To hate the word "pudding?"

[Misswrite89]

I hate it when people use the word pudding instead of dessert. AIBU?

Haha, G1raffe - guess I just don't know the "right people", eh?

Could just be the in laws.... My husbands friends were very nice :)

People looking for class markers have none

kelpeed I think it's perfectly possible to note that a usage is a class marker without it being a comment on their own class.

This thread has been fascinating: a range of responses about what we think words signify. Yet we are al able to communicate about it - a common understanding.

And other societies (French, American, Australian, German) do have indications of class. The British (or maybe it's just the English?) interest in class is not unique.

I would agree that class indicators do exist on Australia but to a far lesser extent. My own parents are Anglophiles and a bit snobby sometimes, and I see it a bit amongst their upper middle baby boomer friends. But we live in a fairly mixed suburb 10km from a capital city and I find that middle and working class people mix socially very easily, and it's not really a thing that's on people's radars.

Perhaps that just my experience though- there could be more polarisation on posher suburbs or further out from the city in thtraditinally working class suburbs - I don't really know.
I can say it NEVER comes up on conversation though eg among school mums - where someone went to school, where their family is from, their accent etc...it's just not a topic of interest generally.

(Though I personally find class and language in Britain especially, a very I tersti g topic - but not from a. Judgey p o v)

I assume that Australia's short history as a western country has some thing to do with it. No Australian family is Old Money, for example, because no Australian family is properly old.

I would be interested to hear from people with knowledge of other old countries with long histories...

Astrophe - oh I don't know about that - did you watch the tv series called A Place Called Home? Definite class system/old money situation going on there, set in the 1950s. I think a lot of it carried on from where the settlers left off in the UK!

There are definite "class" /social scales here, I'm not denying that - just not as easily pickable by the words/language you use, I don't think. More by the way you look, dress, where you live, etc. - and the use of the word "bogan" seems quite normal as a term of disparagement.

I haven't seen it thumbwitch - but 50s ...that would be today's baby boomers yes? I do feel that baby boomers have an attachment to the idea of class that my generation dont have- but agree it isn't gone.

(Did you watch Upper Middle Bogan? It's a wonderful series, if you haven't seen it you should. Though thinking of it is making me question everything I've just said.! It's hyperbole though...)

No, haven't seen that one either - sounds amazing though! Is it on Freeview, or only on pay tv? we only have freeview.

Haven't RTFT but for us, the word 'pudding' conjures up one of the best moments from Spaced. Pooo-ding!

Astrophe

"I can say it NEVER comes up on conversation though eg among school mums - where someone went to school, where their family is from, their accent etc...it's just not a topic of interest generally."

That is true in England too though - in all the time I lived in England I don't think I ever remember anyone talking directly and explicitly about class - its one of those things people don't talk about IRL except perhaps in an oblique or euphemistic way, in my experience, but everyone assumes (probably often wrongly) that the people they chose to spend their time with feel the same way they do (whatever that happens to be) about it.

Mostly people discuss things on internet forums that they don't discuss much, or in the same way, IRL I suspect.

If you are not in the uk you usually need to switch to toilet, ...
If you ask where the toilet is, it reminds me exactly why you are in need of it. In (my part of) Canada we tend to use "restroom" if in a public place, or "washroom" if in someone's home.

There is some sort of a social stratification in Germany, not directly the same as class. There is snobbery (both ways) about dialects, regional accents, the whole former East v West, and a big difference between city and country people and massive obsessions with grammar school education in some sections of society. There are still some people about with "Von der" in their family names, and they are the vestiges of the old pre war aristocracy, but I think a lot of people drop the Von der bit these days, and it is as likely to be very mildly and briefly sneered at as in any way admired, and more often isn't even worth commenting on as far as I've seen. I don't claim to properly understand it, but it exists.

IME what matters to some people - not everyone - around here is whether you speak dialect (which makes you proper local) and which secondary school you went to/ are sending your kids to (all kids go to the same primaries unless they go private, which generally only international types and "alternative" types who would really rather home ed but can't because it is illegal do around here). But it doesn't matter much, unless you are a hard core old dialect speaking farmer...

And it's the couch, in the sitting room. My American exMIL called it the Davenport, and it was in the parlour.
In Canada, we used to say "chesterfield". I imagine it should start with a capital "C".

My (Southern US) grandmother used to say "divan" for sofa.

And other societies (French, American, Australian, German) do have indications of class.

True, but in the US, word choice is not normally one of those indicators.

On the saying toilet outside the UK, if you ask an American "where is the toilet?", you would probably get a quizzical look and then , "Uh, it's in the bathroom."

My American husband and his family call it dessert . I grew up calling it Afters.

A Chesterfield by tradition here has arms you can Let down although it now seems to mean a leather sofa.

Er, Astrophe, how about the Darlings? I can't believe they have vanished out of sight. If ever there were old money, that's it...

The British focus on class is unique in that people are so focused on it, and also because it is more a caste system than a class system, where birth or pedigree are more important than anything else. Hence the disdain for the 'aspirational/middle classes (who don't know/accept who they are)'.

The British focus on class is unique in that people are so focused on it

Well, an Anglo-Indian friend of mine might dispute that! As would my Brahmin colleague ....

I have a friend who used to call her vagina /vulva her 'pudding' because her boyfriend thought it was cute.

That is why it is more like a caste system than anything else in the west, Sunshowercap.