To think I am not posh???

[LadyShirazz]

Our lodger has just informed me that I am "the poshest person he has ever met". Not in a nasty way at all, but at the same time in an entirely genuine one too.

Fair do's - I have the most plummy cut-glass accent imaginable which I hate. God only knows where I've acquired it from, as the rest of the family don't speak anything like this - I can only put it down to having moved around a lot as a child, and therefore never having picked up a particular accent. It's not even one of those "smooth as silk" Joanna Lumley accents either - think more the Queen with constipation (but also shit-faced, so lots of 'shits' and 'fucks' thrown in to the mix too...).

I do speak well and write well. I did go to Cambridge. I do work for a "big name" in The City that is a traditional haunt of the public school types many of them wankers - am new - that's another topic.

But, really, I come from true salt-of-the-earth stock. My mum is a Yorkshire farm lass, and my dad grew up in the slums (true sense of the word there) of the Black Country, and was the first person in his family to go to university (where he met my mum).

His choice of degree (engineering) has afforded the family until it went to shit a fairly "middle class" lifestyle, but certainly not a "posh" one. I went to Cambridge from a bog-standard comp on the basis of my grades (and a lot of hard work) - not my background. I only wish I had a trust fund, but am just working hard, alongside my OH, and caring for my elderly MIL - more or less like all the rest of us. We're okay financially, but by no means rich.

Anyway, surely - if we were that posh - we wouldn't be renting out our main bedroom of our two-bed flat to a lodger in the first place...???

I am definitely not taking this as an insult and am not offended - nor am I intending to cast aspersions on any one from any background at all.

AIBU though to not like assumptions being made on me or my background on the basis of my accent, when a) it's something I can't help and b) actually the very opposite is true...???

you sound very irritatingly self aggrandising

Re the posh comment, you have had privileges that a large section of society never have, and you now have a plummy voice, education in the bag, good job, and own your home. If you'd grown up somewhere where you had no food every night, or no bed to sleep in, that stank of weed and every week you had break-ins, knife attacks next door and so on, or whatever- I sincerely doubt all your hard work would have made a difference with your exam grades, you wouldn't have got to Cambridge, got your job, maybe met your DH, or acquired your home. You are privileged. Not posh, though.

leghoul sounds like Eton in the 70's.

I think you're only really posh if you're posh on the inside. People tell me I'm posh, and I grew up on a council estate in Essex! Just got a scholarship to a good private school and the rest is history

ah yes fair point carol

OP, your strikethroughs are, I guess, designed to add humility to what are somewhat self-agrandising statements. You have shoe-horned in a few real corkers of unstealthy boasting, but then you protest that you can't possibly be stealth-boasting because you're renting out a room and caring for a relative (neither of which are much to do with 'poshness').

I could be a million miles away from the truth, but your post to me, spoke of someone who enjoyed being called 'posh', frankly.

'Posh' is word I barely ever use. It's widely used, I suppose, but I find it fairly hollow and meaningless.

You sound posh to me, not that it really matters.

You don't sound very posh to me at all. I know far posher.

Round our end you're posh if you don't swallow.

I think that many people over use the words "posh" and "middle class". People often think that I'm posh because of my accent and working in the City too, but really, I went to a comprehensive (albeit a quite nice one), worked hard and got a good graduate job. That's all. My parents are both academics and my mother proudly says that she is working class and cuts me down if I would ever suggest otherwise.

People often say how middle class they are, but they're not. Or they stealth-mention aspects of being super posho and they're not either.

Truly truly posh people would never even mention class or money.

So on the basis of the above, no, you're not posh. You're successful. But not posh.

The posh people I know are either to dim or were too drunk in their teen years to have got to Cambridge. Most went to RAG if they bothered with FE. A lot didn't bother as they didn't need to. They may have gone on to do a short land management certificate type course but most just assist daddy with running the estate.

Certainly none would do anything as frightful as having to take up paid employment. It's all about helping with the estate and possibly setting up their own "business" to give them something to bore about at parties and make themselves sound important. Most of these businesses fail to break even but that's not important.

Erm... why aren't you able to laugh off the lodger's comment?

Queenbean has hit the nail on the head regarding posh people not mentioning money or class.

MIL is posh but has fallen on hard times financially. We discovered by accident when helping her clear up that she still has original oil paintings that she inherited in her spare room but won't sell them.

She treats everyone she meets exactly the same whilst quietly doing voluntary work and being exceptionally pleased she has found a bargain in a charity shop.

DH went to Cambridge and has a doctorate but doesn't mention it unless it comes up in his working environment.

I'm working class done well but don't give a shiny shite about anyone's background they just need to be nice.

I live in the north in an area with a very strong, marked accent. I myself have a southern accent. It's not a "posh" accent - I actually get asked a lot of I am from New Zealand because it's eastern and it has a slight twang to it.

When I first moved up here, I worked on literacy in very rough high schools. Several of the teenagers would randomly hurl completely unprovoked abuse at me because I sounded 'posh' to them. I'm from a very unposh background, but they just associated anything 'southern' with wealth, power and privilege, and it just generated this VERY aggressive response of 'I suppose you think you're better than us'. It was quite eye-opening to see the narrowness of their assumptions. Even some educated adults here don't believe me when I say that not all the roads of the south are paved with gold, and that there are areas of poverty and deprivation.

I would ignore it. Yes, you may be privileged and "posh" now, but you know that your background is wider than that and has brought you into contact with a much broader cross-section of society than your lodger thinks. Write it down to their narrowness, not yours.

It's all relative isn't it- you sound very posh to me but then I have never met anyone who has been to Cambridge+accent+city job and I've travelled around a fair bit. But in your view you probably don't feel posh at all as you've seen what some are like in London! You sound pretty down to earth in the way you live but we all judge an accent.. I'm from Yorkshire and people think I'm a right commoner (true )

I get why you were a bit taken aback by it!
DH takes offence when I say he is posh...and that his gran (who is essentially his mum) is posh - his gran was an English teacher back in the day, and used to teach girls at the local private school to say "how now brown cow" properly (can't remember what it's called!)....in reality they are just as common as my lot (manual labouring father, polish immigrant mother), his gran lives in a modest house, drives a modest car, and hardly has millions in the bank....they just speak "proper BBC English" as I call it. Which to me, sound very posh!!

Peoole 'read' other people's social class off a number of indicators, you have to remember. How you speak/education/job/clothes/manners etc.

But of course people can also get things 'wrong'. Like the whole joke of that Hyacinth Bucket tv series (Keeping Up Appearances?) was that she believed herself to be irreproachably 'posh' (though that word is far too vulgar for HB to use) but everything about her from her 'doilies with everything' meals and interior decor and her trilling phone manner and boasting about 'room for a pony' coded as desperate aspirational lower-middle-class, terrified she'll be tainted by her UN-aspirational working-class family. Which I never 'got' entirely until I came to live in England.

Also, not all social class markers add up to the same thing. I have an Oxbridge doctorate but my original foreign regional accent, which codes as working-class in most English ears. As a result, people find me hard to place.

All these people on the thread saying they went to a comp and cannot be posh! As if that were so.

On occasion, I get called 'posh'. Believe me, it is rarely a compliment....

What's this diet coke in the fridge thing? - please explain, I'm foreign an so don't get the nuances. FYI I don't have diet coke as we don't drink fizzy drinks apart from tonic water.

People think that I'm posh because I do have a bit of a posh accent, from having gone to posh schools.

But I've made a right pig's ear of life and I live in a HA house as a LP of 2 kids by 2 different dads. So others in a similar boat tend to think I am posh, and see myself as a cut above them simply because of the way I talk, and genuinely posh people think I'm a scuzzer because of my situation. Can't win.

I love a good posh thread. Round and round it goes. People on here saying 'I'm not posh' but desperate to appear so by being self-deprecating.

I find people make judgements like this based primarily on voice. I've lost count of the times MIL people have called me posh (or more usually, snobby ) on first "glance" simply because of my voice. This is actually due primarily to elocution lessons to overcome a speech impediment so I can't change my "accent" easily btw. I do sometimes cringe though when I over pronounce as it sounds like I am putting on an accent

However - the very fact I had elocution lessons of course means I come from a fairly privileged background. It bugs me when people either downplay or infer that being privileged is somehow negative. People need to appreciate how lucky they are. It irks me considerably when people whine about being negatively judged as posh, it's literally a first world problem, isn't it?

For all the people like my MIL who instantly hate me based on my voice, there is no denying that the simple fact a posh voice has helped me immeasurably in many situations - job interviews, getting support for my SN DC etc etc. My DH has a completely different voice and it's amazing how people treat us differently. Very telling.

Derxa, the irony being that said people are instantly judged as "not posh"

You've got to love the English!

I have been told that I speak "like a newsreader" and that I'm "posh".

I grew up in a rough London council estate in a single parent family with a DM who would correct my speech if I didn't speak correctly.

I have come to the conclusion that I'm not posh, I actually a snob, two very different things.

But people do massively overplay being middle class. Someone has to be working class, we can't all be middle class or above

Someone on my fb was commenting on middle class problems - her husband is a plumber and she's a secretary for a packaging company. That's working class. Why does everyone think now that they're middle class? It really is ok not to be.