Talk:U and non-U English

message: The poem at the bottom of the article is by John Betjeman and is definitely copyvio. Rhinoracer 13:15, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Out it goes then...!  Nick Michael 15:59, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: "Trivia" Poem

message: I don't have access to the sources or I'd do it myself, but I'm a bit concerned about the list. The above discussions give the impression of it being a combination of Ross/Mitford/original research, so I think either each entry should be appropriately referenced, or the list removed. Miremare 10:22, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: As far as I can see, The List contains no citations or references, nearly five years after the above comment. I agree it ought to be removed unless it can be made useful with citations.37.188.82.157 (talk) 18:46, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Quoted from the article: "The English author Nancy Mitford was alerted and immediately took up the usage in an essay, “The English Aristocracy”, which Stephen Spender published in his magazine Encounter in 1954. Mitford provided a glossary of terms used by the upper classes (some appear in the table at right)," and there are several citations to the work of Nancy Mitford in the reflist.  Does the quoted passage together with the list not constitute an in-line citation?  Perhaps not as well footnoted as possible, but... if I were still actively editing articles here, I'd go into the reflist and find the proper source for the list, working from the description in the quoted passage.  loupgarous (talk) 19:51, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  The list 

message: ::I was raised to say "ON-va-ope". My family were bourgeois: my father was descended from industrialists, my mother from a teacher and administrator. My mother in particular spent a fair bit of her childhood "in the colonies"; Englishmen from the colonies were almost a distinct class of their own. They had an accent that was similar to a standard posh accent, but to me was distinct. Their social customs were pretty much upper class (colonials had servants and so on, and did things like having tea with The Governor).
::I imagine I'd have to back a good few generations to find ancestors that didn't go to public (i.e. private) school. That is, my family were definitely not nouveau riche; they weren't rich, but they were accustomed to hanging out with posh folk.
::I'd like to know where "left-tenant" comes from. Similarly "SAR-gent" and "kernel".
::MrDemeanour (talk) 17:57, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: 2022

message: It occurred to me some interested in this very important subject may feel moved (no pun intended) to coment here . Giano (talk) 21:01, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia's very own (non-U) dilemma! 

message: I know nothing about the subject, but does GBS have any relevance?  Phil_burnstein (talk) 14:28, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Pygmalion was written long before Professor Ross's essay and the former is more concerned with pronounciation than vocabulary. Kittybrewster  ☎ 16:12, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  George Bernard Shaw 

message: This is an interesting article and discussion.  I agree that user Ariadne55 provided a concise and
logical explanation for the items in the table.  Profanity is another characteristic of upper and
lower class speech.  Interestingly, none of the wiki pages dealing with curse words/foul language
or profanity touched on this issue.
I do have a question on the Lav/Toilet item.  A good part of this may be due to the fact that I am
from the US.  However, my parents are Icelandic and I travel to Europe at least twice a year...so
I've been exposed to a variety of usages.
In referring to the lav/toilet, I would ask "Where is your bathroom?" in a polite setting and 
"Where is the head" in a daily setting.  "Toilet" applies to the object itself and would be appropriate
to use if one needed a plumber (i.e., "The toilet is broken").
If I were on the Continent, I might ask "Where is your WC?"
I take it that "bathroom" is not used in the UK when one needs to take a leak?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.16.252.152 (talk) 13:10, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: No, we go to the toilet or the loo. I guess this stems from the fact that historically bathroom and toilet were separate rooms, that's even if they were rooms. When my father was growing up in a working-class area of the UK in the 1930s, the toilet was in an outhouse and you took a bath in a tin bathtub in front of the fire. – ukexpat (talk) 15:19, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: No sillier than "toilet" — there is usually no toile there at all. The truth is, there are only euphemisms for this ubiquitous apparatus! Nick Michael (talk) 14:27, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lav/Toilet Redux 

message: I have heard Nancy Mitford's sister, he Duchess of Devonshire say that the whole thing was just a joke perpetrated by her sister - most of the 'rules' she recorded were just pieces of whimsy. --John Price (talk) 08:23, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: It was not Mitford but Ross. Kittybrewster  ☎ 09:05, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the suggestion was that Mitford picked up on Ross's ideas and satirised them by inventing a absurd list of rules which was then taken seriously by the world at large. --86.128.192.97 (talk) 07:58, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: That is not what happened. She edited a book and included Ross's essay. Kittybrewster  ☎ 11:25, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  The article says that Mitford was alerted by Ross's article and 'immediately took up the usage in an essay, “The English Aristocracy” ' which included the famous glossary. --John Price (talk) 10:10, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Joke

message: The second sentence begins, "The debate did not concern itself with the speech of the working classes," but nowhere is there any indication that a debate is involved - merely two styles of speech.  Perhaps something like "This classification did not..." ?  streapadair (talk)17:52, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Debate"? 

message: Is anyone able to relate the U/non-U story, and English sociolects generally, to the 1930s "Improved English" movement? SquisherDa (talk) 01:10, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Or "Basic English"? loupgarous (talk) 16:34, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Improved English" Movement 

message: I hasd always believed that a cemetery was a place for graves that wasn't part of a church yard and that a Graveyard was.  Dainamo (talk) 18:52, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a tendency by people to try to rationalise multiple names for something by distinguing the use and it's complicated by various commercial and marketing factors - I was once under the impression that "napkins" are the cloth things you get in homes and waitered restaurants and "serviettes" are the disposable paper things you get in fast food restaurants. Large standalone areas for burial, often secular or multi-faith, seem to have come about at the time of the industrial revolution when urbanisation and rising populations put space pressure on urban churches so the middle class link is obvious, whereas the upper classes were still being buried in the traditional place for their families at the churches on their rural estates. Timrollpickering (talk) 17:19, 5 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: That sounds logical and sensible to me. The word certainly has a distinguished and ancient origin: . But Mitford, writing in the 1950's definitely no-noed it. Perhaps she disapproved of the euphemism, for it appears to mean "to sleep, or rest". And we know that euphemisms are more often than not non-U. Although I doubt that Mitford was scholar enough to be aware of that. Nick Michael (talk) 20:06, 5 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Graveyard vs Cemetery

message: Where should a discussion take place concerning the non-U use of long white hose (as compared with coloured) when used with a kilt (see numerous examples of photographs under dirk and kilt. And indeed short white socks with outdoor shoes which seems to be a curious Norwegian habit. Kittybrewster  ☎ 12:19, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Ha ha Kitty, an unusual post from you! I can't answer your question because in spite of repeated requests (see above) it's still not clear to me whether this article should deal exclusively with the Ross/Mitford works, or a more general idea of "bad taste". I would have thought you could do a great job expanding Taste (sociology)#Bad taste. Nick Michael (talk) 12:40, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Non-U hosiery

message: Why is "Ill in bed" different from "Ill on the boat"?.--24.62.109.225 (talk) 16:45, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Because it's more convenient, and less apt to result in domestic warfare to vomit over the side of a boat than a bed. ;-)loupgarous (talk) 04:15, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ill vs. Sick