Pardon?

[MothersGrim]

AIBU to not bother with the word "Pardon" for my young children? It seems like a generational thing to me but my parents and in laws correct my young children when they ask "What?"

I was just curious what the expectation is nowadays, should I be teaching them 'pardon'? Is it bad manners not to

Delicate - rolls (not called bread rolls) should be broken by hand. Butter should be put on the side of the side plate and then transferred to the piece of bread as needed. Butter should not go directly from butter dish to bread.

No need to leave anything for Mr Manners.

Cutlery should be positioned fork on left and knife on right, perpendicular. Fork should be facing up.

All a bit silly really isn't it.

Au contraire. There is every need to use the term " bread roll". In Aberdeen there is a delicious flat bread product called a roll by them. It's called a buttery by the rest of the world. I was differentiating between a bread roll and that one.
Clearer?

According to my etiquette book: to indicate one is finished eating, flatware is laid on the plate parallel in a diagonal position. The handles of the utensils rest on the right rim of the plate(4 o'clock) and the tips lay in the well of the plate (10 o'oclock), a position the allows room for a good grasp when the plate is cleared and secures the steadiness of the utensils. To avoid cuts to the hand, the blade of the knife is turned inward and the fork tines are turned toward the plate.

I was corrected by a dining companion when referring to a "napkin" as the item in question was paper, and thus a "serviette". The things I never knew...

Back in't day (before the war, I assume) it was also terribly common to say "mirror": "mirrors are for cars, dear, you mean the looking glass..."

And as for the loo: I don't believe I have ever referred to it as a "toilet", a word that's right up there with "moist" and "earthworm" for ickiness and skincrawl as far as I am concerned. I am saddened, though, at the apparent demise of "khazi" - that was the highlight of the 70s, pretty much, sniggering at khazi (kharzi? karzi?) in Ain't Half Hot Mum/Carry On. I assume it was one of those words, like "bint", that came to us via the Empire and the army - but we should damn well reinstitute it, I think.

Kharzi, Kharzi, Kharzi - "bog" is passe now, "lav" is too Mitford for words, and "littlest room" too twee. Kharzi all the way!

Pardon = middle class.
Sorry = upper-middle class.
What = working class and upper class.

That's what the painfully class-conscious Daily Mail says, so it must be true.

I was corrected by a dining companion when referring to a "napkin" as the item in question was paper, and thus a "serviette". The things I never knew...
Your dining companion was both rude and wrong.

Napkins made of paper are paper napkins. There are no such things as serviettes

Many many people have tried to convince me the polite thing is to call them serviettes. They are wrong. When I am queen (surely any day now) these people will be burnt at the stake on the first day

Anyone who tries to correct someone and tells them that they should use the correct word has no class.

Indeed, never correct people like that.
Queen Victoria was once at a formal dinner with some slightly rough man and lots of other people. The man picked up his food in his hands. She then copied him. That is what you do to make people feel comfortable. You never point out they have done something wrong. You make other people feel good at all times. In fact in the whole of life that's a pretty good way to be - make others feel good. It never fails.

Hmm but what to do if mil corrects dc and teaches them to say pardon? What then?! I hate pardon and all its hyacinth bucket twee connotations.

Agree Dog.

True class and manners are all about making others feel at ease. Correcting people and looking down on them is very new money - and not nice.

How on earth does "pardon" have Hyacinth Bucket twee conotations?

Honestly, where do some of you get these barking ideas?!

Sukey it's not "barking" it's how a certain segment of society thinks because that's how they've been taught for a very, very long time.

In one of his books, Stephen Fry told about how at his VERY select private school, his headmaster would openly disrespect the perfectly nice matron when she told boys to say "Pardon" if they had burped or whatever.

He'd say something like "Any boy I hear saying pardon will get 20 lashes!"

It's a class marker. Call it barking all you like but it's real.

Like serviette versus napkin.

Yes Sukey I'm afraid Violet, Bertrand, clam and others are right. And anyone who thinks it's a regional thing probably just doesn't know any truly smart people from that region.

My family is quite smart (titled, but only three generations ago so we're not true UC aristos), brothers went to Eton, parents have a small estate/manor house. DF says wireless, telephone and looking glass but it's generational - our generation would say radio, mirror and phone without blinking. We all say gum boots but wellies is also fine. But definitely not toilet, serviette, settee, couch, ever so, pinky, lounge, perfume. Turquoise is pronounced turk-wires. Ascot is AScutt (stress on first syllable).

A quarter of my class at boarding school were titled or from titled families. None of them said pardon wherever they were from (from all regions), except one local 'new money' day girl. We all knew her parents were Carole Middleton types because of that, but no-one was mean enough to exclude her on such a petty basis. As PPs have said, anyone who did that wouldn't be truely UC, but a bit jumped up themselves.

The City Bullingdon club types are definitely like this which is why I instinctively dislike the city. There are definitely people who send there kids privately to get 'trained' on this suff. My kids are at state school but can speak the UC dialect and 'pass', but I wouldn't want them to go for that type of job anyway... Anyway as PP have said, even if you learn the dialect, there are a host of other small indicators which would give you away at some point anyway. Eg not wearing a carnation ever in your button hole. How many buttons you have on your jacket sleeve.

DH went to state school and says pardon so for the DC we have compromised on "sorry" as despite not really giving two hoots (or I wouldn't have married him!) it's difficult to undo years of ingrained correction. My best friend also says pardon - I judge people by what they do, not what they say.

Jilly Cooper's book Class is a good read for anyone who's interested in this kind of stuff.

I love not worrying about such things.

Ah but you still say 'kids' though Choos

WellErr yes my DF definitely definitely wouldn't and I know I shouldn't but I don't care so much about the Americanisms...in any case I've chosen to get off the merry-go-round through marriage to DH

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/3632135/What-class-are-you.html

Forgot to say what the Telegraph link was. A "tongue in cheek" (if there is such a thing...) class test. Pardon definitely gets points deducted!

I much prefer "ya wot luv?"

How else do you pronounce Ascot?

Lynda lots of people (including DH, who lived there) say AsCOTT, with both syllables stressed.

The thing is Chips I could answer all the questions on the test 'correctly' but I would rather hack my head off than say 'supper' (but hate 'toilet'). I don't speak to many 'smart' people- mainly rough arsed farmers
Poor old Carole Middleton. She gets such a rough time on here. Strangely though she has acted with complete discretion- more'lady-like' than many.

derxa ditto can answer correctly but would rather hack my head off than hunt or shag someone who wears red trousers (hence bit of rough DH)...don't have a problem with supper though. To me that's just an informal evening meal (meal is also on the List but I don't care!). I mainly talk to geeky engineers who wouldn't give a stuff about any of this and mainly speak in bleeps, 1s and 0s.

Agree re Carole. She's worked hard, built up a very successful business and as you say, discreet. In the back of my mind when I referenced her I was thinking of the "doors to manual" toilet-gate sniping. She showed she didn't speak the dialect by using certain words, which was the same deal with the 'new money' girl at my school and the point being made by some of the PPs in the pardon versus what debate.

I'm not sure we know whether CM is fluent in the U 'dialect' or not, it's more that (as I was saying on another thread) that certain newspapers got their kicks out of vilifying her as a ferociously ambitious social climber who 'betrayed' her origins, once she'd married her daughter into royalty, by sitting around Buck House saying 'Pardon me' and 'ever so' and asking for the 'toilet' in the royal enclosure at Ascot while being snubbed by blue bloods.

For a country supposedly in favour of social mobility, the UK certainly still has a kneejerk hatred of anything it thinks of as 'social climbing'.

For more on social class markers still being a thing in 2016, see a new thread on Baby Names asking what names are 'chav names' so she can avoid them for her unborn baby.

"...there kids"

The word "kids" is perfectly fine and friendly; the word "there" is not.