Grammar

Class wars

We can't open our mouths without revealing the social class we come from. England is no exception here, possibly even the worst case of a class-obsessed society where everyone is able to tell exactly which social class somebody else belongs to. The lower class call the upper class posh, the upper class call the lower class plebs and the war never ends. It's one of the reasons I'm quite happy to have a foreign accent as at least I don't get involved in the battles between the two which, although petty, provide real entertainment to impartial observers like me...

Battle 1. Vowels. The upper class seem to forget vowels exist at all and drop them whenever possible. Suddenly handkerchief becomes a hnkchf almost as if they couldn't be bothered to open their mouths any more than necessary. What's amusing is that they love to refer to themselves as one. As one prefers to avoid personal pronouns. Conversely middle and lower classes in the North seem to stretch vowels and where are you going turns into where are you gooooooing. In particular, they seem to elongate the a sounds and sometimes change them for long i sounds. There was a chef, at my last job in Cumbria, called Dave and certain people would refer to him as Dive. This is especially noticeable in the Brummie and Geordie accents spoken by middle and lower class people from Birmingham and Newcastle respectively. Similarly, they would say me mam, me dog, me car rather than my mum, my dog and my car.
Battle 2. Consonants. The upper class might drop their vowels but lower classes drop their consonants in return. This is linguistically called glottal stop and I explained this term in some of my previous articles. Basically, they would rather say be'er and wha'ever rather than better and whatever and this can be heard in some of the songs by Kate Nash where the artist purposely adopts this style in order to mimic a certain part of society. In the middle and lower classes th often turns into f and g turns into k. They even tend to write it this way too and we refer to it as text-speak. For example, I fink.
Battle 3. Foreign words. I've had numerous arguments in the past over the pronunciation of foreign words in English i.e. usually names or places. Nevertheless, I keep stating as follows. If the word is commonly used in English and has an English version of pronunciation that differs from its original just use the English version, you are English, you speak English, you live in England. Showing you know how to pronounce given words in the source language does not make you any better, it does however make you sound like a pretentious prick. There's no need to try hard and pronounce French words rolling your r badly anyway, neither is there any need to exhibit to everyone that you a member of the middle or lower classes. I'm a native speaker of Polish but refer to places that are in Poland using their English names when speaking English i.e. Warsaw instead of Warszawa and Cracow instead of Kraków.
Battle 4. Certain words. Sometimes it's enough to say just one word and it instantly gives away your social background. We said before that foreign words should be pronounced in the way that is easiest for English speakers. There are also foreign words in common use that should really be completely omitted and changed for their English equivalents. The upper class seem to grasp this concept quite well and avoid saying settee for sofa or lounge for sitting room. This works the other way round in lower classes. The way people refer to meals can also be confusing to foreigners. When I first moved to Cambridge I happened to stay with an upper-middle class family. They would talk of lunch as a midday meal, dinner or supper as the evening meal. Dinner would usually indicate that there are guests invited, whereas supper was a family-only evening meal, usually served in the kitchen. In time as I socialised more with English people from various social groups I wondered how one can eat tea until I was surprised to find out this was what they call their supper. If you are invited for dinner make sure what time you are supposed to turn up as some refer to lunch as dinner - I learnt this after I moved to Cumbria.

The class system in England has very little to do with money or occupation, a bit more to do with education and a lot to do with which social class you were born into and grew up in. There are, of course, other class indicators such as hobbies, drink, food and clothing, however, speech gives it all away immediately and definitively. It's yet another wonder of language.

- The Road To Fluency
Hi. My last article received a great deal more attention than I could have ever hoped for; and for this I’d like to thank you all as my message has been spread. I appreciate all the comments and e-mails you were kind enough to send to me, it seems that...

- So You Think Polish Is Hard?
The truth must finally come out. I’ve heard enough of this utter rubbish about how difficult Polish is. If you’ve tried to learn Polish and failed to achieve decent levels of communication and understanding this means you're either not trying...

- You Don't Know Nothing!
You don’t know nothing – using a double negative with the sense of a single negative is illogical and incorrect. When you think of it, someone who doesn’t know nothing, must know something! A double negative, also referred to as disambiguation,...

- Vowels And Consonants
There are two types of meaning associated with the words 'vowel' and 'consonant'. First, the phonological definition says that consonants are simply those segments that occur at the edges of syllables, unlike vowels which occur at the...

- Exploring Spelling And Pronunciation, Part 1
Complex, yes. But impossible? The complexity of English spelling undoubtedly poses problems for both foreign learners and native speakers. While some languages, like Spanish for example, have a clear relationship between spelling and sound, this...

Grammar