discipline, hard work and deferred gratification in their offspring, which lead to achievement. These values are to be found in supportive families regardless of income, status or class. As one not born in Britain, I find it saddening to see our national obsession with class becoming, if anything, more virulent than when I arrived here 40 years ago. Mary Ring, Abergavenny Times May 27 2008

Increasingly, customs are climbing up the social ladder: ear-piercing and tattooing, obviously, but also barbecuing (and eating burgers generally, but only expensive ones), thrift shopping, holidaying in Britain, swearing, racking up unsustainable personal debt, having an allotment, cycling, going to football and voting labour. ... The emerging middle-class consensus on ear-piercing, incidentally, is the summer before secondary school – late enough to signal disapproval of working-class girls who have theirs done as toddlers, not so late as to be thought dangerously illiberal. ...the chief reason for the resurgence and resilience of headlice ... is the modern habit of hugging. That is, parents hugging their children, children hugging each other. ... Once again, we have the working class, notoriously sentimental with their kids, to thank for this development which, insect propagation aside, is surely a wonderful thing. Robert Crampton Times July 2, 2008

Just when we thought that all those pesky notions of class had been eradicated from British society... Pete Clark Evening Standard August 3, 2007

We in the middle-middle class are not going to set the world on fire. But we will be the ones running the inquiries into why there weren’t enough fire engines in the area after the conflagration occurs. We are conservatives with a small “c” who prize education above all ... We are big on respect: for people and institutions. We can roll our eyes at the royals but respect the institution of monarchy because the Queen has “done a good job” and we love the history. On Sundays you’ll find us at the Natural History Museum. It is a law if you are in the middle-middle class that you join the National Trust when you have children. We are very tolerant but advocate the death penalty for litter louts. We wince if we hear someone we know raising his voice in public. We are keen on debate (occasionally about subjects other than schools) but we like it to be round the dinner table. Anyone eating a TV dinner is immediately demoted one class. We buy quality newspapers, strip our floors and are quietly rather pleased with our lot. It is for others to use the word smug. Where’s the shame in any of that? I urge all the faux working classes to learn to embrace the middle way. Times Online March 27, 2007 Damian Whitworth

New Russians want to be old English toffs. Sam Wollaston Guardian Aug 8 09

Class is dead? People looking for a £400,000 house won’t want to live on a £250,000 street, no matter how big the house is. Property expert Phil Spencer

In the Leibenstein refinement of Veblen and the Steiner-Weiss corollary, “snobbery” and then “counter-snobbery” result; that is, those fearing democratization of consumption engage in display of exotic artifacts and esoteric knowledge that can only be appreciated by those who are literate in the cultural legacy of Western civilization, ie its art, literature, music and sculpture. Then, when democratization of cultural literacy encroaches on the practice of “snobbery,” the “snob” turns to “counter-snobbery” to demarcate and elongate the social distance between themselves and the encroachers. This “counter-snobbery” consists of reversion to a simpler and more austere life style which, of course, is visibly displayed for others to admire and emulate, although the display is no longer ostentatious but pretends to be self-effacing. Rick Tilman, ed Warren J. Samuels, The Founding of Institutional Economics: The Leisure Class and Sovereignty, Routledge 1998

The narcissism of minor differences. Sigmund Freud

My friends, the class war is over! Tony Blair

More here, and links to the rest.