Mumsnet Talk

So, according to that link, 'nice' became derided when overused by young women. The senseless chatter of silly females. Sounds a bit misogynistic to me.

I'm going to reclaim the word nice, in that case. Nice is a feminist issue. Etc. etc.

It is liek ow for pain - the word is ouch, you would think when someone is in pain they would get their words correct

Good link - am a big Jane Austen fan. Maybe she started off the trend for it being seen as a bit of a drippy word?

Wireless and tunny fish. All v old fashioned.

I still can't quite say pardon though- would say 'I'm sorry?' in interrogative tone. Mum was v against pardon, serviette, etc for reasons best known to herself and it does stick!

Sorry, country, wasn't ignoring you, DH distracted me. But the others are correct, 'nice' used to mean 'precise', or sometimes, requiring precision. As in 'it is a nice question', meaning 'it is a question that requires precision to answer'.

I didn't know what tiger said but I'm amused by it. A bit like 'cute' going from meaning 'clever' to meaning 'pretty/sweet', then? Or is that different?

Btw, tiger, I just looked it up in the dictionary of medieval English and it used also to carry a sexual implication, wonder if that has anything to do with it?

quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=id&id=MED29471

Anyhow, as you were.

Am I alone in finding people who use the 'U' list affected? As though they read the Nancy M article and swallowed it whole, revealing social insecurity? Whenever this comes up, I always wonder whether Nancy played a joke by telling social climbers to use the rude 'what?' rather than commonsense...

Anyway, I'm off to the bog...

We are not affected because we don't do it deliberately, it is just the language we have learned from our parents, just as they learned it from theirs.

What is affected is behaving as if it matters a jot.

I agree.

I learned a mix of 'U' and 'non U', and it seems from this thread most people did, right?

I reckon in forty years time our granddaughters will be shocked at the words we use anyhow.

Didn't the U stand for Upper class? As distinct from middle class in fact, rather than working class. Is MN is considerably more socially rarefied than I thought?

how do you do should be answered with another how do you do
I would never say lounge either

So Anglo Saxon is good?

Despite the fact that most local dialects are derived from Anglo Saxon and most folk (like me) who speak with a local dialect are judged the minute we open our mouths?

Potteries dialect is believed to be the form of English closest to Anglo Saxon. So you all need to learn to talk proper like me. Who knew?

(Mind boggles)

nothing is wrong with pardon

its just that what is the correct word, not that pardon is the wrong word just those that like to harp on about speaking correctly will use what and some twatish people desperate for others to know they are middle class lots of them on here will judge others on using pardon yes mother you

though amused the ex always harping on how middle class he is though he always corrects ds when he says what, it is not what it is pardon I do not care as long as he is not rude

My grandmother frequently used french words in her everyday speech. It's amusing to think that certain people would be silently judging her for doing so and assuming she was some sort of ill-educated oik. Maybe she used them because her parents were actually from France...

I wonder if there is any other language which has so many words which are class-related and really mark you out as belonging to one class or another. To my knowledge there isn't but I don't know every language out there obviously. Anyone?