I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Yes, “scone” to rhyme with “cone” is surely a lower middle class genteelism, like “serviette”. I can see John Betjeman quietly wincing when I hear it
Opposite - the short 'o' for scone sounds odd and pretentious to me. Maybe because the only person I know who says it that way is odd and pretentious.
My favourite on this is when you get people who naturally do short 'a's (eg people from the North) trying too hard to change to the (perceived) classier Southern long 'a' sound.
It can lead to horrors such as the "garse cooker".
The truth is scone is one of few words without a strong class or North-South aspect to its pronunciation. It's a complex fractured map. So everyone things their way is the normal and natural way and the other way is pretentious, but they're mistaken.
I struggle to think of another word like that in the English language.
The late Queen said scone to rhyme with gone. That’s the posh and proper way. Below that is a layer of insecure middle class people. Or working class people trying to be middle class - @kinabalu - they say scone like cone
Below that is the uncaring working class and the feral Celts, they say it like the Queen
This isn’t actually an unusual pattern in British life. See the Brexit vote. Working class and very posh: Leave. Insecure middle: Remain
No, look at the map - the "cone" pronunciation is most prevalent in the midlands, the deindustrialised north and the Thames estuary, prime Leave areas, and least prevalent in the Remain heartland of Scotland. It's just another example of Leave voters being wrong about everything.
Belief in ghosts also exhibits this weird social pattern - it is found in the working and upper classes. The insecure middle is profoundly skeptic
This is true, btw. Its a sociological known
Another thing the middle classes are right about.
Quite possibly so. I’m not being down on the aspiring middle classes
They are the people that get things done. The strivers. The shopkeepers. The accountants. The money men and the IT people and the managers of things. I just keep my social intercourse with them to a minimum because of the Cringe Factor
I’ve heard that you try to avoid the tradesman’s entrance.
Though we Scots are less class obsessed I always liked counter jumper as an anachronistic class based insult. Tbf it would probably describe most of our political class nowadays, and PB for that matter.
The Scots have sectarianism, the English have class. As it were
I'm always astounded at the depths of PBScotch Expertise.
You are so pathetically sensitive to anything that might insult Scotland. You do know this exhibits a ginormous inferiority complex?
Not insult, just flat out inaccuracy. It offends me. Inherently. Like claiming that Hereford is in Essex.
I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Scone with the short 'o' reminds me of that same way of pronouncing hotel which some people do. It does have a Hyacinth Bouquet ring to it. No crime, far from it, but perhaps not something to aim for.
The opposite is true for me - scone to rhyme with cone sounds pretentious like 'an hotel'. But while it's not generally geographical, the map shows that you are from prime cone country, and scone to rhyme with cone no doubt sounds reassuringly authentic to you in the opposite way that scon does for me.
While we're on about this, I feel exactly the same way about the word 'dessert' - it sounds pretentious, like someone who consider the more authentic word 'pudding' indelicate. But my Irish friend feels exactly the opposite: to her, 'pudding' sounds posh, and 'dessert' more authentic.
Well I'm with you on that one. "What's for pudding?" is what you say when you've finished your meat and two veg.
I'd see "an hotel" as being up there with pouring spilt tea back from the saucer into the cup.
It's a flag of someone who really wants to drop the "h" but has not got the nerve to do it in company. They really want to say "An 'otel".
See PG Woodhouse's explanation for the "P" in "Leave it to Psmith".
It occurs to me that Nuneaton is at the North Western edge of a peculiarly under-known region of England that is our closest equivalent to the flyover states of the US mid-west. If Birmingham is our Chicago, as has often been claimed, then these places are our Kansas and Oklahoma. The drive-over counties.
The region is bounded in the South West by Banbury and the M40, in the North by Nuneaton, Hinckley and the Southern outskirts of Leicester, it contains half of Warwickshire and most of Northants, and nudges the borders of Bedford and Milton Keynes in the South East.
This is where the M1, M6, A14 and national rail freight systems converge, with the Watford Gap or the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal its spiritual centre.
Is there a region more accessible yet less known to the British mind than this little oval of logistics parks on the way to somewhere else? As familiar yet mysterious as Troyes, St Dizier or the Plateau de Langres in France.
Lincolnshire is accessible but remains unknown. As does much of Cumbria outside the National park area, though the M6 runs through the middle of much of it.
Yes the area where the East Midlands meets the South East and East Anglia - Bedford, Northampton, Lincoln, Peterborough - seems the most anonymous and unknown to me. What's the accent? What are the regional food items? What do they call a bread roll or a small pedestrian alley? How do they pronounce scone? No idea.
It occurs to me that Nuneaton is at the North Western edge of a peculiarly under-known region of England that is our closest equivalent to the flyover states of the US mid-west. If Birmingham is our Chicago, as has often been claimed, then these places are our Kansas and Oklahoma. The drive-over counties.
The region is bounded in the South West by Banbury and the M40, in the North by Nuneaton, Hinckley and the Southern outskirts of Leicester, it contains half of Warwickshire and most of Northants, and nudges the borders of Bedford and Milton Keynes in the South East.
This is where the M1, M6, A14 and national rail freight systems converge, with the Watford Gap or the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal its spiritual centre.
Is there a region more accessible yet less known to the British mind than this little oval of logistics parks on the way to somewhere else? As familiar yet mysterious as Troyes, St Dizier or the Plateau de Langres in France.
Lincolnshire is accessible but remains unknown. As does much of Cumbria outside the National park area, though the M6 runs through the middle of much of it.
Yes the area where the East Midlands meets the South East and East Anglia - Bedford, Northampton, Lincoln, Peterborough - seems the most anonymous and unknown to me. What's the accent? What are the regional food items? What do they call a bread roll or a small pedestrian alley? How do they pronounce scone? No idea.
Lincolnshire is north of Leicester so 'scon'. The rest scone.
suggests that while the scone/scone pronunciation divide is geographical, it's not THAT geographical - most locations contain a far wedge of both 'scone' and 'scone'.
Scotland appears far more 'scone' however - I suppose that is where my pronunciation comes from, as my Scottish grandmother was by far the most influential scone-maker in the family.
Anyway, Devon seems ambivalent/in places scone (cone) favouring and Cornwall goes for scone (cone). So surely that seals it. Plus parts of God's Own County, plus much of Essex.
The debate is over, my friends.
ETA: And the great seat of learning that is Kingston Upon Hull
The late Queen pronounce it 'scon'. And TSE is, of course, a republican.
But let us not stoop to the misplaced pedantry of Professor Higgins.
...An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him,
The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him. One common language I'm afraid we'll never get. Oh, why can't the English learn to set
A good example to people whose English is painful to your ears? The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears. There even are places where English completely
Disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years!..
The Queen's mother was Scottish, of course, which may account for her pronunciation.
I think 'scon' is RP. Though the notion of RP is also hotly contested these days.
Indeed. It's fascinating to observe how HMQE2's accent evolved over the years.
When it came to scones, she remained adamantine.
A sad statement on the times that no one gives a feck how her etiolated heirs and their marry-ins pronounce it. Though no doubt the Mail is preparing a hit piece on Meghan pronouncing it skawn.
You could argue that RP - with all its modulations over the decades - died with her.
It really hasn’t. My older daughter goes to a quite posh, highly coveted state Sixth Form in north London. They all speak pretty standard RP - not extreme like the young QE2 but deffo RP
It is still the accepted and necessary accent if you want to get on. Thank god. Because Multicultural London English is HIDEOUS
That's something we can all agree on. Bring back Cockney.
Yes I like cockney. I miss it. “Awright luv”, “shaddup and do yer bird”. “Ain’t got nuffink”
Vastly preferable to MLE. However I think @cookie makes an excellent point - MLE is so horrible and so associated with crime and drugs etc it is surely driving a revival in RP - certainly in London. All my daughter’s friends speak like Princess Kate - and they’re not aristocrats
I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Scone with the short 'o' reminds me of that same way of pronouncing hotel which some people do. It does have a Hyacinth Bouquet ring to it. No crime, far from it, but perhaps not something to aim for.
The opposite is true for me - scone to rhyme with cone sounds pretentious like 'an hotel'. But while it's not generally geographical, the map shows that you are from prime cone country, and scone to rhyme with cone no doubt sounds reassuringly authentic to you in the opposite way that scon does for me.
While we're on about this, I feel exactly the same way about the word 'dessert' - it sounds pretentious, like someone who consider the more authentic word 'pudding' indelicate. But my Irish friend feels exactly the opposite: to her, 'pudding' sounds posh, and 'dessert' more authentic.
You can have a pudding for dessert, along with many other dishes - but a dessert for pudding ?
In my family, being told we are having cheese and biscuits and apple for pudding is routine.
Is it too controversial to throw supper/dinner/tea into the mix here?
I've given up on that one. I just go with "lunch" and "tea-time". I have literally had people look at me stupid for using "dinner" for "the meal you have at 1pm". Thus passes the glory of the world...
I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Yes, “scone” to rhyme with “cone” is surely a lower middle class genteelism, like “serviette”. I can see John Betjeman quietly wincing when I hear it
Opposite - the short 'o' for scone sounds odd and pretentious to me. Maybe because the only person I know who says it that way is odd and pretentious.
My favourite on this is when you get people who naturally do short 'a's (eg people from the North) trying too hard to change to the (perceived) classier Southern long 'a' sound.
It can lead to horrors such as the "garse cooker".
The truth is scone is one of few words without a strong class or North-South aspect to its pronunciation. It's a complex fractured map. So everyone things their way is the normal and natural way and the other way is pretentious, but they're mistaken.
I struggle to think of another word like that in the English language.
The late Queen said scone to rhyme with gone. That’s the posh and proper way. Below that is a layer of insecure middle class people. Or working class people trying to be middle class - @kinabalu - they say scone like cone
Below that is the uncaring working class and the feral Celts, they say it like the Queen
This isn’t actually an unusual pattern in British life. See the Brexit vote. Working class and very posh: Leave. Insecure middle: Remain
No, look at the map - the "cone" pronunciation is most prevalent in the midlands, the deindustrialised north and the Thames estuary, prime Leave areas, and least prevalent in the Remain heartland of Scotland. It's just another example of Leave voters being wrong about everything.
Belief in ghosts also exhibits this weird social pattern - it is found in the working and upper classes. The insecure middle is profoundly skeptic
This is true, btw. Its a sociological known
Another thing the middle classes are right about.
Quite possibly so. I’m not being down on the aspiring middle classes
They are the people that get things done. The strivers. The shopkeepers. The accountants. The money men and the IT people and the managers of things. I just keep my social intercourse with them to a minimum because of the Cringe Factor
I’ve heard that you try to avoid the tradesman’s entrance.
Though we Scots are less class obsessed I always liked counter jumper as an anachronistic class based insult. Tbf it would probably describe most of our political class nowadays, and PB for that matter.
The Scots have sectarianism, the English have class. As it were
I'm always astounded at the depths of PBScotch Expertise.
Sectarianism is of course centred in the west side of the central belt but the blue ranks of the divide are trying to spread their tentacles. An attempt to run an Orange march in Stonehaven (Stoney ffs!) was recently foiled and one planned for Inverness is currently being opposed.
It occurs to me that Nuneaton is at the North Western edge of a peculiarly under-known region of England that is our closest equivalent to the flyover states of the US mid-west. If Birmingham is our Chicago, as has often been claimed, then these places are our Kansas and Oklahoma. The drive-over counties.
The region is bounded in the South West by Banbury and the M40, in the North by Nuneaton, Hinckley and the Southern outskirts of Leicester, it contains half of Warwickshire and most of Northants, and nudges the borders of Bedford and Milton Keynes in the South East.
This is where the M1, M6, A14 and national rail freight systems converge, with the Watford Gap or the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal its spiritual centre.
Is there a region more accessible yet less known to the British mind than this little oval of logistics parks on the way to somewhere else? As familiar yet mysterious as Troyes, St Dizier or the Plateau de Langres in France.
Lincolnshire is accessible but remains unknown. As does much of Cumbria outside the National park area, though the M6 runs through the middle of much of it.
Yes the area where the East Midlands meets the South East and East Anglia - Bedford, Northampton, Lincoln, Peterborough - seems the most anonymous and unknown to me. What's the accent? What are the regional food items? What do they call a bread roll or a small pedestrian alley? How do they pronounce scone? No idea.
It occurs to me that Nuneaton is at the North Western edge of a peculiarly under-known region of England that is our closest equivalent to the flyover states of the US mid-west. If Birmingham is our Chicago, as has often been claimed, then these places are our Kansas and Oklahoma. The drive-over counties.
The region is bounded in the South West by Banbury and the M40, in the North by Nuneaton, Hinckley and the Southern outskirts of Leicester, it contains half of Warwickshire and most of Northants, and nudges the borders of Bedford and Milton Keynes in the South East.
This is where the M1, M6, A14 and national rail freight systems converge, with the Watford Gap or the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal its spiritual centre.
Is there a region more accessible yet less known to the British mind than this little oval of logistics parks on the way to somewhere else? As familiar yet mysterious as Troyes, St Dizier or the Plateau de Langres in France.
Lincolnshire is accessible but remains unknown. As does much of Cumbria outside the National park area, though the M6 runs through the middle of much of it.
Yes the area where the East Midlands meets the South East and East Anglia - Bedford, Northampton, Lincoln, Peterborough - seems the most anonymous and unknown to me. What's the accent? What are the regional food items? What do they call a bread roll or a small pedestrian alley? How do they pronounce scone? No idea.
Lincolnshire is north of Leicester so 'scon'. The rest scone.
suggests that while the scone/scone pronunciation divide is geographical, it's not THAT geographical - most locations contain a far wedge of both 'scone' and 'scone'.
Scotland appears far more 'scone' however - I suppose that is where my pronunciation comes from, as my Scottish grandmother was by far the most influential scone-maker in the family.
Anyway, Devon seems ambivalent/in places scone (cone) favouring and Cornwall goes for scone (cone). So surely that seals it. Plus parts of God's Own County, plus much of Essex.
The debate is over, my friends.
ETA: And the great seat of learning that is Kingston Upon Hull
The late Queen pronounce it 'scon'. And TSE is, of course, a republican.
But let us not stoop to the misplaced pedantry of Professor Higgins.
...An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him,
The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him. One common language I'm afraid we'll never get. Oh, why can't the English learn to set
A good example to people whose English is painful to your ears? The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears. There even are places where English completely
Disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years!..
The Queen's mother was Scottish, of course, which may account for her pronunciation.
I think 'scon' is RP. Though the notion of RP is also hotly contested these days.
Indeed. It's fascinating to observe how HMQE2's accent evolved over the years.
When it came to scones, she remained adamantine.
A sad statement on the times that no one gives a feck how her etiolated heirs and their marry-ins pronounce it. Though no doubt the Mail is preparing a hit piece on Meghan pronouncing it skawn.
You could argue that RP - with all its modulations over the decades - died with her.
It really hasn’t. My older daughter goes to a quite posh, highly coveted state Sixth Form in north London. They all speak pretty standard RP - not extreme like the young QE2 but deffo RP
It is still the accepted and necessary accent if you want to get on. Thank god. Because Multicultural London English is HIDEOUS
That's no longer RP; it's just richspeak.
There was a time when the two weren't identical.
Probably true but I think that’s because the super poshos came somewhat downmarket as they started to sound ridiculous. Like the young QE2
It is a fascinating subject. Like - why do Scottish accents often sound quite posh and educated to RP English people (not Glasgow obvs) yet Irish, Welsh and West Country do not?
It must be a legacy of when Scotland - before the SNP - had a good education system and exported a lot of doctors, engineers, scientists etc
Suggest it's because England had RP. 70 years ago, if you went to a grammar school or a private school, you'd have RP drummed into you. (I'd say that started to break down in the 60s - neither my parents nor my wife's parents, all of whom went to grammar schools in the 60s, nor anyone really they associate with, speaks with RP.) Almost everyone in England who was educated had RP - it became a badge. Not so much in Scotland, I don't think. So there are fewer negative associations with Scottish accents than English ones.
I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Yes, “scone” to rhyme with “cone” is surely a lower middle class genteelism, like “serviette”. I can see John Betjeman quietly wincing when I hear it
Opposite - the short 'o' for scone sounds odd and pretentious to me. Maybe because the only person I know who says it that way is odd and pretentious.
My favourite on this is when you get people who naturally do short 'a's (eg people from the North) trying too hard to change to the (perceived) classier Southern long 'a' sound.
It can lead to horrors such as the "garse cooker".
The truth is scone is one of few words without a strong class or North-South aspect to its pronunciation. It's a complex fractured map. So everyone things their way is the normal and natural way and the other way is pretentious, but they're mistaken.
I struggle to think of another word like that in the English language.
The late Queen said scone to rhyme with gone. That’s the posh and proper way. Below that is a layer of insecure middle class people. Or working class people trying to be middle class - @kinabalu - they say scone like cone
Below that is the uncaring working class and the feral Celts, they say it like the Queen
This isn’t actually an unusual pattern in British life. See the Brexit vote. Working class and very posh: Leave. Insecure middle: Remain
No, look at the map - the "cone" pronunciation is most prevalent in the midlands, the deindustrialised north and the Thames estuary, prime Leave areas, and least prevalent in the Remain heartland of Scotland. It's just another example of Leave voters being wrong about everything.
Belief in ghosts also exhibits this weird social pattern - it is found in the working and upper classes. The insecure middle is profoundly skeptic
This is true, btw. Its a sociological known
Another thing the middle classes are right about.
Quite possibly so. I’m not being down on the aspiring middle classes
They are the people that get things done. The strivers. The shopkeepers. The accountants. The money men and the IT people and the managers of things. I just keep my social intercourse with them to a minimum because of the Cringe Factor
I’ve heard that you try to avoid the tradesman’s entrance.
Though we Scots are less class obsessed I always liked counter jumper as an anachronistic class based insult. Tbf it would probably describe most of our political class nowadays, and PB for that matter.
The Scots have sectarianism, the English have class. As it were
The Scots have class too, watch (or read) Trainspotting, it's all about class.
I have an absolutely brilliant Irvine Welsh anecdote
Overnight, Ukraine has gone from exporter to blackout: exploiting weakened air defense, Russia destroyed 70-75% of Ukraine's thermal power production and 35-40% of hydro production in a spring spree of missile attacks https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1779812066330567001
There have been quite a few comments from Ukrainians contrasting the way Iran's attack on Israel was repelled with the lack of air defence support for Ukraine.
Also this kind of comment.
The United States has supplied 0 out of 841 of its F-16 fighters to Ukrainian defenders, 0 out of 60 of its Patriot batteries, and 31 of its 8000 reserve Abrams tanks.
Through reflexive control and active measures, fascist Russia has beaten the United States into submission.
That F-16 number is fucking bollocks. There is another 1,000 Vipers in storage at AMARC. (Minus the QF-16 consumption.)
I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Yes, “scone” to rhyme with “cone” is surely a lower middle class genteelism, like “serviette”. I can see John Betjeman quietly wincing when I hear it
Opposite - the short 'o' for scone sounds odd and pretentious to me. Maybe because the only person I know who says it that way is odd and pretentious.
My favourite on this is when you get people who naturally do short 'a's (eg people from the North) trying too hard to change to the (perceived) classier Southern long 'a' sound.
It can lead to horrors such as the "garse cooker".
The truth is scone is one of few words without a strong class or North-South aspect to its pronunciation. It's a complex fractured map. So everyone things their way is the normal and natural way and the other way is pretentious, but they're mistaken.
I struggle to think of another word like that in the English language.
The late Queen said scone to rhyme with gone. That’s the posh and proper way. Below that is a layer of insecure middle class people. Or working class people trying to be middle class - @kinabalu - they say scone like cone
Below that is the uncaring working class and the feral Celts, they say it like the Queen
This isn’t actually an unusual pattern in British life. See the Brexit vote. Working class and very posh: Leave. Insecure middle: Remain
No, look at the map - the "cone" pronunciation is most prevalent in the midlands, the deindustrialised north and the Thames estuary, prime Leave areas, and least prevalent in the Remain heartland of Scotland. It's just another example of Leave voters being wrong about everything.
Belief in ghosts also exhibits this weird social pattern - it is found in the working and upper classes. The insecure middle is profoundly skeptic
This is true, btw. Its a sociological known
Another thing the middle classes are right about.
Quite possibly so. I’m not being down on the aspiring middle classes
They are the people that get things done. The strivers. The shopkeepers. The accountants. The money men and the IT people and the managers of things. I just keep my social intercourse with them to a minimum because of the Cringe Factor
I’ve heard that you try to avoid the tradesman’s entrance.
Though we Scots are less class obsessed I always liked counter jumper as an anachronistic class based insult. Tbf it would probably describe most of our political class nowadays, and PB for that matter.
The Scots have sectarianism, the English have class. As it were
I'm always astounded at the depths of PBScotch Expertise.
I strongly believe that the prejudice against blending and the worship of single malts is a mistake.
Much as the worship of wine from single, often tiny, piece of land is to neglect a whole host of skills in the truly able winemaker.
There are some excellent blends around - most obviously Grouse.
Actually, there's a lot to be said for Glenfiddich as an *introduction* to single malts for the timid southron. It certainly expanded the market in that sense, historically, and it has that role still even now.
No, if you want to introduce a Sassenach to single malt, give them a Laphroaig.
It occurs to me that Nuneaton is at the North Western edge of a peculiarly under-known region of England that is our closest equivalent to the flyover states of the US mid-west. If Birmingham is our Chicago, as has often been claimed, then these places are our Kansas and Oklahoma. The drive-over counties.
The region is bounded in the South West by Banbury and the M40, in the North by Nuneaton, Hinckley and the Southern outskirts of Leicester, it contains half of Warwickshire and most of Northants, and nudges the borders of Bedford and Milton Keynes in the South East.
This is where the M1, M6, A14 and national rail freight systems converge, with the Watford Gap or the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal its spiritual centre.
Is there a region more accessible yet less known to the British mind than this little oval of logistics parks on the way to somewhere else? As familiar yet mysterious as Troyes, St Dizier or the Plateau de Langres in France.
Lincolnshire is accessible but remains unknown. As does much of Cumbria outside the National park area, though the M6 runs through the middle of much of it.
Yes the area where the East Midlands meets the South East and East Anglia - Bedford, Northampton, Lincoln, Peterborough - seems the most anonymous and unknown to me. What's the accent? What are the regional food items? What do they call a bread roll or a small pedestrian alley? How do they pronounce scone? No idea.
It occurs to me that Nuneaton is at the North Western edge of a peculiarly under-known region of England that is our closest equivalent to the flyover states of the US mid-west. If Birmingham is our Chicago, as has often been claimed, then these places are our Kansas and Oklahoma. The drive-over counties.
The region is bounded in the South West by Banbury and the M40, in the North by Nuneaton, Hinckley and the Southern outskirts of Leicester, it contains half of Warwickshire and most of Northants, and nudges the borders of Bedford and Milton Keynes in the South East.
This is where the M1, M6, A14 and national rail freight systems converge, with the Watford Gap or the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal its spiritual centre.
Is there a region more accessible yet less known to the British mind than this little oval of logistics parks on the way to somewhere else? As familiar yet mysterious as Troyes, St Dizier or the Plateau de Langres in France.
Lincolnshire is accessible but remains unknown. As does much of Cumbria outside the National park area, though the M6 runs through the middle of much of it.
Yes the area where the East Midlands meets the South East and East Anglia - Bedford, Northampton, Lincoln, Peterborough - seems the most anonymous and unknown to me. What's the accent? What are the regional food items? What do they call a bread roll or a small pedestrian alley? How do they pronounce scone? No idea.
Lincolnshire is north of Leicester so 'scon'. The rest scone.
suggests that while the scone/scone pronunciation divide is geographical, it's not THAT geographical - most locations contain a far wedge of both 'scone' and 'scone'.
Scotland appears far more 'scone' however - I suppose that is where my pronunciation comes from, as my Scottish grandmother was by far the most influential scone-maker in the family.
Anyway, Devon seems ambivalent/in places scone (cone) favouring and Cornwall goes for scone (cone). So surely that seals it. Plus parts of God's Own County, plus much of Essex.
The debate is over, my friends.
ETA: And the great seat of learning that is Kingston Upon Hull
The late Queen pronounce it 'scon'. And TSE is, of course, a republican.
But let us not stoop to the misplaced pedantry of Professor Higgins.
...An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him,
The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him. One common language I'm afraid we'll never get. Oh, why can't the English learn to set
A good example to people whose English is painful to your ears? The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears. There even are places where English completely
Disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years!..
The Queen's mother was Scottish, of course, which may account for her pronunciation.
I think 'scon' is RP. Though the notion of RP is also hotly contested these days.
Indeed. It's fascinating to observe how HMQE2's accent evolved over the years.
When it came to scones, she remained adamantine.
A sad statement on the times that no one gives a feck how her etiolated heirs and their marry-ins pronounce it. Though no doubt the Mail is preparing a hit piece on Meghan pronouncing it skawn.
You could argue that RP - with all its modulations over the decades - died with her.
It really hasn’t. My older daughter goes to a quite posh, highly coveted state Sixth Form in north London. They all speak pretty standard RP - not extreme like the young QE2 but deffo RP
It is still the accepted and necessary accent if you want to get on. Thank god. Because Multicultural London English is HIDEOUS
My daughter goes to a fairly average state primary school in Brockley with a mixed intake, and the children almost all speak RP with a few ethnic and national variations on the theme. In most cases they sound much posher than their parents or their teachers. No idea where it comes from.
At secondary school the girls' and boys' accents diverge in a weird way. The girls are all Oh yah and the boys are You get me, blud?
When Yah rhymes with Raa you know what company you are in. Time for a sharp exit.
Overnight, Ukraine has gone from exporter to blackout: exploiting weakened air defense, Russia destroyed 70-75% of Ukraine's thermal power production and 35-40% of hydro production in a spring spree of missile attacks https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1779812066330567001
There have been quite a few comments from Ukrainians contrasting the way Iran's attack on Israel was repelled with the lack of air defence support for Ukraine.
Also this kind of comment.
The United States has supplied 0 out of 841 of its F-16 fighters to Ukrainian defenders, 0 out of 60 of its Patriot batteries, and 31 of its 8000 reserve Abrams tanks.
Through reflexive control and active measures, fascist Russia has beaten the United States into submission.
That F-16 number is fucking bollocks. There is another 1,000 Vipers in storage at AMARC. (Minus the QF-16 consumption.)
On topic, I'm not sure there's any seat right now that's safe for the Conservatives.
What I don't know is how things would play out in a GE campign and what pitch Sunak and CCHQ can cry to rally (some) centre-right support around them.
I half expect them to start with we have successfully sent 1 flight of 300 people to Rwanda.
Which would allow the opposition to list the total cost over £1m per person and the fact that’s 1/6th of the people who would be sent there every year
And if HMG is unlucky, more people will arrive on R-Day than leave.
The government are also going to have to be very careful about the tone of the announcement. The temptation will be to celebrate a significant success, but that could easily fall into revelling in cruelty. It's not as if Rishi has shown mastery of political tone.
(See also the tension between Rwanda has to be a deterrent but not too much because the UK aren't heartless bastards. It's possible to walk the tightrope, but it's easy to get it wrong.)
What happens when the first deportee to Rwanda finds their way back here and is offered asylum as a result of being politically persecuted by the Rwandan government?
They mentioned on the news this morning that the government were in talks with other countries about replicating the Rwanda plan and one of those countries listed was Costa Rica.
It made me think, if Costa Rica became the destination it would make sense for anyone from the UK who is on their uppers to get over to France, lose their passport and pretend they can’t speak English and get on a small boat. You get moved to Costa Rica free of charge for a new start in the sun.
Funny, I thought similar. I found myself applying the Place in the Sun filter to the destinations mentioned. Armenia was another one. Why would Armenia be interested in Britain's asylum seekers? What if some of them were Azerbaijanis fleeing persecution in Iran? Or Turks?
Armenia might just be the worst country I’ve ever visited. In terms of hideous buildings and depressing architecture and awful weather. Despite its latitude it’s on a high plateau so it’s windy and cold most of the time. The Soviets left behind a ton of dreadful buildings and the Armenians have only added to that. In addition, the women are beautiful, the people are friendly, and the food is surprisingly good apart from the dried fish. I loved it
I always think countries with a lot of turmoil such as invasions and revolutions have the most beautiful women. Its natural selection as women compete for scarce men. Sadly the uk hasnt had an invasion or revolution for a long time.
I'm not sure natural selection works that quickly.
That said, I think it's true that during and immediately after wars, there tends to be a slight abundance of daughters born over sons (submariners and policemen, famously, tend to have daughters, ISTR). Not sure why that is. (Though I understand it's also true that men with a lot of testosterone disproportionately have daughters - perhaps that's the reason; during wars, men produce more testosterone?)
The submariners one, from a quick google, looks like a case of green jelly beans giving you acne. There is a dose response in one article[1] (although not consistently) but for things like this you really want a randomised sample. Survey may not cut it, particularly if the expected association is known - fathers of girls think, "hey I wonder if there really is anything in that rumour; I'll respond". Only some studies find associations [1,2,3]
See also "IDF pilots only have daughters". Which was, for a brief period of time, a thing.
I find I vary it according to company; I’ve even caught myself saying “restroom” in certain circumstances
Toilet or loo, depending on how many syllables I have time to pronounce. Lavatory is ridiculous.
I remember an American woman I used to work with being absolutely scandalised I'd used the word 'toilet'. It was as if I'd sworn. "You must say 'bathroom'", she chided. I'm not having a bath, though, am I? And given I'm in the office it's unlikely there is a bath. Whereas there will be a toilet. Now I can see the desire to euphemise toilet in a way I absolutely can't with pudding. But still. It's not that great a taboo. I'm not ashamed to be going to the loo. I'm not asking anyone to watch; just explaining my temporary absence from the room.
I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Scone with the short 'o' reminds me of that same way of pronouncing hotel which some people do. It does have a Hyacinth Bouquet ring to it. No crime, far from it, but perhaps not something to aim for.
The opposite is true for me - scone to rhyme with cone sounds pretentious like 'an hotel'. But while it's not generally geographical, the map shows that you are from prime cone country, and scone to rhyme with cone no doubt sounds reassuringly authentic to you in the opposite way that scon does for me.
While we're on about this, I feel exactly the same way about the word 'dessert' - it sounds pretentious, like someone who consider the more authentic word 'pudding' indelicate. But my Irish friend feels exactly the opposite: to her, 'pudding' sounds posh, and 'dessert' more authentic.
You can have a pudding for dessert, along with many other dishes - but a dessert for pudding ?
In my family, being told we are having cheese and biscuits and apple for pudding is routine.
Is it too controversial to throw supper/dinner/tea into the mix here?
It occurs to me that Nuneaton is at the North Western edge of a peculiarly under-known region of England that is our closest equivalent to the flyover states of the US mid-west. If Birmingham is our Chicago, as has often been claimed, then these places are our Kansas and Oklahoma. The drive-over counties.
The region is bounded in the South West by Banbury and the M40, in the North by Nuneaton, Hinckley and the Southern outskirts of Leicester, it contains half of Warwickshire and most of Northants, and nudges the borders of Bedford and Milton Keynes in the South East.
This is where the M1, M6, A14 and national rail freight systems converge, with the Watford Gap or the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal its spiritual centre.
Is there a region more accessible yet less known to the British mind than this little oval of logistics parks on the way to somewhere else? As familiar yet mysterious as Troyes, St Dizier or the Plateau de Langres in France.
Lincolnshire is accessible but remains unknown. As does much of Cumbria outside the National park area, though the M6 runs through the middle of much of it.
Yes the area where the East Midlands meets the South East and East Anglia - Bedford, Northampton, Lincoln, Peterborough - seems the most anonymous and unknown to me. What's the accent? What are the regional food items? What do they call a bread roll or a small pedestrian alley? How do they pronounce scone? No idea.
It occurs to me that Nuneaton is at the North Western edge of a peculiarly under-known region of England that is our closest equivalent to the flyover states of the US mid-west. If Birmingham is our Chicago, as has often been claimed, then these places are our Kansas and Oklahoma. The drive-over counties.
The region is bounded in the South West by Banbury and the M40, in the North by Nuneaton, Hinckley and the Southern outskirts of Leicester, it contains half of Warwickshire and most of Northants, and nudges the borders of Bedford and Milton Keynes in the South East.
This is where the M1, M6, A14 and national rail freight systems converge, with the Watford Gap or the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal its spiritual centre.
Is there a region more accessible yet less known to the British mind than this little oval of logistics parks on the way to somewhere else? As familiar yet mysterious as Troyes, St Dizier or the Plateau de Langres in France.
Lincolnshire is accessible but remains unknown. As does much of Cumbria outside the National park area, though the M6 runs through the middle of much of it.
Yes the area where the East Midlands meets the South East and East Anglia - Bedford, Northampton, Lincoln, Peterborough - seems the most anonymous and unknown to me. What's the accent? What are the regional food items? What do they call a bread roll or a small pedestrian alley? How do they pronounce scone? No idea.
Lincolnshire is north of Leicester so 'scon'. The rest scone.
suggests that while the scone/scone pronunciation divide is geographical, it's not THAT geographical - most locations contain a far wedge of both 'scone' and 'scone'.
Scotland appears far more 'scone' however - I suppose that is where my pronunciation comes from, as my Scottish grandmother was by far the most influential scone-maker in the family.
Anyway, Devon seems ambivalent/in places scone (cone) favouring and Cornwall goes for scone (cone). So surely that seals it. Plus parts of God's Own County, plus much of Essex.
The debate is over, my friends.
ETA: And the great seat of learning that is Kingston Upon Hull
The late Queen pronounce it 'scon'. And TSE is, of course, a republican.
But let us not stoop to the misplaced pedantry of Professor Higgins.
...An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him,
The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him. One common language I'm afraid we'll never get. Oh, why can't the English learn to set
A good example to people whose English is painful to your ears? The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears. There even are places where English completely
Disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years!..
The Queen's mother was Scottish, of course, which may account for her pronunciation.
I think 'scon' is RP. Though the notion of RP is also hotly contested these days.
Indeed. It's fascinating to observe how HMQE2's accent evolved over the years.
When it came to scones, she remained adamantine.
A sad statement on the times that no one gives a feck how her etiolated heirs and their marry-ins pronounce it. Though no doubt the Mail is preparing a hit piece on Meghan pronouncing it skawn.
You could argue that RP - with all its modulations over the decades - died with her.
It really hasn’t. My older daughter goes to a quite posh, highly coveted state Sixth Form in north London. They all speak pretty standard RP - not extreme like the young QE2 but deffo RP
It is still the accepted and necessary accent if you want to get on. Thank god. Because Multicultural London English is HIDEOUS
That's no longer RP; it's just richspeak.
There was a time when the two weren't identical.
Probably true but I think that’s because the super poshos came somewhat downmarket as they started to sound ridiculous. Like the young QE2
It is a fascinating subject. Like - why do Scottish accents often sound quite posh and educated to RP English people (not Glasgow obvs) yet Irish, Welsh and West Country do not?
It must be a legacy of when Scotland - before the SNP - had a good education system and exported a lot of doctors, engineers, scientists etc
Suggest it's because England had RP. 70 years ago, if you went to a grammar school or a private school, you'd have RP drummed into you. (I'd say that started to break down in the 60s - neither my parents nor my wife's parents, all of whom went to grammar schools in the 60s, nor anyone really they associate with, speaks with RP.) Almost everyone in England who was educated had RP - it became a badge. Not so much in Scotland, I don't think. So there are fewer negative associations with Scottish accents than English ones.
I disagree on this. I’m fairly sure it’s because Scotland really did have a superior education system and also the Scots that English people tended to meet would be the mobile successful ones. The doctors and engineers. The steelworkers of Corby were an exception
It’s a bit like the way Americans worship the posh British accent and they vaguely imagine everyone in Britain lives in Downton Abbey. They know it’s not true logically. Yet the reflex remains
I’ve got male British friends in America who attribute their sexual success to their accents. Indeed I’ve got a male British friend in America who made sure - despite living in America - that his son kept some kind of British accent. So he would also be popular with the girls. And it worked! Except it turns out he’s gay so it’s boys
I change the way I pronounce words depending on where I am, and don't see anything wrong with doing so.
Code switching; nothing wrong with that if you do it well.
I have to. My original accent is not great for professional purposes. I really do have to dial it back.
I was brought up in Fife and Newcastle. My dad is from London, my mum from the West country. I've lived in the Caribbean and the United States. I'm married to someone who spent most of her childhood in the East Midlands. I've lived in SE London for the last decade and a half. My accent is a fucking car crash.
I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Scone with the short 'o' reminds me of that same way of pronouncing hotel which some people do. It does have a Hyacinth Bouquet ring to it. No crime, far from it, but perhaps not something to aim for.
The opposite is true for me - scone to rhyme with cone sounds pretentious like 'an hotel'. But while it's not generally geographical, the map shows that you are from prime cone country, and scone to rhyme with cone no doubt sounds reassuringly authentic to you in the opposite way that scon does for me.
While we're on about this, I feel exactly the same way about the word 'dessert' - it sounds pretentious, like someone who consider the more authentic word 'pudding' indelicate. But my Irish friend feels exactly the opposite: to her, 'pudding' sounds posh, and 'dessert' more authentic.
You can have a pudding for dessert, along with many other dishes - but a dessert for pudding ?
In my family, being told we are having cheese and biscuits and apple for pudding is routine.
Is it too controversial to throw supper/dinner/tea into the mix here?
I've given up on that one. I just go with "lunch" and "tea-time". I have literally had people look at me stupid for using "dinner" for "the meal you have at 1pm". Thus passes the glory of the world...
I don't tend to use the word 'dinner'. Breakfast, lunch and tea.
Tribally, dinner comes in the middle of the day. But I'm about to pop to Greggs. That really isn't a dinner. To me, the word 'dinner' is more about the size of the mean than where it sits in the day. Christmas Dinner/Sunday Dinner. You know what that is, and whether it happens at 12 or 2 or 6 doesn't really matter.
I find I vary it according to company; I’ve even caught myself saying “restroom” in certain circumstances
Toilet or loo, depending on how many syllables I have time to pronounce. Lavatory is ridiculous.
I remember an American woman I used to work with being absolutely scandalised I'd used the word 'toilet'. It was as if I'd sworn. "You must say 'bathroom'", she chided. I'm not having a bath, though, am I? And given I'm in the office it's unlikely there is a bath. Whereas there will be a toilet. Now I can see the desire to euphemise toilet in a way I absolutely can't with pudding. But still. It's not that great a taboo. I'm not ashamed to be going to the loo. I'm not asking anyone to watch; just explaining my temporary absence from the room.
But “toilet” is also a euphemism. A French word for washing. You’re not actually having a wash
The only word that isn’t a euphemism is “shitter” but despite my lifelong desires to epater les bourgeois even i draw the line at “shitter”
Lack of sex and love can lead fo mental health problems too its a chicken and egg situation. But we have to ask why is it only in the west that we have incels acting out like this.A big flaw in our society i think.
I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Yes, “scone” to rhyme with “cone” is surely a lower middle class genteelism, like “serviette”. I can see John Betjeman quietly wincing when I hear it
Opposite - the short 'o' for scone sounds odd and pretentious to me. Maybe because the only person I know who says it that way is odd and pretentious.
My favourite on this is when you get people who naturally do short 'a's (eg people from the North) trying too hard to change to the (perceived) classier Southern long 'a' sound.
It can lead to horrors such as the "garse cooker".
The truth is scone is one of few words without a strong class or North-South aspect to its pronunciation. It's a complex fractured map. So everyone things their way is the normal and natural way and the other way is pretentious, but they're mistaken.
I struggle to think of another word like that in the English language.
The late Queen said scone to rhyme with gone. That’s the posh and proper way. Below that is a layer of insecure middle class people. Or working class people trying to be middle class - @kinabalu - they say scone like cone
Below that is the uncaring working class and the feral Celts, they say it like the Queen
This isn’t actually an unusual pattern in British life. See the Brexit vote. Working class and very posh: Leave. Insecure middle: Remain
No, look at the map - the "cone" pronunciation is most prevalent in the midlands, the deindustrialised north and the Thames estuary, prime Leave areas, and least prevalent in the Remain heartland of Scotland. It's just another example of Leave voters being wrong about everything.
Belief in ghosts also exhibits this weird social pattern - it is found in the working and upper classes. The insecure middle is profoundly skeptic
This is true, btw. Its a sociological known
Another thing the middle classes are right about.
Quite possibly so. I’m not being down on the aspiring middle classes
They are the people that get things done. The strivers. The shopkeepers. The accountants. The money men and the IT people and the managers of things. I just keep my social intercourse with them to a minimum because of the Cringe Factor
I’ve heard that you try to avoid the tradesman’s entrance.
Though we Scots are less class obsessed I always liked counter jumper as an anachronistic class based insult. Tbf it would probably describe most of our political class nowadays, and PB for that matter.
The Scots have sectarianism, the English have class. As it were
I'm always astounded at the depths of PBScotch Expertise.
I strongly believe that the prejudice against blending and the worship of single malts is a mistake.
Much as the worship of wine from single, often tiny, piece of land is to neglect a whole host of skills in the truly able winemaker.
There's no inherent reason why blends should be worse than single malts. What they usually are, of course, is cheaper. And therefore more cheaply produced. And therefore, usually, of a lower quality. A £12 bottle of blend will almost never be as good as a £30 bottle of single malt - but a £12 bottle of anything is rarely as good as it's £30 equivalent.
Overnight, Ukraine has gone from exporter to blackout: exploiting weakened air defense, Russia destroyed 70-75% of Ukraine's thermal power production and 35-40% of hydro production in a spring spree of missile attacks https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1779812066330567001
There have been quite a few comments from Ukrainians contrasting the way Iran's attack on Isreal was repelled with the lack of air defence support for Ukraine.
Indeed pretty hypocritical of the west to act like this. But the israel lobby in the us is powerful.
Overnight, Ukraine has gone from exporter to blackout: exploiting weakened air defense, Russia destroyed 70-75% of Ukraine's thermal power production and 35-40% of hydro production in a spring spree of missile attacks https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1779812066330567001
There have been quite a few comments from Ukrainians contrasting the way Iran's attack on Israel was repelled with the lack of air defence support for Ukraine.
Also this kind of comment.
The United States has supplied 0 out of 841 of its F-16 fighters to Ukrainian defenders, 0 out of 60 of its Patriot batteries, and 31 of its 8000 reserve Abrams tanks.
Through reflexive control and active measures, fascist Russia has beaten the United States into submission.
That F-16 number is fucking bollocks. There is another 1,000 Vipers in storage at AMARC. (Minus the QF-16 consumption.)
Yeah, but some of those have been stored for decades. They're going to need an f'load of recommissioning, even with AMARC's climate and storage standards
Also, if you're going off the 1,036 reported 'stored' at f16.net, note that many have been scrapped since, e.g.:
I find I vary it according to company; I’ve even caught myself saying “restroom” in certain circumstances
Toilet or loo, depending on how many syllables I have time to pronounce. Lavatory is ridiculous.
I remember an American woman I used to work with being absolutely scandalised I'd used the word 'toilet'. It was as if I'd sworn. "You must say 'bathroom'", she chided. I'm not having a bath, though, am I? And given I'm in the office it's unlikely there is a bath. Whereas there will be a toilet. Now I can see the desire to euphemise toilet in a way I absolutely can't with pudding. But still. It's not that great a taboo. I'm not ashamed to be going to the loo. I'm not asking anyone to watch; just explaining my temporary absence from the room.
But “toilet” is also a euphemism. A French word for washing. You’re not actually having a wash
The only word that isn’t a euphemism is “shitter” but despite my lifelong desires to epater les bourgeois even i draw the line at “shitter”
Well yes, but a euphemism so ancient that it's become the default noun for the real thing. See also, I think, pub (although that might be a myth?).
It occurs to me that Nuneaton is at the North Western edge of a peculiarly under-known region of England that is our closest equivalent to the flyover states of the US mid-west. If Birmingham is our Chicago, as has often been claimed, then these places are our Kansas and Oklahoma. The drive-over counties.
The region is bounded in the South West by Banbury and the M40, in the North by Nuneaton, Hinckley and the Southern outskirts of Leicester, it contains half of Warwickshire and most of Northants, and nudges the borders of Bedford and Milton Keynes in the South East.
This is where the M1, M6, A14 and national rail freight systems converge, with the Watford Gap or the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal its spiritual centre.
Is there a region more accessible yet less known to the British mind than this little oval of logistics parks on the way to somewhere else? As familiar yet mysterious as Troyes, St Dizier or the Plateau de Langres in France.
Lincolnshire is accessible but remains unknown. As does much of Cumbria outside the National park area, though the M6 runs through the middle of much of it.
Yes the area where the East Midlands meets the South East and East Anglia - Bedford, Northampton, Lincoln, Peterborough - seems the most anonymous and unknown to me. What's the accent? What are the regional food items? What do they call a bread roll or a small pedestrian alley? How do they pronounce scone? No idea.
It occurs to me that Nuneaton is at the North Western edge of a peculiarly under-known region of England that is our closest equivalent to the flyover states of the US mid-west. If Birmingham is our Chicago, as has often been claimed, then these places are our Kansas and Oklahoma. The drive-over counties.
The region is bounded in the South West by Banbury and the M40, in the North by Nuneaton, Hinckley and the Southern outskirts of Leicester, it contains half of Warwickshire and most of Northants, and nudges the borders of Bedford and Milton Keynes in the South East.
This is where the M1, M6, A14 and national rail freight systems converge, with the Watford Gap or the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal its spiritual centre.
Is there a region more accessible yet less known to the British mind than this little oval of logistics parks on the way to somewhere else? As familiar yet mysterious as Troyes, St Dizier or the Plateau de Langres in France.
Lincolnshire is accessible but remains unknown. As does much of Cumbria outside the National park area, though the M6 runs through the middle of much of it.
Yes the area where the East Midlands meets the South East and East Anglia - Bedford, Northampton, Lincoln, Peterborough - seems the most anonymous and unknown to me. What's the accent? What are the regional food items? What do they call a bread roll or a small pedestrian alley? How do they pronounce scone? No idea.
Lincolnshire is north of Leicester so 'scon'. The rest scone.
suggests that while the scone/scone pronunciation divide is geographical, it's not THAT geographical - most locations contain a far wedge of both 'scone' and 'scone'.
Scotland appears far more 'scone' however - I suppose that is where my pronunciation comes from, as my Scottish grandmother was by far the most influential scone-maker in the family.
Anyway, Devon seems ambivalent/in places scone (cone) favouring and Cornwall goes for scone (cone). So surely that seals it. Plus parts of God's Own County, plus much of Essex.
The debate is over, my friends.
ETA: And the great seat of learning that is Kingston Upon Hull
The late Queen pronounce it 'scon'. And TSE is, of course, a republican.
But let us not stoop to the misplaced pedantry of Professor Higgins.
...An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him,
The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him. One common language I'm afraid we'll never get. Oh, why can't the English learn to set
A good example to people whose English is painful to your ears? The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears. There even are places where English completely
Disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years!..
The Queen's mother was Scottish, of course, which may account for her pronunciation.
I think 'scon' is RP. Though the notion of RP is also hotly contested these days.
Indeed. It's fascinating to observe how HMQE2's accent evolved over the years.
When it came to scones, she remained adamantine.
A sad statement on the times that no one gives a feck how her etiolated heirs and their marry-ins pronounce it. Though no doubt the Mail is preparing a hit piece on Meghan pronouncing it skawn.
You could argue that RP - with all its modulations over the decades - died with her.
It really hasn’t. My older daughter goes to a quite posh, highly coveted state Sixth Form in north London. They all speak pretty standard RP - not extreme like the young QE2 but deffo RP
It is still the accepted and necessary accent if you want to get on. Thank god. Because Multicultural London English is HIDEOUS
That's something we can all agree on. Bring back Cockney.
Yes I like cockney. I miss it. “Awright luv”, “shaddup and do yer bird”. “Ain’t got nuffink”
Vastly preferable to MLE. However I think @cookie makes an excellent point - MLE is so horrible and so associated with crime and drugs etc it is surely driving a revival in RP - certainly in London. All my daughter’s friends speak like Princess Kate - and they’re not aristocrats
I quite like MLE. The cheeky wide boy element of Estuary mixed with the warmth and energy of the Caribbean. Caribbean accents themselves (vastly different from island to island, even from parish to parish) are themselves the product of hundreds of years of mixing accents from Africa and India with Scots and Irish indentured workers, the British personnel of the slave trade and the plantation economy, nonconformist preachers, French and Spanish influences... Then imported back to the mother country and blended with Cockney and London Irish to give you MLE, bruv! That's hundreds of years of colonial history encoded in how people communicate. If you hate MLE you hate the British Empire, basically.
I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Yes, “scone” to rhyme with “cone” is surely a lower middle class genteelism, like “serviette”. I can see John Betjeman quietly wincing when I hear it
Opposite - the short 'o' for scone sounds odd and pretentious to me. Maybe because the only person I know who says it that way is odd and pretentious.
My favourite on this is when you get people who naturally do short 'a's (eg people from the North) trying too hard to change to the (perceived) classier Southern long 'a' sound.
It can lead to horrors such as the "garse cooker".
The truth is scone is one of few words without a strong class or North-South aspect to its pronunciation. It's a complex fractured map. So everyone things their way is the normal and natural way and the other way is pretentious, but they're mistaken.
I struggle to think of another word like that in the English language.
The late Queen said scone to rhyme with gone. That’s the posh and proper way. Below that is a layer of insecure middle class people. Or working class people trying to be middle class - @kinabalu - they say scone like cone
Below that is the uncaring working class and the feral Celts, they say it like the Queen
This isn’t actually an unusual pattern in British life. See the Brexit vote. Working class and very posh: Leave. Insecure middle: Remain
No, look at the map - the "cone" pronunciation is most prevalent in the midlands, the deindustrialised north and the Thames estuary, prime Leave areas, and least prevalent in the Remain heartland of Scotland. It's just another example of Leave voters being wrong about everything.
Belief in ghosts also exhibits this weird social pattern - it is found in the working and upper classes. The insecure middle is profoundly skeptic
This is true, btw. Its a sociological known
Another thing the middle classes are right about.
Quite possibly so. I’m not being down on the aspiring middle classes
They are the people that get things done. The strivers. The shopkeepers. The accountants. The money men and the IT people and the managers of things. I just keep my social intercourse with them to a minimum because of the Cringe Factor
I’ve heard that you try to avoid the tradesman’s entrance.
Though we Scots are less class obsessed I always liked counter jumper as an anachronistic class based insult. Tbf it would probably describe most of our political class nowadays, and PB for that matter.
The Scots have sectarianism, the English have class. As it were
I'm always astounded at the depths of PBScotch Expertise.
I strongly believe that the prejudice against blending and the worship of single malts is a mistake.
Much as the worship of wine from single, often tiny, piece of land is to neglect a whole host of skills in the truly able winemaker.
There's no inherent reason why blends should be worse than single malts. What they usually are, of course, is cheaper. And therefore more cheaply produced. And therefore, usually, of a lower quality. A £12 bottle of blend will almost never be as good as a £30 bottle of single malt - but a £12 bottle of anything is rarely as good as it's £30 equivalent.
I’m rather fond of Johnnie Walker black label, in a retro way. Also it’s often the only decent alcohol you can get in really remote places
Stuck in a one whore town in Yunnanese Tibet? In the solitary bar by the dead yak there will be a dusty bottle of Black Label
It occurs to me that Nuneaton is at the North Western edge of a peculiarly under-known region of England that is our closest equivalent to the flyover states of the US mid-west. If Birmingham is our Chicago, as has often been claimed, then these places are our Kansas and Oklahoma. The drive-over counties.
The region is bounded in the South West by Banbury and the M40, in the North by Nuneaton, Hinckley and the Southern outskirts of Leicester, it contains half of Warwickshire and most of Northants, and nudges the borders of Bedford and Milton Keynes in the South East.
This is where the M1, M6, A14 and national rail freight systems converge, with the Watford Gap or the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal its spiritual centre.
Is there a region more accessible yet less known to the British mind than this little oval of logistics parks on the way to somewhere else? As familiar yet mysterious as Troyes, St Dizier or the Plateau de Langres in France.
Lincolnshire is accessible but remains unknown. As does much of Cumbria outside the National park area, though the M6 runs through the middle of much of it.
Yes the area where the East Midlands meets the South East and East Anglia - Bedford, Northampton, Lincoln, Peterborough - seems the most anonymous and unknown to me. What's the accent? What are the regional food items? What do they call a bread roll or a small pedestrian alley? How do they pronounce scone? No idea.
It occurs to me that Nuneaton is at the North Western edge of a peculiarly under-known region of England that is our closest equivalent to the flyover states of the US mid-west. If Birmingham is our Chicago, as has often been claimed, then these places are our Kansas and Oklahoma. The drive-over counties.
The region is bounded in the South West by Banbury and the M40, in the North by Nuneaton, Hinckley and the Southern outskirts of Leicester, it contains half of Warwickshire and most of Northants, and nudges the borders of Bedford and Milton Keynes in the South East.
This is where the M1, M6, A14 and national rail freight systems converge, with the Watford Gap or the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal its spiritual centre.
Is there a region more accessible yet less known to the British mind than this little oval of logistics parks on the way to somewhere else? As familiar yet mysterious as Troyes, St Dizier or the Plateau de Langres in France.
Lincolnshire is accessible but remains unknown. As does much of Cumbria outside the National park area, though the M6 runs through the middle of much of it.
Yes the area where the East Midlands meets the South East and East Anglia - Bedford, Northampton, Lincoln, Peterborough - seems the most anonymous and unknown to me. What's the accent? What are the regional food items? What do they call a bread roll or a small pedestrian alley? How do they pronounce scone? No idea.
Lincolnshire is north of Leicester so 'scon'. The rest scone.
suggests that while the scone/scone pronunciation divide is geographical, it's not THAT geographical - most locations contain a far wedge of both 'scone' and 'scone'.
Scotland appears far more 'scone' however - I suppose that is where my pronunciation comes from, as my Scottish grandmother was by far the most influential scone-maker in the family.
Anyway, Devon seems ambivalent/in places scone (cone) favouring and Cornwall goes for scone (cone). So surely that seals it. Plus parts of God's Own County, plus much of Essex.
The debate is over, my friends.
ETA: And the great seat of learning that is Kingston Upon Hull
The late Queen pronounce it 'scon'. And TSE is, of course, a republican.
But let us not stoop to the misplaced pedantry of Professor Higgins.
...An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him,
The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him. One common language I'm afraid we'll never get. Oh, why can't the English learn to set
A good example to people whose English is painful to your ears? The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears. There even are places where English completely
Disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years!..
The Queen's mother was Scottish, of course, which may account for her pronunciation.
I think 'scon' is RP. Though the notion of RP is also hotly contested these days.
Indeed. It's fascinating to observe how HMQE2's accent evolved over the years.
When it came to scones, she remained adamantine.
A sad statement on the times that no one gives a feck how her etiolated heirs and their marry-ins pronounce it. Though no doubt the Mail is preparing a hit piece on Meghan pronouncing it skawn.
You could argue that RP - with all its modulations over the decades - died with her.
It really hasn’t. My older daughter goes to a quite posh, highly coveted state Sixth Form in north London. They all speak pretty standard RP - not extreme like the young QE2 but deffo RP
It is still the accepted and necessary accent if you want to get on. Thank god. Because Multicultural London English is HIDEOUS
That's no longer RP; it's just richspeak.
There was a time when the two weren't identical.
Probably true but I think that’s because the super poshos came somewhat downmarket as they started to sound ridiculous. Like the young QE2
It is a fascinating subject. Like - why do Scottish accents often sound quite posh and educated to RP English people (not Glasgow obvs) yet Irish, Welsh and West Country do not?
It must be a legacy of when Scotland - before the SNP - had a good education system and exported a lot of doctors, engineers, scientists etc
Suggest it's because England had RP. 70 years ago, if you went to a grammar school or a private school, you'd have RP drummed into you. (I'd say that started to break down in the 60s - neither my parents nor my wife's parents, all of whom went to grammar schools in the 60s, nor anyone really they associate with, speaks with RP.) Almost everyone in England who was educated had RP - it became a badge. Not so much in Scotland, I don't think. So there are fewer negative associations with Scottish accents than English ones.
I disagree on this. I’m fairly sure it’s because Scotland really did have a superior education system and also the Scots that English people tended to meet would be the mobile successful ones. The doctors and engineers. The steelworkers of Corby were an exception
It’s a bit like the way Americans worship the posh British accent and they vaguely imagine everyone in Britain lives in Downton Abbey. They know it’s not true logically. Yet the reflex remains
I’ve got male British friends in America who attribute their sexual success to their accents. Indeed I’ve got a male British friend in America who made sure - despite living in America - that his son kept some kind of British accent. So he would also be popular with the girls. And it worked! Except it turns out he’s gay so it’s boys
Also if you are dealing with americans on the phone the british accent helps a great deal. They always seem to go above and beyond for you.
I've just arrived, so forgive me if I haven't quite got the gist of this thread, but one of my favourite euphemisms was used by an American in Central Park in New York, who exclaimed, "Oh, shit! I've just trodden in some doggy-do-do!"
It occurs to me that Nuneaton is at the North Western edge of a peculiarly under-known region of England that is our closest equivalent to the flyover states of the US mid-west. If Birmingham is our Chicago, as has often been claimed, then these places are our Kansas and Oklahoma. The drive-over counties.
The region is bounded in the South West by Banbury and the M40, in the North by Nuneaton, Hinckley and the Southern outskirts of Leicester, it contains half of Warwickshire and most of Northants, and nudges the borders of Bedford and Milton Keynes in the South East.
This is where the M1, M6, A14 and national rail freight systems converge, with the Watford Gap or the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal its spiritual centre.
Is there a region more accessible yet less known to the British mind than this little oval of logistics parks on the way to somewhere else? As familiar yet mysterious as Troyes, St Dizier or the Plateau de Langres in France.
Lincolnshire is accessible but remains unknown. As does much of Cumbria outside the National park area, though the M6 runs through the middle of much of it.
Yes the area where the East Midlands meets the South East and East Anglia - Bedford, Northampton, Lincoln, Peterborough - seems the most anonymous and unknown to me. What's the accent? What are the regional food items? What do they call a bread roll or a small pedestrian alley? How do they pronounce scone? No idea.
It occurs to me that Nuneaton is at the North Western edge of a peculiarly under-known region of England that is our closest equivalent to the flyover states of the US mid-west. If Birmingham is our Chicago, as has often been claimed, then these places are our Kansas and Oklahoma. The drive-over counties.
The region is bounded in the South West by Banbury and the M40, in the North by Nuneaton, Hinckley and the Southern outskirts of Leicester, it contains half of Warwickshire and most of Northants, and nudges the borders of Bedford and Milton Keynes in the South East.
This is where the M1, M6, A14 and national rail freight systems converge, with the Watford Gap or the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal its spiritual centre.
Is there a region more accessible yet less known to the British mind than this little oval of logistics parks on the way to somewhere else? As familiar yet mysterious as Troyes, St Dizier or the Plateau de Langres in France.
Lincolnshire is accessible but remains unknown. As does much of Cumbria outside the National park area, though the M6 runs through the middle of much of it.
Yes the area where the East Midlands meets the South East and East Anglia - Bedford, Northampton, Lincoln, Peterborough - seems the most anonymous and unknown to me. What's the accent? What are the regional food items? What do they call a bread roll or a small pedestrian alley? How do they pronounce scone? No idea.
Lincolnshire is north of Leicester so 'scon'. The rest scone.
suggests that while the scone/scone pronunciation divide is geographical, it's not THAT geographical - most locations contain a far wedge of both 'scone' and 'scone'.
Scotland appears far more 'scone' however - I suppose that is where my pronunciation comes from, as my Scottish grandmother was by far the most influential scone-maker in the family.
Anyway, Devon seems ambivalent/in places scone (cone) favouring and Cornwall goes for scone (cone). So surely that seals it. Plus parts of God's Own County, plus much of Essex.
The debate is over, my friends.
ETA: And the great seat of learning that is Kingston Upon Hull
The late Queen pronounce it 'scon'. And TSE is, of course, a republican.
But let us not stoop to the misplaced pedantry of Professor Higgins.
...An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him,
The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him. One common language I'm afraid we'll never get. Oh, why can't the English learn to set
A good example to people whose English is painful to your ears? The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears. There even are places where English completely
Disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years!..
The Queen's mother was Scottish, of course, which may account for her pronunciation.
I think 'scon' is RP. Though the notion of RP is also hotly contested these days.
Indeed. It's fascinating to observe how HMQE2's accent evolved over the years.
When it came to scones, she remained adamantine.
A sad statement on the times that no one gives a feck how her etiolated heirs and their marry-ins pronounce it. Though no doubt the Mail is preparing a hit piece on Meghan pronouncing it skawn.
You could argue that RP - with all its modulations over the decades - died with her.
It really hasn’t. My older daughter goes to a quite posh, highly coveted state Sixth Form in north London. They all speak pretty standard RP - not extreme like the young QE2 but deffo RP
It is still the accepted and necessary accent if you want to get on. Thank god. Because Multicultural London English is HIDEOUS
That's something we can all agree on. Bring back Cockney.
Yes I like cockney. I miss it. “Awright luv”, “shaddup and do yer bird”. “Ain’t got nuffink”
Vastly preferable to MLE. However I think @cookie makes an excellent point - MLE is so horrible and so associated with crime and drugs etc it is surely driving a revival in RP - certainly in London. All my daughter’s friends speak like Princess Kate - and they’re not aristocrats
I quite like MLE. The cheeky wide boy element of Estuary mixed with the warmth and energy of the Caribbean. Caribbean accents themselves (vastly different from island to island, even from parish to parish) are themselves the product of hundreds of years of mixing accents from Africa and India with Scots and Irish indentured workers, the British personnel of the slave trade and the plantation economy, nonconformist preachers, French and Spanish influences... Then imported back to the mother country and blended with Cockney and London Irish to give you MLE, bruv! That's hundreds of years of colonial history encoded in how people communicate. If you hate MLE you hate the British Empire, basically.
I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Yes, “scone” to rhyme with “cone” is surely a lower middle class genteelism, like “serviette”. I can see John Betjeman quietly wincing when I hear it
Opposite - the short 'o' for scone sounds odd and pretentious to me. Maybe because the only person I know who says it that way is odd and pretentious.
My favourite on this is when you get people who naturally do short 'a's (eg people from the North) trying too hard to change to the (perceived) classier Southern long 'a' sound.
It can lead to horrors such as the "garse cooker".
The truth is scone is one of few words without a strong class or North-South aspect to its pronunciation. It's a complex fractured map. So everyone things their way is the normal and natural way and the other way is pretentious, but they're mistaken.
I struggle to think of another word like that in the English language.
The late Queen said scone to rhyme with gone. That’s the posh and proper way. Below that is a layer of insecure middle class people. Or working class people trying to be middle class - @kinabalu - they say scone like cone
Below that is the uncaring working class and the feral Celts, they say it like the Queen
This isn’t actually an unusual pattern in British life. See the Brexit vote. Working class and very posh: Leave. Insecure middle: Remain
No, look at the map - the "cone" pronunciation is most prevalent in the midlands, the deindustrialised north and the Thames estuary, prime Leave areas, and least prevalent in the Remain heartland of Scotland. It's just another example of Leave voters being wrong about everything.
Belief in ghosts also exhibits this weird social pattern - it is found in the working and upper classes. The insecure middle is profoundly skeptic
This is true, btw. Its a sociological known
Another thing the middle classes are right about.
Quite possibly so. I’m not being down on the aspiring middle classes
They are the people that get things done. The strivers. The shopkeepers. The accountants. The money men and the IT people and the managers of things. I just keep my social intercourse with them to a minimum because of the Cringe Factor
I’ve heard that you try to avoid the tradesman’s entrance.
Though we Scots are less class obsessed I always liked counter jumper as an anachronistic class based insult. Tbf it would probably describe most of our political class nowadays, and PB for that matter.
The Scots have sectarianism, the English have class. As it were
I'm always astounded at the depths of PBScotch Expertise.
I strongly believe that the prejudice against blending and the worship of single malts is a mistake.
Much as the worship of wine from single, often tiny, piece of land is to neglect a whole host of skills in the truly able winemaker.
There's no inherent reason why blends should be worse than single malts. What they usually are, of course, is cheaper. And therefore more cheaply produced. And therefore, usually, of a lower quality. A £12 bottle of blend will almost never be as good as a £30 bottle of single malt - but a £12 bottle of anything is rarely as good as it's £30 equivalent.
I’m rather fond of Johnnie Walker black label, in a retro way. Also it’s often the only decent alcohol you can get in really remote places
Stuck in a one whore town in Yunnanese Tibet? In the solitary bar by the dead yak there will be a dusty bottle of Black Label
I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Scone with the short 'o' reminds me of that same way of pronouncing hotel which some people do. It does have a Hyacinth Bouquet ring to it. No crime, far from it, but perhaps not something to aim for.
The opposite is true for me - scone to rhyme with cone sounds pretentious like 'an hotel'. But while it's not generally geographical, the map shows that you are from prime cone country, and scone to rhyme with cone no doubt sounds reassuringly authentic to you in the opposite way that scon does for me.
While we're on about this, I feel exactly the same way about the word 'dessert' - it sounds pretentious, like someone who consider the more authentic word 'pudding' indelicate. But my Irish friend feels exactly the opposite: to her, 'pudding' sounds posh, and 'dessert' more authentic.
You can have a pudding for dessert, along with many other dishes - but a dessert for pudding ?
I accept that there is a common use of pudding to mean a particular sort of (*cringe*) dessert e.g. a sponge pudding. But to me a pudding is simply the last course of your meal (as long as it's sweet - though if someone said they were having cheese for their pudding, I wouldn't object). Also a steak and kidney pudding is a pudding. But to me that is an entirely different sense of the word pudding.
Pudding. It's just a much more enjoyable word. It can also be used as a mild insult. I don't really trust words like 'Dessert' where the emphasis is on the second syllable rather than the first. See also Cherie Blair.
Agreed. Sometimes I like to go even further and reduce the enjoyable “pudding” to the shocking terseness of “pud”
“Dessert” is Cringe Factor 8. The solidly working class “afters” is better, and it’s arguable that even “sweet” is preferable
We say ‘afters’ though my Dad often says ‘Desert’, deliberately mispronouncing ‘dessert’
I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Yes, “scone” to rhyme with “cone” is surely a lower middle class genteelism, like “serviette”. I can see John Betjeman quietly wincing when I hear it
Opposite - the short 'o' for scone sounds odd and pretentious to me. Maybe because the only person I know who says it that way is odd and pretentious.
My favourite on this is when you get people who naturally do short 'a's (eg people from the North) trying too hard to change to the (perceived) classier Southern long 'a' sound.
It can lead to horrors such as the "garse cooker".
The truth is scone is one of few words without a strong class or North-South aspect to its pronunciation. It's a complex fractured map. So everyone things their way is the normal and natural way and the other way is pretentious, but they're mistaken.
I struggle to think of another word like that in the English language.
The late Queen said scone to rhyme with gone. That’s the posh and proper way. Below that is a layer of insecure middle class people. Or working class people trying to be middle class - @kinabalu - they say scone like cone
Below that is the uncaring working class and the feral Celts, they say it like the Queen
This isn’t actually an unusual pattern in British life. See the Brexit vote. Working class and very posh: Leave. Insecure middle: Remain
No, look at the map - the "cone" pronunciation is most prevalent in the midlands, the deindustrialised north and the Thames estuary, prime Leave areas, and least prevalent in the Remain heartland of Scotland. It's just another example of Leave voters being wrong about everything.
Belief in ghosts also exhibits this weird social pattern - it is found in the working and upper classes. The insecure middle is profoundly skeptic
This is true, btw. Its a sociological known
Another thing the middle classes are right about.
Quite possibly so. I’m not being down on the aspiring middle classes
They are the people that get things done. The strivers. The shopkeepers. The accountants. The money men and the IT people and the managers of things. I just keep my social intercourse with them to a minimum because of the Cringe Factor
I’ve heard that you try to avoid the tradesman’s entrance.
Though we Scots are less class obsessed I always liked counter jumper as an anachronistic class based insult. Tbf it would probably describe most of our political class nowadays, and PB for that matter.
The Scots have sectarianism, the English have class. As it were
I'm always astounded at the depths of PBScotch Expertise.
I strongly believe that the prejudice against blending and the worship of single malts is a mistake.
Much as the worship of wine from single, often tiny, piece of land is to neglect a whole host of skills in the truly able winemaker.
There are some excellent blends around - most obviously Grouse.
Actually, there's a lot to be said for Glenfiddich as an *introduction* to single malts for the timid southron. It certainly expanded the market in that sense, historically, and it has that role still even now.
Yes. Pointless “taste” snobbery (often based on price+ignorance) annoys anyone sane. From pretty much everything. Certainly booze.
It occurs to me that Nuneaton is at the North Western edge of a peculiarly under-known region of England that is our closest equivalent to the flyover states of the US mid-west. If Birmingham is our Chicago, as has often been claimed, then these places are our Kansas and Oklahoma. The drive-over counties.
The region is bounded in the South West by Banbury and the M40, in the North by Nuneaton, Hinckley and the Southern outskirts of Leicester, it contains half of Warwickshire and most of Northants, and nudges the borders of Bedford and Milton Keynes in the South East.
This is where the M1, M6, A14 and national rail freight systems converge, with the Watford Gap or the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal its spiritual centre.
Is there a region more accessible yet less known to the British mind than this little oval of logistics parks on the way to somewhere else? As familiar yet mysterious as Troyes, St Dizier or the Plateau de Langres in France.
Lincolnshire is accessible but remains unknown. As does much of Cumbria outside the National park area, though the M6 runs through the middle of much of it.
Yes the area where the East Midlands meets the South East and East Anglia - Bedford, Northampton, Lincoln, Peterborough - seems the most anonymous and unknown to me. What's the accent? What are the regional food items? What do they call a bread roll or a small pedestrian alley? How do they pronounce scone? No idea.
It occurs to me that Nuneaton is at the North Western edge of a peculiarly under-known region of England that is our closest equivalent to the flyover states of the US mid-west. If Birmingham is our Chicago, as has often been claimed, then these places are our Kansas and Oklahoma. The drive-over counties.
The region is bounded in the South West by Banbury and the M40, in the North by Nuneaton, Hinckley and the Southern outskirts of Leicester, it contains half of Warwickshire and most of Northants, and nudges the borders of Bedford and Milton Keynes in the South East.
This is where the M1, M6, A14 and national rail freight systems converge, with the Watford Gap or the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal its spiritual centre.
Is there a region more accessible yet less known to the British mind than this little oval of logistics parks on the way to somewhere else? As familiar yet mysterious as Troyes, St Dizier or the Plateau de Langres in France.
Lincolnshire is accessible but remains unknown. As does much of Cumbria outside the National park area, though the M6 runs through the middle of much of it.
Yes the area where the East Midlands meets the South East and East Anglia - Bedford, Northampton, Lincoln, Peterborough - seems the most anonymous and unknown to me. What's the accent? What are the regional food items? What do they call a bread roll or a small pedestrian alley? How do they pronounce scone? No idea.
Lincolnshire is north of Leicester so 'scon'. The rest scone.
suggests that while the scone/scone pronunciation divide is geographical, it's not THAT geographical - most locations contain a far wedge of both 'scone' and 'scone'.
Scotland appears far more 'scone' however - I suppose that is where my pronunciation comes from, as my Scottish grandmother was by far the most influential scone-maker in the family.
Anyway, Devon seems ambivalent/in places scone (cone) favouring and Cornwall goes for scone (cone). So surely that seals it. Plus parts of God's Own County, plus much of Essex.
The debate is over, my friends.
ETA: And the great seat of learning that is Kingston Upon Hull
The late Queen pronounce it 'scon'. And TSE is, of course, a republican.
But let us not stoop to the misplaced pedantry of Professor Higgins.
...An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him,
The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him. One common language I'm afraid we'll never get. Oh, why can't the English learn to set
A good example to people whose English is painful to your ears? The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears. There even are places where English completely
Disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years!..
The Queen's mother was Scottish, of course, which may account for her pronunciation.
I think 'scon' is RP. Though the notion of RP is also hotly contested these days.
Indeed. It's fascinating to observe how HMQE2's accent evolved over the years.
When it came to scones, she remained adamantine.
A sad statement on the times that no one gives a feck how her etiolated heirs and their marry-ins pronounce it. Though no doubt the Mail is preparing a hit piece on Meghan pronouncing it skawn.
You could argue that RP - with all its modulations over the decades - died with her.
It really hasn’t. My older daughter goes to a quite posh, highly coveted state Sixth Form in north London. They all speak pretty standard RP - not extreme like the young QE2 but deffo RP
It is still the accepted and necessary accent if you want to get on. Thank god. Because Multicultural London English is HIDEOUS
That's no longer RP; it's just richspeak.
There was a time when the two weren't identical.
Probably true but I think that’s because the super poshos came somewhat downmarket as they started to sound ridiculous. Like the young QE2
It is a fascinating subject. Like - why do Scottish accents often sound quite posh and educated to RP English people (not Glasgow obvs) yet Irish, Welsh and West Country do not?
It must be a legacy of when Scotland - before the SNP - had a good education system and exported a lot of doctors, engineers, scientists etc
Suggest it's because England had RP. 70 years ago, if you went to a grammar school or a private school, you'd have RP drummed into you. (I'd say that started to break down in the 60s - neither my parents nor my wife's parents, all of whom went to grammar schools in the 60s, nor anyone really they associate with, speaks with RP.) Almost everyone in England who was educated had RP - it became a badge. Not so much in Scotland, I don't think. So there are fewer negative associations with Scottish accents than English ones.
I disagree on this. I’m fairly sure it’s because Scotland really did have a superior education system and also the Scots that English people tended to meet would be the mobile successful ones. The doctors and engineers. The steelworkers of Corby were an exception
It’s a bit like the way Americans worship the posh British accent and they vaguely imagine everyone in Britain lives in Downton Abbey. They know it’s not true logically. Yet the reflex remains
I’ve got male British friends in America who attribute their sexual success to their accents. Indeed I’ve got a male British friend in America who made sure - despite living in America - that his son kept some kind of British accent. So he would also be popular with the girls. And it worked! Except it turns out he’s gay so it’s boys
Also if you are dealing with americans on the phone the british accent helps a great deal. They always seem to go above and beyond for you.
Yes it’s amusing. And for the post imperial downtrodden Brit it is some consolation. I find I amp up the poshness of my English in America just to get that reaction
And it always works. Americans are generally quite loud and confident but you can knock them off their stride simply by talking like Her Late Maj, then a flicker of social insecurity appears. They presume you got a double first at Trinity and you own a deer park and they become noticeably more humble. Also they just like the accent. Makes them smile
I find I vary it according to company; I’ve even caught myself saying “restroom” in certain circumstances
Toilet or loo, depending on how many syllables I have time to pronounce. Lavatory is ridiculous.
I remember an American woman I used to work with being absolutely scandalised I'd used the word 'toilet'. It was as if I'd sworn. "You must say 'bathroom'", she chided. I'm not having a bath, though, am I? And given I'm in the office it's unlikely there is a bath. Whereas there will be a toilet. Now I can see the desire to euphemise toilet in a way I absolutely can't with pudding. But still. It's not that great a taboo. I'm not ashamed to be going to the loo. I'm not asking anyone to watch; just explaining my temporary absence from the room.
When I go to the pub for a session with my mates we keep a running count of how many times each of us has to go for a pee. Lowest number wins. It adds quite a buzz to proceedings since we all want to be The Man (as it were).
I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Yes, “scone” to rhyme with “cone” is surely a lower middle class genteelism, like “serviette”. I can see John Betjeman quietly wincing when I hear it
Opposite - the short 'o' for scone sounds odd and pretentious to me. Maybe because the only person I know who says it that way is odd and pretentious.
My favourite on this is when you get people who naturally do short 'a's (eg people from the North) trying too hard to change to the (perceived) classier Southern long 'a' sound.
It can lead to horrors such as the "garse cooker".
The truth is scone is one of few words without a strong class or North-South aspect to its pronunciation. It's a complex fractured map. So everyone things their way is the normal and natural way and the other way is pretentious, but they're mistaken.
I struggle to think of another word like that in the English language.
The late Queen said scone to rhyme with gone. That’s the posh and proper way. Below that is a layer of insecure middle class people. Or working class people trying to be middle class - @kinabalu - they say scone like cone
Below that is the uncaring working class and the feral Celts, they say it like the Queen
This isn’t actually an unusual pattern in British life. See the Brexit vote. Working class and very posh: Leave. Insecure middle: Remain
No, look at the map - the "cone" pronunciation is most prevalent in the midlands, the deindustrialised north and the Thames estuary, prime Leave areas, and least prevalent in the Remain heartland of Scotland. It's just another example of Leave voters being wrong about everything.
Belief in ghosts also exhibits this weird social pattern - it is found in the working and upper classes. The insecure middle is profoundly skeptic
This is true, btw. Its a sociological known
Another thing the middle classes are right about.
Quite possibly so. I’m not being down on the aspiring middle classes
They are the people that get things done. The strivers. The shopkeepers. The accountants. The money men and the IT people and the managers of things. I just keep my social intercourse with them to a minimum because of the Cringe Factor
I’ve heard that you try to avoid the tradesman’s entrance.
Though we Scots are less class obsessed I always liked counter jumper as an anachronistic class based insult. Tbf it would probably describe most of our political class nowadays, and PB for that matter.
The Scots have sectarianism, the English have class. As it were
I'm always astounded at the depths of PBScotch Expertise.
I strongly believe that the prejudice against blending and the worship of single malts is a mistake.
Much as the worship of wine from single, often tiny, piece of land is to neglect a whole host of skills in the truly able winemaker.
There's no inherent reason why blends should be worse than single malts. What they usually are, of course, is cheaper. And therefore more cheaply produced. And therefore, usually, of a lower quality. A £12 bottle of blend will almost never be as good as a £30 bottle of single malt - but a £12 bottle of anything is rarely as good as it's £30 equivalent.
I’m rather fond of Johnnie Walker black label, in a retro way. Also it’s often the only decent alcohol you can get in really remote places
Stuck in a one whore town in Yunnanese Tibet? In the solitary bar by the dead yak there will be a dusty bottle of Black Label
I can’t stand whiskey, but Johnnie Walker Red features in the opening line of one of my favourite songs; ‘Miss Misery’ by Elliott Smith
Some from both the upper class and the working class are just as snot-nosed as the middle classes. There is even snobbery on council estates.
There used to be an upper class bod in this parish who kept going on about where he shopped and how he "grew up on an estate", har har. Others from the upper class don't give a fuck about class, aren't credulous believers either in science or in non-scientific religions, call a ghost a ghost when they experience one, and generally try to see things as they are. See for example what Charles Spencer has written about boarding school. Good on him. You'd never get a nouve from the middle classes like Rishi Sunak writing anything like that in a million years.
Another example of someone from the upper class who has been telling it how it really is recently is Constance Marten, from the dock at the Old Bailey. 👍 Constance. No middle class wanker will ever share this view. The case is a great shibboleth.
Of course many working class people "would" do the same if they could, but generally their minds get smashed at school, and the rebellious ones [*] get very severely worked over.
*For those who don't already know: this doesn't mean gangsters.
PS I learnt yesterday that Dillibe Onyeama had died. RIP Dillibe.
Overnight, Ukraine has gone from exporter to blackout: exploiting weakened air defense, Russia destroyed 70-75% of Ukraine's thermal power production and 35-40% of hydro production in a spring spree of missile attacks https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1779812066330567001
There have been quite a few comments from Ukrainians contrasting the way Iran's attack on Isreal was repelled with the lack of air defence support for Ukraine.
Indeed pretty hypocritical of the west to act like this. But the israel lobby in the us is powerful.
On topic... surely Hartlegrad is the local government area to watch on May 2nd. The Fukkers are contesting every seat and have a very strong local presence. It's the heartland of the Brexit Industrial Complex and if the Fukkers don't make headway there then their threat to the tories is overstated.
It occurs to me that Nuneaton is at the North Western edge of a peculiarly under-known region of England that is our closest equivalent to the flyover states of the US mid-west. If Birmingham is our Chicago, as has often been claimed, then these places are our Kansas and Oklahoma. The drive-over counties.
The region is bounded in the South West by Banbury and the M40, in the North by Nuneaton, Hinckley and the Southern outskirts of Leicester, it contains half of Warwickshire and most of Northants, and nudges the borders of Bedford and Milton Keynes in the South East.
This is where the M1, M6, A14 and national rail freight systems converge, with the Watford Gap or the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal its spiritual centre.
Is there a region more accessible yet less known to the British mind than this little oval of logistics parks on the way to somewhere else? As familiar yet mysterious as Troyes, St Dizier or the Plateau de Langres in France.
Lincolnshire is accessible but remains unknown. As does much of Cumbria outside the National park area, though the M6 runs through the middle of much of it.
Yes the area where the East Midlands meets the South East and East Anglia - Bedford, Northampton, Lincoln, Peterborough - seems the most anonymous and unknown to me. What's the accent? What are the regional food items? What do they call a bread roll or a small pedestrian alley? How do they pronounce scone? No idea.
It occurs to me that Nuneaton is at the North Western edge of a peculiarly under-known region of England that is our closest equivalent to the flyover states of the US mid-west. If Birmingham is our Chicago, as has often been claimed, then these places are our Kansas and Oklahoma. The drive-over counties.
The region is bounded in the South West by Banbury and the M40, in the North by Nuneaton, Hinckley and the Southern outskirts of Leicester, it contains half of Warwickshire and most of Northants, and nudges the borders of Bedford and Milton Keynes in the South East.
This is where the M1, M6, A14 and national rail freight systems converge, with the Watford Gap or the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal its spiritual centre.
Is there a region more accessible yet less known to the British mind than this little oval of logistics parks on the way to somewhere else? As familiar yet mysterious as Troyes, St Dizier or the Plateau de Langres in France.
Lincolnshire is accessible but remains unknown. As does much of Cumbria outside the National park area, though the M6 runs through the middle of much of it.
Yes the area where the East Midlands meets the South East and East Anglia - Bedford, Northampton, Lincoln, Peterborough - seems the most anonymous and unknown to me. What's the accent? What are the regional food items? What do they call a bread roll or a small pedestrian alley? How do they pronounce scone? No idea.
Lincolnshire is north of Leicester so 'scon'. The rest scone.
suggests that while the scone/scone pronunciation divide is geographical, it's not THAT geographical - most locations contain a far wedge of both 'scone' and 'scone'.
Scotland appears far more 'scone' however - I suppose that is where my pronunciation comes from, as my Scottish grandmother was by far the most influential scone-maker in the family.
Anyway, Devon seems ambivalent/in places scone (cone) favouring and Cornwall goes for scone (cone). So surely that seals it. Plus parts of God's Own County, plus much of Essex.
The debate is over, my friends.
ETA: And the great seat of learning that is Kingston Upon Hull
The late Queen pronounce it 'scon'. And TSE is, of course, a republican.
But let us not stoop to the misplaced pedantry of Professor Higgins.
...An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him,
The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him. One common language I'm afraid we'll never get. Oh, why can't the English learn to set
A good example to people whose English is painful to your ears? The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears. There even are places where English completely
Disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years!..
The Queen's mother was Scottish, of course, which may account for her pronunciation.
I think 'scon' is RP. Though the notion of RP is also hotly contested these days.
Indeed. It's fascinating to observe how HMQE2's accent evolved over the years.
When it came to scones, she remained adamantine.
A sad statement on the times that no one gives a feck how her etiolated heirs and their marry-ins pronounce it. Though no doubt the Mail is preparing a hit piece on Meghan pronouncing it skawn.
You could argue that RP - with all its modulations over the decades - died with her.
It really hasn’t. My older daughter goes to a quite posh, highly coveted state Sixth Form in north London. They all speak pretty standard RP - not extreme like the young QE2 but deffo RP
It is still the accepted and necessary accent if you want to get on. Thank god. Because Multicultural London English is HIDEOUS
That's no longer RP; it's just richspeak.
There was a time when the two weren't identical.
Probably true but I think that’s because the super poshos came somewhat downmarket as they started to sound ridiculous. Like the young QE2
It is a fascinating subject. Like - why do Scottish accents often sound quite posh and educated to RP English people (not Glasgow obvs) yet Irish, Welsh and West Country do not?
It must be a legacy of when Scotland - before the SNP - had a good education system and exported a lot of doctors, engineers, scientists etc
Suggest it's because England had RP. 70 years ago, if you went to a grammar school or a private school, you'd have RP drummed into you. (I'd say that started to break down in the 60s - neither my parents nor my wife's parents, all of whom went to grammar schools in the 60s, nor anyone really they associate with, speaks with RP.) Almost everyone in England who was educated had RP - it became a badge. Not so much in Scotland, I don't think. So there are fewer negative associations with Scottish accents than English ones.
I disagree on this. I’m fairly sure it’s because Scotland really did have a superior education system and also the Scots that English people tended to meet would be the mobile successful ones. The doctors and engineers. The steelworkers of Corby were an exception
It’s a bit like the way Americans worship the posh British accent and they vaguely imagine everyone in Britain lives in Downton Abbey. They know it’s not true logically. Yet the reflex remains
I’ve got male British friends in America who attribute their sexual success to their accents. Indeed I’ve got a male British friend in America who made sure - despite living in America - that his son kept some kind of British accent. So he would also be popular with the girls. And it worked! Except it turns out he’s gay so it’s boys
Also if you are dealing with americans on the phone the british accent helps a great deal. They always seem to go above and beyond for you.
Yes it’s amusing. And for the post imperial downtrodden Brit it is some consolation. I find I amp up the poshness of my English in America just to get that reaction
And it always works. Americans are generally quite loud and confident but you can knock them off their stride simply by talking like Her Late Maj, then a flicker of social insecurity appears. They presume you got a double first at Trinity and you own a deer park and they become noticeably more humble. Also they just like the accent. Makes them smile
Yeah, when I worked in Boulder, CO, back in 2011, my boss treated me and my colleagues to dinner soon after I started, and he announced in front of everyone, "doesn't Sunil have a wonderful British accent?"
I find I vary it according to company; I’ve even caught myself saying “restroom” in certain circumstances
Toilet or loo, depending on how many syllables I have time to pronounce. Lavatory is ridiculous.
I remember an American woman I used to work with being absolutely scandalised I'd used the word 'toilet'. It was as if I'd sworn. "You must say 'bathroom'", she chided. I'm not having a bath, though, am I? And given I'm in the office it's unlikely there is a bath. Whereas there will be a toilet. Now I can see the desire to euphemise toilet in a way I absolutely can't with pudding. But still. It's not that great a taboo. I'm not ashamed to be going to the loo. I'm not asking anyone to watch; just explaining my temporary absence from the room.
When I go to the pub for a session with my mates we keep a running count of how many times each of us has to go for a pee. Lowest number wins. It adds quite a buzz to proceedings since we all want to be The Man (as it were).
I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Yes, “scone” to rhyme with “cone” is surely a lower middle class genteelism, like “serviette”. I can see John Betjeman quietly wincing when I hear it
Opposite - the short 'o' for scone sounds odd and pretentious to me. Maybe because the only person I know who says it that way is odd and pretentious.
My favourite on this is when you get people who naturally do short 'a's (eg people from the North) trying too hard to change to the (perceived) classier Southern long 'a' sound.
It can lead to horrors such as the "garse cooker".
The truth is scone is one of few words without a strong class or North-South aspect to its pronunciation. It's a complex fractured map. So everyone things their way is the normal and natural way and the other way is pretentious, but they're mistaken.
I struggle to think of another word like that in the English language.
The late Queen said scone to rhyme with gone. That’s the posh and proper way. Below that is a layer of insecure middle class people. Or working class people trying to be middle class - @kinabalu - they say scone like cone
Below that is the uncaring working class and the feral Celts, they say it like the Queen
This isn’t actually an unusual pattern in British life. See the Brexit vote. Working class and very posh: Leave. Insecure middle: Remain
No, look at the map - the "cone" pronunciation is most prevalent in the midlands, the deindustrialised north and the Thames estuary, prime Leave areas, and least prevalent in the Remain heartland of Scotland. It's just another example of Leave voters being wrong about everything.
Belief in ghosts also exhibits this weird social pattern - it is found in the working and upper classes. The insecure middle is profoundly skeptic
This is true, btw. Its a sociological known
Another thing the middle classes are right about.
Quite possibly so. I’m not being down on the aspiring middle classes
They are the people that get things done. The strivers. The shopkeepers. The accountants. The money men and the IT people and the managers of things. I just keep my social intercourse with them to a minimum because of the Cringe Factor
I’ve heard that you try to avoid the tradesman’s entrance.
Though we Scots are less class obsessed I always liked counter jumper as an anachronistic class based insult. Tbf it would probably describe most of our political class nowadays, and PB for that matter.
The Scots have sectarianism, the English have class. As it were
I'm always astounded at the depths of PBScotch Expertise.
I strongly believe that the prejudice against blending and the worship of single malts is a mistake.
Much as the worship of wine from single, often tiny, piece of land is to neglect a whole host of skills in the truly able winemaker.
There's no inherent reason why blends should be worse than single malts. What they usually are, of course, is cheaper. And therefore more cheaply produced. And therefore, usually, of a lower quality. A £12 bottle of blend will almost never be as good as a £30 bottle of single malt - but a £12 bottle of anything is rarely as good as it's £30 equivalent.
I’m rather fond of Johnnie Walker black label, in a retro way. Also it’s often the only decent alcohol you can get in really remote places
Stuck in a one whore town in Yunnanese Tibet? In the solitary bar by the dead yak there will be a dusty bottle of Black Label
I can’t stand whiskey, but Johnnie Walker Red features in the opening line of one of my favourite songs; ‘Miss Misery’ by Elliott Smith
You should try it without the "e". Its much nicer.
It occurs to me that Nuneaton is at the North Western edge of a peculiarly under-known region of England that is our closest equivalent to the flyover states of the US mid-west. If Birmingham is our Chicago, as has often been claimed, then these places are our Kansas and Oklahoma. The drive-over counties.
The region is bounded in the South West by Banbury and the M40, in the North by Nuneaton, Hinckley and the Southern outskirts of Leicester, it contains half of Warwickshire and most of Northants, and nudges the borders of Bedford and Milton Keynes in the South East.
This is where the M1, M6, A14 and national rail freight systems converge, with the Watford Gap or the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal its spiritual centre.
Is there a region more accessible yet less known to the British mind than this little oval of logistics parks on the way to somewhere else? As familiar yet mysterious as Troyes, St Dizier or the Plateau de Langres in France.
Lincolnshire is accessible but remains unknown. As does much of Cumbria outside the National park area, though the M6 runs through the middle of much of it.
Yes the area where the East Midlands meets the South East and East Anglia - Bedford, Northampton, Lincoln, Peterborough - seems the most anonymous and unknown to me. What's the accent? What are the regional food items? What do they call a bread roll or a small pedestrian alley? How do they pronounce scone? No idea.
It occurs to me that Nuneaton is at the North Western edge of a peculiarly under-known region of England that is our closest equivalent to the flyover states of the US mid-west. If Birmingham is our Chicago, as has often been claimed, then these places are our Kansas and Oklahoma. The drive-over counties.
The region is bounded in the South West by Banbury and the M40, in the North by Nuneaton, Hinckley and the Southern outskirts of Leicester, it contains half of Warwickshire and most of Northants, and nudges the borders of Bedford and Milton Keynes in the South East.
This is where the M1, M6, A14 and national rail freight systems converge, with the Watford Gap or the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal its spiritual centre.
Is there a region more accessible yet less known to the British mind than this little oval of logistics parks on the way to somewhere else? As familiar yet mysterious as Troyes, St Dizier or the Plateau de Langres in France.
Lincolnshire is accessible but remains unknown. As does much of Cumbria outside the National park area, though the M6 runs through the middle of much of it.
Yes the area where the East Midlands meets the South East and East Anglia - Bedford, Northampton, Lincoln, Peterborough - seems the most anonymous and unknown to me. What's the accent? What are the regional food items? What do they call a bread roll or a small pedestrian alley? How do they pronounce scone? No idea.
Lincolnshire is north of Leicester so 'scon'. The rest scone.
suggests that while the scone/scone pronunciation divide is geographical, it's not THAT geographical - most locations contain a far wedge of both 'scone' and 'scone'.
Scotland appears far more 'scone' however - I suppose that is where my pronunciation comes from, as my Scottish grandmother was by far the most influential scone-maker in the family.
Anyway, Devon seems ambivalent/in places scone (cone) favouring and Cornwall goes for scone (cone). So surely that seals it. Plus parts of God's Own County, plus much of Essex.
The debate is over, my friends.
ETA: And the great seat of learning that is Kingston Upon Hull
The late Queen pronounce it 'scon'. And TSE is, of course, a republican.
But let us not stoop to the misplaced pedantry of Professor Higgins.
...An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him,
The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him. One common language I'm afraid we'll never get. Oh, why can't the English learn to set
A good example to people whose English is painful to your ears? The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears. There even are places where English completely
Disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years!..
The Queen's mother was Scottish, of course, which may account for her pronunciation.
I think 'scon' is RP. Though the notion of RP is also hotly contested these days.
Indeed. It's fascinating to observe how HMQE2's accent evolved over the years.
When it came to scones, she remained adamantine.
A sad statement on the times that no one gives a feck how her etiolated heirs and their marry-ins pronounce it. Though no doubt the Mail is preparing a hit piece on Meghan pronouncing it skawn.
You could argue that RP - with all its modulations over the decades - died with her.
It really hasn’t. My older daughter goes to a quite posh, highly coveted state Sixth Form in north London. They all speak pretty standard RP - not extreme like the young QE2 but deffo RP
It is still the accepted and necessary accent if you want to get on. Thank god. Because Multicultural London English is HIDEOUS
That's something we can all agree on. Bring back Cockney.
Yes I like cockney. I miss it. “Awright luv”, “shaddup and do yer bird”. “Ain’t got nuffink”
Vastly preferable to MLE. However I think @cookie makes an excellent point - MLE is so horrible and so associated with crime and drugs etc it is surely driving a revival in RP - certainly in London. All my daughter’s friends speak like Princess Kate - and they’re not aristocrats
I quite like MLE. The cheeky wide boy element of Estuary mixed with the warmth and energy of the Caribbean. Caribbean accents themselves (vastly different from island to island, even from parish to parish) are themselves the product of hundreds of years of mixing accents from Africa and India with Scots and Irish indentured workers, the British personnel of the slave trade and the plantation economy, nonconformist preachers, French and Spanish influences... Then imported back to the mother country and blended with Cockney and London Irish to give you MLE, bruv! That's hundreds of years of colonial history encoded in how people communicate. If you hate MLE you hate the British Empire, basically.
lol, nice try, but no
Actually, this is my new definition of anti-woke: someone who loves capitalism and colonialism but hates everything they've led to.
I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Yes, “scone” to rhyme with “cone” is surely a lower middle class genteelism, like “serviette”. I can see John Betjeman quietly wincing when I hear it
Opposite - the short 'o' for scone sounds odd and pretentious to me. Maybe because the only person I know who says it that way is odd and pretentious.
My favourite on this is when you get people who naturally do short 'a's (eg people from the North) trying too hard to change to the (perceived) classier Southern long 'a' sound.
It can lead to horrors such as the "garse cooker".
The truth is scone is one of few words without a strong class or North-South aspect to its pronunciation. It's a complex fractured map. So everyone things their way is the normal and natural way and the other way is pretentious, but they're mistaken.
I struggle to think of another word like that in the English language.
The late Queen said scone to rhyme with gone. That’s the posh and proper way. Below that is a layer of insecure middle class people. Or working class people trying to be middle class - @kinabalu - they say scone like cone
Below that is the uncaring working class and the feral Celts, they say it like the Queen
This isn’t actually an unusual pattern in British life. See the Brexit vote. Working class and very posh: Leave. Insecure middle: Remain
No, look at the map - the "cone" pronunciation is most prevalent in the midlands, the deindustrialised north and the Thames estuary, prime Leave areas, and least prevalent in the Remain heartland of Scotland. It's just another example of Leave voters being wrong about everything.
Belief in ghosts also exhibits this weird social pattern - it is found in the working and upper classes. The insecure middle is profoundly skeptic
This is true, btw. Its a sociological known
Another thing the middle classes are right about.
Quite possibly so. I’m not being down on the aspiring middle classes
They are the people that get things done. The strivers. The shopkeepers. The accountants. The money men and the IT people and the managers of things. I just keep my social intercourse with them to a minimum because of the Cringe Factor
I’ve heard that you try to avoid the tradesman’s entrance.
Though we Scots are less class obsessed I always liked counter jumper as an anachronistic class based insult. Tbf it would probably describe most of our political class nowadays, and PB for that matter.
The Scots have sectarianism, the English have class. As it were
I'm always astounded at the depths of PBScotch Expertise.
I strongly believe that the prejudice against blending and the worship of single malts is a mistake.
Much as the worship of wine from single, often tiny, piece of land is to neglect a whole host of skills in the truly able winemaker.
There's no inherent reason why blends should be worse than single malts. What they usually are, of course, is cheaper. And therefore more cheaply produced. And therefore, usually, of a lower quality. A £12 bottle of blend will almost never be as good as a £30 bottle of single malt - but a £12 bottle of anything is rarely as good as it's £30 equivalent.
I beg to differ. Because of fads and snobbery, you can often find wine at £15 a bottle that is better than £50 stuff.
For example in Chablis - a number of the producers have disappeared up their own arses, tripling prices and spending like fools. Next to them, you find “farmers who make wine”. A fraction of the price…
One chap, his Premier Cru is cheaper than the Petits from the a couple of neighbours. And better than some Grand Crus!
I’m pretty sure I’ve detected similar in whisky and gin - paying for a name. I would bet the blends are trying harder - because they have to.
"Organisers of the Beijing half marathon are investigating allegations that three African athletes deliberately allowed China's star runner He Jie to win Sunday's race.
Footage appeared, external to show Kenya's Robert Keter and Willy Mnangat and Ethiopia's Dejene Hailu pointing to the line and slowing down before waving He past."
I find I vary it according to company; I’ve even caught myself saying “restroom” in certain circumstances
Toilet or loo, depending on how many syllables I have time to pronounce. Lavatory is ridiculous.
I remember an American woman I used to work with being absolutely scandalised I'd used the word 'toilet'. It was as if I'd sworn. "You must say 'bathroom'", she chided. I'm not having a bath, though, am I? And given I'm in the office it's unlikely there is a bath. Whereas there will be a toilet. Now I can see the desire to euphemise toilet in a way I absolutely can't with pudding. But still. It's not that great a taboo. I'm not ashamed to be going to the loo. I'm not asking anyone to watch; just explaining my temporary absence from the room.
When I go to the pub for a session with my mates we keep a running count of how many times each of us has to go for a pee. Lowest number wins. It adds quite a buzz to proceedings since we all want to be The Man (as it were).
Anybody else do this?
According to a strip in Viz it's not uncommon among ex-Paras.
I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Scone with the short 'o' reminds me of that same way of pronouncing hotel which some people do. It does have a Hyacinth Bouquet ring to it. No crime, far from it, but perhaps not something to aim for.
The opposite is true for me - scone to rhyme with cone sounds pretentious like 'an hotel'. But while it's not generally geographical, the map shows that you are from prime cone country, and scone to rhyme with cone no doubt sounds reassuringly authentic to you in the opposite way that scon does for me.
While we're on about this, I feel exactly the same way about the word 'dessert' - it sounds pretentious, like someone who consider the more authentic word 'pudding' indelicate. But my Irish friend feels exactly the opposite: to her, 'pudding' sounds posh, and 'dessert' more authentic.
You can have a pudding for dessert, along with many other dishes - but a dessert for pudding ?
I accept that there is a common use of pudding to mean a particular sort of (*cringe*) dessert e.g. a sponge pudding. But to me a pudding is simply the last course of your meal (as long as it's sweet - though if someone said they were having cheese for their pudding, I wouldn't object). Also a steak and kidney pudding is a pudding. But to me that is an entirely different sense of the word pudding.
Pudding. It's just a much more enjoyable word. It can also be used as a mild insult. I don't really trust words like 'Dessert' where the emphasis is on the second syllable rather than the first. See also Cherie Blair.
Agreed. Sometimes I like to go even further and reduce the enjoyable “pudding” to the shocking terseness of “pud”
“Dessert” is Cringe Factor 8. The solidly working class “afters” is better, and it’s arguable that even “sweet” is preferable
We say ‘afters’ though my Dad often says ‘Desert’, deliberately mispronouncing ‘dessert’
Afters is also a late drink
I find that many recent immigrants from India (as well as a host of Youtube vloggers based in India) also say "desert" when they mean 'dessert'.
They also tend to mispronounce:
'lounge' as "launch" 'therapy' as "ther-ah-py" 'casualty' as "casuality" 'bowl' as "bowel" 'healthy' as "heldy" 'birthday' as "bird-day"
and a really weird one by certain Indian vloggers:
Some from both the upper class and the working class are just as snot-nosed as the middle classes. There is even snobbery on council estates.
There used to be an upper class bod in this parish who kept going on about where he shopped and how he "grew up on an estate", har har. Others from the upper class don't give a fuck about class, aren't credulous believers either in science or in non-scientific religions, call a ghost a ghost when they experience one, and generally try to see things as they are. See for example what Charles Spencer has written about boarding school. Good on him. You'd never get a nouve from the middle classes like Rishi Sunak writing anything like that in a million years.
Another example of someone from the upper class who has been telling it how it really is recently is Constance Marten, from the dock at the Old Bailey. 👍 Constance. No middle class wanker will ever share this view. The case is a great shibboleth.
Of course many working class people "would" do the same if they could, but generally their minds get smashed at school, and the rebellious ones [*] get very severely worked over.
*For those who don't already know: this doesn't mean gangsters.
PS I learnt yesterday that Dillibe Onyeama had died. RIP Dillibe.
As the grandson of humble immigrants to this country I’ve struggled to understand the class system in this country.
The worst sort are upper middle class people who try and pass themselves off as working class (whilst denigrating the working classes.)
I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Yes, “scone” to rhyme with “cone” is surely a lower middle class genteelism, like “serviette”. I can see John Betjeman quietly wincing when I hear it
Opposite - the short 'o' for scone sounds odd and pretentious to me. Maybe because the only person I know who says it that way is odd and pretentious.
My favourite on this is when you get people who naturally do short 'a's (eg people from the North) trying too hard to change to the (perceived) classier Southern long 'a' sound.
It can lead to horrors such as the "garse cooker".
The truth is scone is one of few words without a strong class or North-South aspect to its pronunciation. It's a complex fractured map. So everyone things their way is the normal and natural way and the other way is pretentious, but they're mistaken.
I struggle to think of another word like that in the English language.
The late Queen said scone to rhyme with gone. That’s the posh and proper way. Below that is a layer of insecure middle class people. Or working class people trying to be middle class - @kinabalu - they say scone like cone
Below that is the uncaring working class and the feral Celts, they say it like the Queen
This isn’t actually an unusual pattern in British life. See the Brexit vote. Working class and very posh: Leave. Insecure middle: Remain
No, look at the map - the "cone" pronunciation is most prevalent in the midlands, the deindustrialised north and the Thames estuary, prime Leave areas, and least prevalent in the Remain heartland of Scotland. It's just another example of Leave voters being wrong about everything.
Belief in ghosts also exhibits this weird social pattern - it is found in the working and upper classes. The insecure middle is profoundly skeptic
This is true, btw. Its a sociological known
Another thing the middle classes are right about.
Quite possibly so. I’m not being down on the aspiring middle classes
They are the people that get things done. The strivers. The shopkeepers. The accountants. The money men and the IT people and the managers of things. I just keep my social intercourse with them to a minimum because of the Cringe Factor
I’ve heard that you try to avoid the tradesman’s entrance.
Though we Scots are less class obsessed I always liked counter jumper as an anachronistic class based insult. Tbf it would probably describe most of our political class nowadays, and PB for that matter.
The Scots have sectarianism, the English have class. As it were
I'm always astounded at the depths of PBScotch Expertise.
I strongly believe that the prejudice against blending and the worship of single malts is a mistake.
Much as the worship of wine from single, often tiny, piece of land is to neglect a whole host of skills in the truly able winemaker.
There's no inherent reason why blends should be worse than single malts. What they usually are, of course, is cheaper. And therefore more cheaply produced. And therefore, usually, of a lower quality. A £12 bottle of blend will almost never be as good as a £30 bottle of single malt - but a £12 bottle of anything is rarely as good as it's £30 equivalent.
I beg to differ. Because of fads and snobbery, you can often find wine at £15 a bottle that is better than £50 stuff.
For example in Chablis - a number of the producers have disappeared up their own arses, tripling prices and spending like fools. Next to them, you find “farmers who make wine”. A fraction of the price…
One chap, his Premier Cru is cheaper than the Petits from the a couple of neighbours. And better than some Grand Crus!
I’m pretty sure I’ve detected similar in whisky and gin - paying for a name. I would bet the blends are trying harder - because they have to.
This is definitely true. Unfashionable alcohols are the ones to go for
eg sherry can be fantastic value, good complex drinks at cheapo prices
And, yes, some blended whisky
It was true of Greek wine - amazing whites for bargain prices, but now they’re fashionable and they’ve tripled the cost. Tsk
Some from both the upper class and the working class are just as snot-nosed as the middle classes. There is even snobbery on council estates.
There used to be an upper class bod in this parish who kept going on about where he shopped and how he "grew up on an estate", har har. Others from the upper class don't give a fuck about class, aren't credulous believers either in science or in non-scientific religions, call a ghost a ghost when they experience one, and generally try to see things as they are. See for example what Charles Spencer has written about boarding school. Good on him. You'd never get a nouve from the middle classes like Rishi Sunak writing anything like that in a million years.
Another example of someone from the upper class who has been telling it how it really is recently is Constance Marten, from the dock at the Old Bailey. 👍 Constance. No middle class wanker will ever share this view. The case is a great shibboleth.
Of course many working class people "would" do the same if they could, but generally their minds get smashed at school, and the rebellious ones [*] get very severely worked over.
*For those who don't already know: this doesn't mean gangsters.
PS I learnt yesterday that Dillibe Onyeama had died. RIP Dillibe.
It occurs to me that Nuneaton is at the North Western edge of a peculiarly under-known region of England that is our closest equivalent to the flyover states of the US mid-west. If Birmingham is our Chicago, as has often been claimed, then these places are our Kansas and Oklahoma. The drive-over counties.
The region is bounded in the South West by Banbury and the M40, in the North by Nuneaton, Hinckley and the Southern outskirts of Leicester, it contains half of Warwickshire and most of Northants, and nudges the borders of Bedford and Milton Keynes in the South East.
This is where the M1, M6, A14 and national rail freight systems converge, with the Watford Gap or the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal its spiritual centre.
Is there a region more accessible yet less known to the British mind than this little oval of logistics parks on the way to somewhere else? As familiar yet mysterious as Troyes, St Dizier or the Plateau de Langres in France.
Lincolnshire is accessible but remains unknown. As does much of Cumbria outside the National park area, though the M6 runs through the middle of much of it.
Yes the area where the East Midlands meets the South East and East Anglia - Bedford, Northampton, Lincoln, Peterborough - seems the most anonymous and unknown to me. What's the accent? What are the regional food items? What do they call a bread roll or a small pedestrian alley? How do they pronounce scone? No idea.
It occurs to me that Nuneaton is at the North Western edge of a peculiarly under-known region of England that is our closest equivalent to the flyover states of the US mid-west. If Birmingham is our Chicago, as has often been claimed, then these places are our Kansas and Oklahoma. The drive-over counties.
The region is bounded in the South West by Banbury and the M40, in the North by Nuneaton, Hinckley and the Southern outskirts of Leicester, it contains half of Warwickshire and most of Northants, and nudges the borders of Bedford and Milton Keynes in the South East.
This is where the M1, M6, A14 and national rail freight systems converge, with the Watford Gap or the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal its spiritual centre.
Is there a region more accessible yet less known to the British mind than this little oval of logistics parks on the way to somewhere else? As familiar yet mysterious as Troyes, St Dizier or the Plateau de Langres in France.
Lincolnshire is accessible but remains unknown. As does much of Cumbria outside the National park area, though the M6 runs through the middle of much of it.
Yes the area where the East Midlands meets the South East and East Anglia - Bedford, Northampton, Lincoln, Peterborough - seems the most anonymous and unknown to me. What's the accent? What are the regional food items? What do they call a bread roll or a small pedestrian alley? How do they pronounce scone? No idea.
Lincolnshire is north of Leicester so 'scon'. The rest scone.
suggests that while the scone/scone pronunciation divide is geographical, it's not THAT geographical - most locations contain a far wedge of both 'scone' and 'scone'.
Scotland appears far more 'scone' however - I suppose that is where my pronunciation comes from, as my Scottish grandmother was by far the most influential scone-maker in the family.
Anyway, Devon seems ambivalent/in places scone (cone) favouring and Cornwall goes for scone (cone). So surely that seals it. Plus parts of God's Own County, plus much of Essex.
The debate is over, my friends.
ETA: And the great seat of learning that is Kingston Upon Hull
The late Queen pronounce it 'scon'. And TSE is, of course, a republican.
But let us not stoop to the misplaced pedantry of Professor Higgins.
...An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him,
The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him. One common language I'm afraid we'll never get. Oh, why can't the English learn to set
A good example to people whose English is painful to your ears? The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears. There even are places where English completely
Disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years!..
The Queen's mother was Scottish, of course, which may account for her pronunciation.
I think 'scon' is RP. Though the notion of RP is also hotly contested these days.
Indeed. It's fascinating to observe how HMQE2's accent evolved over the years.
When it came to scones, she remained adamantine.
A sad statement on the times that no one gives a feck how her etiolated heirs and their marry-ins pronounce it. Though no doubt the Mail is preparing a hit piece on Meghan pronouncing it skawn.
You could argue that RP - with all its modulations over the decades - died with her.
It really hasn’t. My older daughter goes to a quite posh, highly coveted state Sixth Form in north London. They all speak pretty standard RP - not extreme like the young QE2 but deffo RP
It is still the accepted and necessary accent if you want to get on. Thank god. Because Multicultural London English is HIDEOUS
That's no longer RP; it's just richspeak.
There was a time when the two weren't identical.
Probably true but I think that’s because the super poshos came somewhat downmarket as they started to sound ridiculous. Like the young QE2
It is a fascinating subject. Like - why do Scottish accents often sound quite posh and educated to RP English people (not Glasgow obvs) yet Irish, Welsh and West Country do not?
It must be a legacy of when Scotland - before the SNP - had a good education system and exported a lot of doctors, engineers, scientists etc
Suggest it's because England had RP. 70 years ago, if you went to a grammar school or a private school, you'd have RP drummed into you. (I'd say that started to break down in the 60s - neither my parents nor my wife's parents, all of whom went to grammar schools in the 60s, nor anyone really they associate with, speaks with RP.) Almost everyone in England who was educated had RP - it became a badge. Not so much in Scotland, I don't think. So there are fewer negative associations with Scottish accents than English ones.
I think the final death blow for RP was the numerous sketches by Pamela Stephenson on Not the 9 o'clock News mocking the pronunciation of BBC news reporters. Her pronunciation of Mugabe sticks particularly in the mind.
I change the way I pronounce words depending on where I am, and don't see anything wrong with doing so.
Code switching; nothing wrong with that if you do it well.
I have to. My original accent is not great for professional purposes. I really do have to dial it back.
I was brought up in Fife and Newcastle. My dad is from London, my mum from the West country. I've lived in the Caribbean and the United States. I'm married to someone who spent most of her childhood in the East Midlands. I've lived in SE London for the last decade and a half. My accent is a fucking car crash.
You are Pete Postlethwaite from "The Usual Suspects"?
I find I vary it according to company; I’ve even caught myself saying “restroom” in certain circumstances
Toilet or loo, depending on how many syllables I have time to pronounce. Lavatory is ridiculous.
I remember an American woman I used to work with being absolutely scandalised I'd used the word 'toilet'. It was as if I'd sworn. "You must say 'bathroom'", she chided. I'm not having a bath, though, am I? And given I'm in the office it's unlikely there is a bath. Whereas there will be a toilet. Now I can see the desire to euphemise toilet in a way I absolutely can't with pudding. But still. It's not that great a taboo. I'm not ashamed to be going to the loo. I'm not asking anyone to watch; just explaining my temporary absence from the room.
When I go to the pub for a session with my mates we keep a running count of how many times each of us has to go for a pee. Lowest number wins. It adds quite a buzz to proceedings since we all want to be The Man (as it were).
Anybody else do this?
I'm good up to pint #3 but after that I might as well be sat in the toilets.
Some from both the upper class and the working class are just as snot-nosed as the middle classes. There is even snobbery on council estates.
There used to be an upper class bod in this parish who kept going on about where he shopped and how he "grew up on an estate", har har. Others from the upper class don't give a fuck about class, aren't credulous believers either in science or in non-scientific religions, call a ghost a ghost when they experience one, and generally try to see things as they are. See for example what Charles Spencer has written about boarding school. Good on him. You'd never get a nouve from the middle classes like Rishi Sunak writing anything like that in a million years.
Another example of someone from the upper class who has been telling it how it really is recently is Constance Marten, from the dock at the Old Bailey. 👍 Constance. No middle class wanker will ever share this view. The case is a great shibboleth.
Of course many working class people "would" do the same if they could, but generally their minds get smashed at school, and the rebellious ones [*] get very severely worked over.
*For those who don't already know: this doesn't mean gangsters.
PS I learnt yesterday that Dillibe Onyeama had died. RIP Dillibe.
Rishi isn't a "nouve".
There’s a hint of noov in him, but only a hint. He went to a genuinely posh school and he’s worth £1bn and he’s the Prime Minister, so he certainly doesn’t have classic noov insecurities
But I bet he still feels a tiny bit noov when surrounded by Tory blue bloods
When I go to the pub for a session with my mates we keep a running count of how many times each of us has to go for a pee. Lowest number wins. It adds quite a buzz to proceedings since we all want to be The Man (as it were).
Anybody else do this?
Number of pints before a piss is the RN variant. I've seen eight done, never seen nine and ten exists only in hushed and reverent whispers of legendary heroics. Interestingly, many matches end with throwing up rather than the contestant pissing themselves.
Some from both the upper class and the working class are just as snot-nosed as the middle classes. There is even snobbery on council estates.
There used to be an upper class bod in this parish who kept going on about where he shopped and how he "grew up on an estate", har har. Others from the upper class don't give a fuck about class, aren't credulous believers either in science or in non-scientific religions, call a ghost a ghost when they experience one, and generally try to see things as they are. See for example what Charles Spencer has written about boarding school. Good on him. You'd never get a nouve from the middle classes like Rishi Sunak writing anything like that in a million years.
Another example of someone from the upper class who has been telling it how it really is recently is Constance Marten, from the dock at the Old Bailey. 👍 Constance. No middle class wanker will ever share this view. The case is a great shibboleth.
Of course many working class people "would" do the same if they could, but generally their minds get smashed at school, and the rebellious ones [*] get very severely worked over.
*For those who don't already know: this doesn't mean gangsters.
PS I learnt yesterday that Dillibe Onyeama had died. RIP Dillibe.
Rishi isn't a "nouve".
There’s a hint of noov in him, but only a hint. He went to a genuinely posh school and he’s worth £1bn and he’s the Prime Minister, so he certainly doesn’t have classic noov insecurities
But I bet he still feels a tiny bit noov when surrounded by Tory blue bloods
I would possibly die of cringe if I had to sit with someone who said “scone” to rhyme with “cone”. It could literally be lethal. Happily, no one in my social circle is that naff
What about people who put the cream on top of the jam… *shudders*
When I go to the pub for a session with my mates we keep a running count of how many times each of us has to go for a pee. Lowest number wins. It adds quite a buzz to proceedings since we all want to be The Man (as it were).
Anybody else do this?
Number of pints before a piss is the RN variant. I've seen eight done, never seen nine and ten exists only in hushed and reverent whispers of legendary heroics. Interestingly, many matches end with throwing up rather than the contestant pissing themselves.
Jesus. A pint and a half and I have been for a pee four times. Not an insubstantial amount either. Pissing like Seabiscuit.
I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Scone with the short 'o' reminds me of that same way of pronouncing hotel which some people do. It does have a Hyacinth Bouquet ring to it. No crime, far from it, but perhaps not something to aim for.
The opposite is true for me - scone to rhyme with cone sounds pretentious like 'an hotel'. But while it's not generally geographical, the map shows that you are from prime cone country, and scone to rhyme with cone no doubt sounds reassuringly authentic to you in the opposite way that scon does for me.
While we're on about this, I feel exactly the same way about the word 'dessert' - it sounds pretentious, like someone who consider the more authentic word 'pudding' indelicate. But my Irish friend feels exactly the opposite: to her, 'pudding' sounds posh, and 'dessert' more authentic.
You can have a pudding for dessert, along with many other dishes - but a dessert for pudding ?
I accept that there is a common use of pudding to mean a particular sort of (*cringe*) dessert e.g. a sponge pudding. But to me a pudding is simply the last course of your meal (as long as it's sweet - though if someone said they were having cheese for their pudding, I wouldn't object). Also a steak and kidney pudding is a pudding. But to me that is an entirely different sense of the word pudding.
Pudding. It's just a much more enjoyable word. It can also be used as a mild insult. I don't really trust words like 'Dessert' where the emphasis is on the second syllable rather than the first. See also Cherie Blair.
Agreed. Sometimes I like to go even further and reduce the enjoyable “pudding” to the shocking terseness of “pud”
“Dessert” is Cringe Factor 8. The solidly working class “afters” is better, and it’s arguable that even “sweet” is preferable
We say ‘afters’ though my Dad often says ‘Desert’, deliberately mispronouncing ‘dessert’
Afters is also a late drink
I find that many recent immigrants from India (as well as a host of Youtube vloggers based in India) also say "desert" when they mean 'dessert'.
They also tend to mispronounce:
'lounge' as "launch" 'therapy' as "ther-ah-py" 'casualty' as "casuality" 'bowl' as "bowel" 'healthy' as "heldy" 'birthday' as "bird-day"
and a really weird one by certain Indian vloggers:
'Kazakhstan' becomes "Kazakh-ee-stan"
I could go on all day, I guess
Pronouncing school as skoo-el is a Yorkshire thing.
"Organisers of the Beijing half marathon are investigating allegations that three African athletes deliberately allowed China's star runner He Jie to win Sunday's race.
Footage appeared, external to show Kenya's Robert Keter and Willy Mnangat and Ethiopia's Dejene Hailu pointing to the line and slowing down before waving He past."
'Afters' is fine - perfectly acceptable to say, though as you say, quite working class, which means that if you are middle class and use it you sound like you're needlessly trying to give the impression that you aren't middle class. 'Sweet' is slightly ridiculous, but still probably better than 'dessert'. But both - along with dessert - have the feeling of a euphemism for something that really doesn't need a euphemism. I blame the sort of women who think that pudding is somehow naughty.
There's a gender difference? Personally I think "pudding" suggests something large and slightly indigestible, as in "bread and butter pudding", and just wrong if you're referring to, say, creme caramel. I routinely say "dessert" or "sweet".
All of which just shows there isn't really a consensus...
Some from both the upper class and the working class are just as snot-nosed as the middle classes. There is even snobbery on council estates.
There used to be an upper class bod in this parish who kept going on about where he shopped and how he "grew up on an estate", har har. Others from the upper class don't give a fuck about class, aren't credulous believers either in science or in non-scientific religions, call a ghost a ghost when they experience one, and generally try to see things as they are. See for example what Charles Spencer has written about boarding school. Good on him. You'd never get a nouve from the middle classes like Rishi Sunak writing anything like that in a million years.
Another example of someone from the upper class who has been telling it how it really is recently is Constance Marten, from the dock at the Old Bailey. 👍 Constance. No middle class wanker will ever share this view. The case is a great shibboleth.
Of course many working class people "would" do the same if they could, but generally their minds get smashed at school, and the rebellious ones [*] get very severely worked over.
*For those who don't already know: this doesn't mean gangsters.
PS I learnt yesterday that Dillibe Onyeama had died. RIP Dillibe.
Rishi isn't a "nouve".
There’s a hint of noov in him, but only a hint. He went to a genuinely posh school and he’s worth £1bn and he’s the Prime Minister, so he certainly doesn’t have classic noov insecurities
But I bet he still feels a tiny bit noov when surrounded by Tory blue bloods
What he is more than anything is a tech bro
And son-in-law of one the richest billionaires in India, if not the world.
It occurs to me that Nuneaton is at the North Western edge of a peculiarly under-known region of England that is our closest equivalent to the flyover states of the US mid-west. If Birmingham is our Chicago, as has often been claimed, then these places are our Kansas and Oklahoma. The drive-over counties.
The region is bounded in the South West by Banbury and the M40, in the North by Nuneaton, Hinckley and the Southern outskirts of Leicester, it contains half of Warwickshire and most of Northants, and nudges the borders of Bedford and Milton Keynes in the South East.
This is where the M1, M6, A14 and national rail freight systems converge, with the Watford Gap or the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal its spiritual centre.
Is there a region more accessible yet less known to the British mind than this little oval of logistics parks on the way to somewhere else? As familiar yet mysterious as Troyes, St Dizier or the Plateau de Langres in France.
Lincolnshire is accessible but remains unknown. As does much of Cumbria outside the National park area, though the M6 runs through the middle of much of it.
Yes the area where the East Midlands meets the South East and East Anglia - Bedford, Northampton, Lincoln, Peterborough - seems the most anonymous and unknown to me. What's the accent? What are the regional food items? What do they call a bread roll or a small pedestrian alley? How do they pronounce scone? No idea.
It occurs to me that Nuneaton is at the North Western edge of a peculiarly under-known region of England that is our closest equivalent to the flyover states of the US mid-west. If Birmingham is our Chicago, as has often been claimed, then these places are our Kansas and Oklahoma. The drive-over counties.
The region is bounded in the South West by Banbury and the M40, in the North by Nuneaton, Hinckley and the Southern outskirts of Leicester, it contains half of Warwickshire and most of Northants, and nudges the borders of Bedford and Milton Keynes in the South East.
This is where the M1, M6, A14 and national rail freight systems converge, with the Watford Gap or the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal its spiritual centre.
Is there a region more accessible yet less known to the British mind than this little oval of logistics parks on the way to somewhere else? As familiar yet mysterious as Troyes, St Dizier or the Plateau de Langres in France.
Lincolnshire is accessible but remains unknown. As does much of Cumbria outside the National park area, though the M6 runs through the middle of much of it.
Yes the area where the East Midlands meets the South East and East Anglia - Bedford, Northampton, Lincoln, Peterborough - seems the most anonymous and unknown to me. What's the accent? What are the regional food items? What do they call a bread roll or a small pedestrian alley? How do they pronounce scone? No idea.
Lincolnshire is north of Leicester so 'scon'. The rest scone.
suggests that while the scone/scone pronunciation divide is geographical, it's not THAT geographical - most locations contain a far wedge of both 'scone' and 'scone'.
Scotland appears far more 'scone' however - I suppose that is where my pronunciation comes from, as my Scottish grandmother was by far the most influential scone-maker in the family.
Anyway, Devon seems ambivalent/in places scone (cone) favouring and Cornwall goes for scone (cone). So surely that seals it. Plus parts of God's Own County, plus much of Essex.
The debate is over, my friends.
ETA: And the great seat of learning that is Kingston Upon Hull
The late Queen pronounce it 'scon'. And TSE is, of course, a republican.
But let us not stoop to the misplaced pedantry of Professor Higgins.
...An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him,
The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him. One common language I'm afraid we'll never get. Oh, why can't the English learn to set
A good example to people whose English is painful to your ears? The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears. There even are places where English completely
Disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years!..
The Queen's mother was Scottish, of course, which may account for her pronunciation.
I think 'scon' is RP. Though the notion of RP is also hotly contested these days.
They call it Queen’s English these days to distinguish it from its sister dialect Castle Scot.
When I go to the pub for a session with my mates we keep a running count of how many times each of us has to go for a pee. Lowest number wins. It adds quite a buzz to proceedings since we all want to be The Man (as it were).
Anybody else do this?
Number of pints before a piss is the RN variant. I've seen eight done, never seen nine and ten exists only in hushed and reverent whispers of legendary heroics. Interestingly, many matches end with throwing up rather than the contestant pissing themselves.
I gather there are one or two posh regiments in the Army where going for a pee at a formal dinner before the end of the evening is over is enough to derail a rupert's career. Even if it is his guest or wife who doesn't have a bladder like a fuel tank (and even if she is expecting etc).
I may be thinking of the previous generation, however. More female officers these days, for a start.
I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Scone with the short 'o' reminds me of that same way of pronouncing hotel which some people do. It does have a Hyacinth Bouquet ring to it. No crime, far from it, but perhaps not something to aim for.
The opposite is true for me - scone to rhyme with cone sounds pretentious like 'an hotel'. But while it's not generally geographical, the map shows that you are from prime cone country, and scone to rhyme with cone no doubt sounds reassuringly authentic to you in the opposite way that scon does for me.
While we're on about this, I feel exactly the same way about the word 'dessert' - it sounds pretentious, like someone who consider the more authentic word 'pudding' indelicate. But my Irish friend feels exactly the opposite: to her, 'pudding' sounds posh, and 'dessert' more authentic.
You can have a pudding for dessert, along with many other dishes - but a dessert for pudding ?
I accept that there is a common use of pudding to mean a particular sort of (*cringe*) dessert e.g. a sponge pudding. But to me a pudding is simply the last course of your meal (as long as it's sweet - though if someone said they were having cheese for their pudding, I wouldn't object). Also a steak and kidney pudding is a pudding. But to me that is an entirely different sense of the word pudding.
Pudding. It's just a much more enjoyable word. It can also be used as a mild insult. I don't really trust words like 'Dessert' where the emphasis is on the second syllable rather than the first. See also Cherie Blair.
Agreed. Sometimes I like to go even further and reduce the enjoyable “pudding” to the shocking terseness of “pud”
“Dessert” is Cringe Factor 8. The solidly working class “afters” is better, and it’s arguable that even “sweet” is preferable
We say ‘afters’ though my Dad often says ‘Desert’, deliberately mispronouncing ‘dessert’
Afters is also a late drink
I find that many recent immigrants from India (as well as a host of Youtube vloggers based in India) also say "desert" when they mean 'dessert'.
They also tend to mispronounce:
'lounge' as "launch" 'therapy' as "ther-ah-py" 'casualty' as "casuality" 'bowl' as "bowel" 'healthy' as "heldy" 'birthday' as "bird-day"
and a really weird one by certain Indian vloggers:
'Kazakhstan' becomes "Kazakh-ee-stan"
I could go on all day, I guess
Pronouncing school as skoo-el is a Yorkshire thing.
Some from both the upper class and the working class are just as snot-nosed as the middle classes. There is even snobbery on council estates.
There used to be an upper class bod in this parish who kept going on about where he shopped and how he "grew up on an estate", har har. Others from the upper class don't give a fuck about class, aren't credulous believers either in science or in non-scientific religions, call a ghost a ghost when they experience one, and generally try to see things as they are. See for example what Charles Spencer has written about boarding school. Good on him. You'd never get a nouve from the middle classes like Rishi Sunak writing anything like that in a million years.
Another example of someone from the upper class who has been telling it how it really is recently is Constance Marten, from the dock at the Old Bailey. 👍 Constance. No middle class wanker will ever share this view. The case is a great shibboleth.
Of course many working class people "would" do the same if they could, but generally their minds get smashed at school, and the rebellious ones [*] get very severely worked over.
*For those who don't already know: this doesn't mean gangsters.
PS I learnt yesterday that Dillibe Onyeama had died. RIP Dillibe.
Rishi isn't a "nouve".
There’s a hint of noov in him, but only a hint. He went to a genuinely posh school and he’s worth £1bn and he’s the Prime Minister, so he certainly doesn’t have classic noov insecurities
But I bet he still feels a tiny bit noov when surrounded by Tory blue bloods
What he is more than anything is a tech bro
And son-in-law of one the richest billionaires in India, if not the world.
He is of course one of the richest people, or even millionaires, but only just in the top quarter of billionaires both in India and worldwide.
I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Scone with the short 'o' reminds me of that same way of pronouncing hotel which some people do. It does have a Hyacinth Bouquet ring to it. No crime, far from it, but perhaps not something to aim for.
The opposite is true for me - scone to rhyme with cone sounds pretentious like 'an hotel'. But while it's not generally geographical, the map shows that you are from prime cone country, and scone to rhyme with cone no doubt sounds reassuringly authentic to you in the opposite way that scon does for me.
While we're on about this, I feel exactly the same way about the word 'dessert' - it sounds pretentious, like someone who consider the more authentic word 'pudding' indelicate. But my Irish friend feels exactly the opposite: to her, 'pudding' sounds posh, and 'dessert' more authentic.
You can have a pudding for dessert, along with many other dishes - but a dessert for pudding ?
I accept that there is a common use of pudding to mean a particular sort of (*cringe*) dessert e.g. a sponge pudding. But to me a pudding is simply the last course of your meal (as long as it's sweet - though if someone said they were having cheese for their pudding, I wouldn't object). Also a steak and kidney pudding is a pudding. But to me that is an entirely different sense of the word pudding.
Pudding. It's just a much more enjoyable word. It can also be used as a mild insult. I don't really trust words like 'Dessert' where the emphasis is on the second syllable rather than the first. See also Cherie Blair.
Agreed. Sometimes I like to go even further and reduce the enjoyable “pudding” to the shocking terseness of “pud”
“Dessert” is Cringe Factor 8. The solidly working class “afters” is better, and it’s arguable that even “sweet” is preferable
We say ‘afters’ though my Dad often says ‘Desert’, deliberately mispronouncing ‘dessert’
Afters is also a late drink
I find that many recent immigrants from India (as well as a host of Youtube vloggers based in India) also say "desert" when they mean 'dessert'.
They also tend to mispronounce:
'lounge' as "launch" 'therapy' as "ther-ah-py" 'casualty' as "casuality" 'bowl' as "bowel" 'healthy' as "heldy" 'birthday' as "bird-day"
and a really weird one by certain Indian vloggers:
'Kazakhstan' becomes "Kazakh-ee-stan"
I could go on all day, I guess
Pronouncing school as skoo-el is a Yorkshire thing.
Mackems say skewl.
Mackems go to school?
They have to understand the concept, if only to comprehend what to avoid.
I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Scone with the short 'o' reminds me of that same way of pronouncing hotel which some people do. It does have a Hyacinth Bouquet ring to it. No crime, far from it, but perhaps not something to aim for.
The opposite is true for me - scone to rhyme with cone sounds pretentious like 'an hotel'. But while it's not generally geographical, the map shows that you are from prime cone country, and scone to rhyme with cone no doubt sounds reassuringly authentic to you in the opposite way that scon does for me.
While we're on about this, I feel exactly the same way about the word 'dessert' - it sounds pretentious, like someone who consider the more authentic word 'pudding' indelicate. But my Irish friend feels exactly the opposite: to her, 'pudding' sounds posh, and 'dessert' more authentic.
You can have a pudding for dessert, along with many other dishes - but a dessert for pudding ?
I accept that there is a common use of pudding to mean a particular sort of (*cringe*) dessert e.g. a sponge pudding. But to me a pudding is simply the last course of your meal (as long as it's sweet - though if someone said they were having cheese for their pudding, I wouldn't object). Also a steak and kidney pudding is a pudding. But to me that is an entirely different sense of the word pudding.
Pudding. It's just a much more enjoyable word. It can also be used as a mild insult. I don't really trust words like 'Dessert' where the emphasis is on the second syllable rather than the first. See also Cherie Blair.
Agreed. Sometimes I like to go even further and reduce the enjoyable “pudding” to the shocking terseness of “pud”
“Dessert” is Cringe Factor 8. The solidly working class “afters” is better, and it’s arguable that even “sweet” is preferable
We say ‘afters’ though my Dad often says ‘Desert’, deliberately mispronouncing ‘dessert’
Afters is also a late drink
I find that many recent immigrants from India (as well as a host of Youtube vloggers based in India) also say "desert" when they mean 'dessert'.
They also tend to mispronounce:
'lounge' as "launch" 'therapy' as "ther-ah-py" 'casualty' as "casuality" 'bowl' as "bowel" 'healthy' as "heldy" 'birthday' as "bird-day"
and a really weird one by certain Indian vloggers:
'Kazakhstan' becomes "Kazakh-ee-stan"
I could go on all day, I guess
Pronouncing school as skoo-el is a Yorkshire thing.
I change the way I pronounce words depending on where I am, and don't see anything wrong with doing so.
Code switching; nothing wrong with that if you do it well.
I have to. My original accent is not great for professional purposes. I really do have to dial it back.
I was brought up in Fife and Newcastle. My dad is from London, my mum from the West country. I've lived in the Caribbean and the United States. I'm married to someone who spent most of her childhood in the East Midlands. I've lived in SE London for the last decade and a half. My accent is a fucking car crash.
I sympathise. My parents were Welsh and my father was in the oil industry. We moved around quite a bit - Gloucester, Leeds, Bristol, Horsham, the US, France and the Middle East. I picked up accents and dialects as if they were going out of fashion. Nobody can place my accent now. They lean in to listen and usually say "I'm trying to place where you're from..."
As an aside, I ended up at uni in St Andrews for my undergraduate degree. After graduation I ran some restaurants and hotels in and around Fife for a few years before returning to academia. Naturally, when you pick up accents quickly you... have a habit of slipping back into them when meeting somebody from that place. Always a bit awkward if you're front of house and the guest thinks you're patronising them...
Especially if they're professional golfers from South Africa...
Some from both the upper class and the working class are just as snot-nosed as the middle classes. There is even snobbery on council estates.
There used to be an upper class bod in this parish who kept going on about where he shopped and how he "grew up on an estate", har har. Others from the upper class don't give a fuck about class, aren't credulous believers either in science or in non-scientific religions, call a ghost a ghost when they experience one, and generally try to see things as they are. See for example what Charles Spencer has written about boarding school. Good on him. You'd never get a nouve from the middle classes like Rishi Sunak writing anything like that in a million years.
Another example of someone from the upper class who has been telling it how it really is recently is Constance Marten, from the dock at the Old Bailey. 👍 Constance. No middle class wanker will ever share this view. The case is a great shibboleth.
Of course many working class people "would" do the same if they could, but generally their minds get smashed at school, and the rebellious ones [*] get very severely worked over.
*For those who don't already know: this doesn't mean gangsters.
PS I learnt yesterday that Dillibe Onyeama had died. RIP Dillibe.
Rishi isn't a "nouve".
We must be working from different definitions. Or else there's info I'm missing about his parents. They're outside Britain's top decile by net worth, or at least they were - am I right?
He * went to a famous school that his father (an NHS GP) didn't go to * must have been a right crawler of a goody two shoes when he was there * married loadsamoney * joined the nouves' favourite political party to boot.
He's a textbook nouve. Or he would be if I wrote the textbook.
Admittedly he's a different kind of nouve from the son of a barrow boy who builds his own business to become a self-made millionaire, always loves a day at the races, has tastes that are considered vulgar, and comes across as a boastful extrovert with a loud mouth. Still a nouve though.
Why do Americans give you a pot of (not very) hot water and a teabag when you request a cup of tea? Do they imagine that putting the tea in the water would be an inpolite reminder of the Boston Tea Party?
Why do Americans give you a pot of (not very) hot water and a teabag when you request a cup of tea? Do they imagine that putting the tea in the water would be an inpolite reminder of the Boston Tea Party?
For those of us who prefer tea on the weaker side, this is vastly preferable to having a pot of overbrewed tea dumped on the table and needing to rush to remove and discard the bag.
I will entertain no further discussions on this topic with plebs who think it rhymes with gone.
Makes you sound like Hyacinth Bucket, rather than the proud, yet modest working class Yorkshireman we all recognise.
At least no one is rhyming it with 'done'.
Scone with the short 'o' reminds me of that same way of pronouncing hotel which some people do. It does have a Hyacinth Bouquet ring to it. No crime, far from it, but perhaps not something to aim for.
The opposite is true for me - scone to rhyme with cone sounds pretentious like 'an hotel'. But while it's not generally geographical, the map shows that you are from prime cone country, and scone to rhyme with cone no doubt sounds reassuringly authentic to you in the opposite way that scon does for me.
While we're on about this, I feel exactly the same way about the word 'dessert' - it sounds pretentious, like someone who consider the more authentic word 'pudding' indelicate. But my Irish friend feels exactly the opposite: to her, 'pudding' sounds posh, and 'dessert' more authentic.
You can have a pudding for dessert, along with many other dishes - but a dessert for pudding ?
I accept that there is a common use of pudding to mean a particular sort of (*cringe*) dessert e.g. a sponge pudding. But to me a pudding is simply the last course of your meal (as long as it's sweet - though if someone said they were having cheese for their pudding, I wouldn't object). Also a steak and kidney pudding is a pudding. But to me that is an entirely different sense of the word pudding.
Pudding. It's just a much more enjoyable word. It can also be used as a mild insult. I don't really trust words like 'Dessert' where the emphasis is on the second syllable rather than the first. See also Cherie Blair.
Agreed. Sometimes I like to go even further and reduce the enjoyable “pudding” to the shocking terseness of “pud”
“Dessert” is Cringe Factor 8. The solidly working class “afters” is better, and it’s arguable that even “sweet” is preferable
To have real class, you need to possess three types of balsamic.
And scone rhymes with gone.
No, you have no idea how many types of balsamic you posses.
But you can ask the butler to ask the cook, if she doesn’t mind, to tell you.
The otherwise loathsome Taki once said that you can tell you’re rich when you put your spoon into the pot of caviar you’re eating and it doesn’t touch the bottom.
When I go to the pub for a session with my mates we keep a running count of how many times each of us has to go for a pee. Lowest number wins. It adds quite a buzz to proceedings since we all want to be The Man (as it were).
Anybody else do this?
Number of pints before a piss is the RN variant. I've seen eight done, never seen nine and ten exists only in hushed and reverent whispers of legendary heroics. Interestingly, many matches end with throwing up rather than the contestant pissing themselves.
I gather there are one or two posh regiments in the Army where going for a pee at a formal dinner before the end of the evening is over is enough to derail a rupert's career. Even if it is his guest or wife who doesn't have a bladder like a fuel tank (and even if she is expecting etc).
I may be thinking of the previous generation, however. More female officers these days, for a start.
That's what did for Tycho Brahe. He was on a drinking binge with the king(?) and it wasn't the done thing to be the first to go to the toilet. Died of a burst bladder.
I find I vary it according to company; I’ve even caught myself saying “restroom” in certain circumstances
Toilet or loo, depending on how many syllables I have time to pronounce. Lavatory is ridiculous.
I remember an American woman I used to work with being absolutely scandalised I'd used the word 'toilet'. It was as if I'd sworn. "You must say 'bathroom'", she chided. I'm not having a bath, though, am I? And given I'm in the office it's unlikely there is a bath. Whereas there will be a toilet. Now I can see the desire to euphemise toilet in a way I absolutely can't with pudding. But still. It's not that great a taboo. I'm not ashamed to be going to the loo. I'm not asking anyone to watch; just explaining my temporary absence from the room.
When I go to the pub for a session with my mates we keep a running count of how many times each of us has to go for a pee. Lowest number wins. It adds quite a buzz to proceedings since we all want to be The Man (as it were).
Comments
e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphrey_de_Bohun,_2nd_Earl_of_Hereford (and a couple after him, I think)
It's a flag of someone who really wants to drop the "h" but has not got the nerve to do it in company. They really want to say "An 'otel".
See PG Woodhouse's explanation for the "P" in "Leave it to Psmith".
Vastly preferable to MLE. However I think @cookie makes an excellent point - MLE is so horrible and so associated with crime and drugs etc it is surely driving a revival in RP - certainly in London. All my daughter’s friends speak like Princess Kate - and they’re not aristocrats
I remember an American woman I used to work with being absolutely scandalised I'd used the word 'toilet'. It was as if I'd sworn. "You must say 'bathroom'", she chided. I'm not having a bath, though, am I? And given I'm in the office it's unlikely there is a bath. Whereas there will be a toilet.
Now I can see the desire to euphemise toilet in a way I absolutely can't with pudding. But still. It's not that great a taboo. I'm not ashamed to be going to the loo. I'm not asking anyone to watch; just explaining my temporary absence from the room.
Is there anything in this thread anyone takes exception to (I suspect it would appeal to @Cyclefree ) ?
https://twitter.com/dieworkwear/status/1779646388504310109
ones. The doctors and engineers. The steelworkers of Corby were an exception
It’s a bit like the way Americans worship the posh British accent and they vaguely imagine everyone in Britain lives in Downton Abbey. They know it’s not true logically. Yet the reflex remains
I’ve got male British friends in America who attribute their sexual success to their accents. Indeed I’ve got a male British friend in America who made sure - despite living in America - that his son kept some kind of British accent. So he would also be popular with the girls. And it worked! Except it turns out he’s gay so it’s boys
Tribally, dinner comes in the middle of the day. But I'm about to pop to Greggs. That really isn't a dinner. To me, the word 'dinner' is more about the size of the mean than where it sits in the day. Christmas Dinner/Sunday Dinner. You know what that is, and whether it happens at 12 or 2 or 6 doesn't really matter.
The only word that isn’t a euphemism is “shitter” but despite my lifelong desires to epater les bourgeois even i draw the line at “shitter”
What they usually are, of course, is cheaper. And therefore more cheaply produced. And therefore, usually, of a lower quality. A £12 bottle of blend will almost never be as good as a £30 bottle of single malt - but a £12 bottle of anything is rarely as good as it's £30 equivalent.
Unless you’re playing one of those ghastly new Day/Night matches.
Also, if you're going off the 1,036 reported 'stored' at f16.net, note that many have been scrapped since, e.g.:
e.g.: https://www.f-16.net/aircraft-database/F-16/airframe-profile/27/
https://www.f-16.net/aircraft-database/F-16/airframe-profile/1346/
https://www.f-16.net/aircraft-database/F-16/airframe-profile/38/
And this site reports only 340 stored.
https://www.amarcexperience.com/ui/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=205&Itemid=274
Do you have a better source for your claim?
Stuck in a one whore town in Yunnanese Tibet? In the solitary bar by the dead yak there will be a dusty bottle of Black Label
Afters is also a late drink
And it always works. Americans are generally quite loud and confident but you can knock them off their stride simply by talking like Her Late Maj, then a flicker of social insecurity appears. They presume you got a double first at Trinity and you own a deer park and they become noticeably more humble. Also they just like the accent. Makes them smile
Anybody else do this?
There is even snobbery on council estates.
There used to be an upper class bod in this parish who kept going on about where he shopped and how he "grew up on an estate", har har. Others from the upper class don't give a fuck about class, aren't credulous believers either in science or in non-scientific religions, call a ghost a ghost when they experience one, and generally try to see things as they are. See for example what Charles Spencer has written about boarding school. Good on him. You'd never get a nouve from the middle classes like Rishi Sunak writing anything like that in a million years.
Another example of someone from the upper class who has been telling it how it really is recently is Constance Marten, from the dock at the Old Bailey. 👍 Constance. No middle class wanker will ever share this view. The case is a great shibboleth.
Of course many working class people "would" do the same if they could, but generally their minds get smashed at school, and the rebellious ones [*] get very severely worked over.
*For those who don't already know: this doesn't mean gangsters.
PS I learnt yesterday that Dillibe Onyeama had died. RIP Dillibe.
I don't think he'd use any of the forms of address you suggest - first name terms all round.
For example in Chablis - a number of the producers have disappeared up their own arses, tripling prices and spending like fools.
Next to them, you find “farmers who make wine”. A fraction of the price…
One chap, his Premier Cru is cheaper than the Petits from the a couple of neighbours. And better than some Grand Crus!
I’m pretty sure I’ve detected similar in whisky and gin - paying for a name. I would bet the blends are trying harder - because they have to.
"Organisers of the Beijing half marathon are investigating allegations that three African athletes deliberately allowed China's star runner He Jie to win Sunday's race.
Footage appeared, external to show Kenya's Robert Keter and Willy Mnangat and Ethiopia's Dejene Hailu pointing to the line and slowing down before waving He past."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/68815592
They also tend to mispronounce:
'lounge' as "launch"
'therapy' as "ther-ah-py"
'casualty' as "casuality"
'bowl' as "bowel"
'healthy' as "heldy"
'birthday' as "bird-day"
and a really weird one by certain Indian vloggers:
'Kazakhstan' becomes "Kazakh-ee-stan"
I could go on all day, I guess
The worst sort are upper middle class people who try and pass themselves off as working class (whilst denigrating the working classes.)
eg sherry can be fantastic value, good complex drinks at cheapo prices
And, yes, some blended whisky
It was true of Greek wine - amazing whites for bargain prices, but now they’re fashionable and they’ve tripled the cost. Tsk
https://youtu.be/A1FIDA6QxqE?si=z8KQCVN63rAuwmX8
And Labour led the Tories by 8% in the polls
But I bet he still feels a tiny bit noov when surrounded by Tory blue bloods
What he is more than anything is a tech bro
To have real class, you need to possess three types of balsamic.
And scone rhymes with gone.
Same with Bumbaclart for that matter !!!
Mackems say skewl.
All of which just shows there isn't really a consensus...
His wife overheard ...
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/sydney-police-stabbing-mall-attack-bishop-wakeley-australia-b1151520.html
I may be thinking of the previous generation, however. More female officers these days, for a start.
As an aside, I ended up at uni in St Andrews for my undergraduate degree. After graduation I ran some restaurants and hotels in and around Fife for a few years before returning to academia. Naturally, when you pick up accents quickly you... have a habit of slipping back into them when meeting somebody from that place. Always a bit awkward if you're front of house and the guest thinks you're patronising them...
Especially if they're professional golfers from South Africa...
But you can ask the butler to ask the cook, if she doesn’t mind, to tell you.
He
* went to a famous school that his father (an NHS GP) didn't go to
* must have been a right crawler of a goody two shoes when he was there
* married loadsamoney
* joined the nouves' favourite political party to boot.
He's a textbook nouve. Or he would be if I wrote the textbook.
Admittedly he's a different kind of nouve from the son of a barrow boy who builds his own business to become a self-made millionaire, always loves a day at the races, has tastes that are considered vulgar, and comes across as a boastful extrovert with a loud mouth. Still a nouve though.