How the other half lives, what and when you learned

[tomorrowalready]

Reflecting from another thread made me realise it was not until my 20s I found out some people expected to have a private bathroom. I went to university then and shared with another mature student who had been married, divorced and said she found having to share a bathroom with unrelated people unpleasant. I had always taken it for granted as had live in jobs and rented bedsits before. She was a lovely person and also the first person I knew who had a glass of wine every evening and she introduced me to many new things - cooking with garlic, sherry, owning and using a car for shopping for example.

So what did you take for granted that surprised other people you met?

What was actually really great about going to a private school in the 90s was that because of the assisted places scheme (a large minority of kids went to school with these government funded grants that included transport and uniforms) I met people from all walks of life- from on benefits to millionaires.

Looking back though friendship groups were often divided by class/income.

Yes it's interesting. See we never ate out, the first time I went to a restaurant was at 14 with a school friend and her family.

But my parents were determined we would experience culture 😂

Looking back though friendship groups were often divided by class/income.

This was my experience of the Assisted Place scheme too. Even little things such as the fact that the school coaches only went to wealthier areas, while the AP kids got the bus together to/from the deprived areas meant that friendship groups that arose were definitely class based.

@korawick12345

@Heartofglass12345

I shared a house with a girl in my 3rd year of uni whose dad had bought it for her to live in while she was in uni lol. We were from different worlds but got on fine smile

For a lot of families it makes far more financial sense to buy a cheap student property that they can get a return on rather than pay rent out to someone else for 3 years.

It's all relative I guess. Our 4 bed family home was bought by a couple for their daughter. She was going to University in Oxford and they wanted her to have her own space. The house was £420.000 and 5 of us had lived there. Apparently other rooms were for when parents and friends came to visit. My mum had to explain they had another house as I'd wondered where the parents would live. I'd never heard of second/holiday homes etc. That was shocking as to afford our house, everyone worked and it was a doer-upper over many years. To top it all off, they were going to rip out the kitchen and bathroom for new ones.

I'm flabbergasted at the sheer number of people who consider themselves middle class.

A regional accent does preclude you from being considered MC. You were obviously raised by WC parents.

Social class has little to do with earnings, wealth or educational attainment/professional qualifications. It is wholly about culture.

MC parents would not raise their children to speak with a regional accent. It simply doesn't happen.

@ZednotZee

I'm flabbergasted at the sheer number of people who consider themselves middle class.

A regional accent does preclude you from being considered MC. You were obviously raised by WC parents.

Social class has little to do with earnings, wealth or educational attainment/professional qualifications. It is wholly about culture.

MC parents would not raise their children to speak with a regional accent. It simply doesn't happen.

It most certainly does. Edinburgh is an extremely posh regional accent. Plenty of people in middle class jobs - doctors, dentists, military officers, to name just a few - have regional accents. You must inhabit a very tiny, snobbish planet.

Lots of mc people speak with their own regional accents! I’m flabbergasted you don’t realise this! Your probably someone , I’ve met a few, who think they don’t have an accent when they do, it’s just a London accent or Kent accent but they often say oh I don’t have an accent while we all inwardly eye roll at their easy to spot the regional accent!

@ZednotZee

I'm flabbergasted at the sheer number of people who consider themselves middle class.

A regional accent does preclude you from being considered MC. You were obviously raised by WC parents.

Social class has little to do with earnings, wealth or educational attainment/professional qualifications. It is wholly about culture.

MC parents would not raise their children to speak with a regional accent. It simply doesn't happen.

Your accent doesn’t only come from your parents though. It comes from your peers. A M/C child raised in Birmingham for example would be bound to pick up some aspects of the Birmingham accent from their friends.

@awaynboilyurheid

Lots of mc people speak with their own regional accents! I’m flabbergasted you don’t realise this! Your probably someone , I’ve met a few, who think they don’t have an accent when they do, it’s just a London accent or Kent accent but they often say oh I don’t have an accent while we all inwardly eye roll at their easy to spot the regional accent!

I agree. Are MC people only supposed to speak with an RP accent? Not all MC children go to public schools.

How do you define MC and WC anyway?

@ZednotZee

I'm flabbergasted at the sheer number of people who consider themselves middle class.

A regional accent does preclude you from being considered MC. You were obviously raised by WC parents.

Social class has little to do with earnings, wealth or educational attainment/professional qualifications. It is wholly about culture.

MC parents would not raise their children to speak with a regional accent. It simply doesn't happen.

Utter rot!

Middle classes have regional accents.

Come visit where i live!

I second that MC people can have regional accents.

This is especially true in the North. Regional MC accents will also be different from from the regional WC counterparts. They are much easier to understand and clearer ( to mc people).

The 19th century northern mc must have been the bed-rock of a huge number of obvious southern mc families today especially where inherited wealth from industries is concerned.

The northern MC children with regional accents would probably pick up southern RP if they moved to schools in the south. Many pick it up in southern universities.

This is almost the entire plot of "Normal People"
I had a broad range of friends throughout school in my rural town.
But university was different. Visited a friend where they had hot water all the time and their mother bulk bought toiletries and tampons"( a lot of girls in the house). A boyfriend on visiting my family when asked, said " Well they are lower middle class" .

My partner is from a much better off background than me, we weren't poor but what I'd called ordinary lower middle class whereas he was boarding school / skiing holidays etc. He's generally not that bad (though I did find out a few months ago he didn't realise Wednesday afternoons off for games and Saturday morning school wasn't a thing in most schools) but some of his family are a bit .

I'm not sure his 80 something godmother has ever had a social conversation with someone who went to state school before me and seemed genuinely perplexed that despite me having a good job, my own house and a degree from a top uni that I hadn't been to a school she'd heard of.

I also told another relative of his that my parents had recently been on holiday to a place we were talking about and they said "Oh do they have a place there as well"

MC parents would not raise their children to speak with a regional accent. It simply doesn't happen.

Except plenty of MC parents have regional accents themselves! Not as broad as the local WC accent, but the MC parents I know don't speak like southerners (because they aren't southerners!).

Also - such arrogance in assuming that the London / Home Counties accent that many MC people speak with isn't also a "regional accent". Of course it is, it's just a different region!

A very small minority of people actually speak RP, even among southern MC types.

I am northern, I went to a private school on a scholarship.
The only children with a hint of the local accent were also there on a whole or partial scholarship.

In my adult life I have come across many established MC people who are as northern as I. You would never know it from their accent though.

I thinknits the working classes who have diversified and grown since larger numbers of us entered the professions and/or became graduates.

The middle class have always been the smaller demographic and that continues today despite the working classes matching them in l
acquisition of education and wealth in a lot of instances.

For the avoidance of doubt; middle class does not confer superiority in any way, they are simply historically different social class and it takes far more than a couple of generations earning a professional salary to become MC.

@ScrollingLeaves

I second that MC people can have regional accents.

This is especially true in the North. Regional MC accents will also be different from from the regional WC counterparts. They are much easier to understand and clearer ( to mc people).

The 19th century northern mc must have been the bed-rock of a huge number of obvious southern mc families today especially where inherited wealth from industries is concerned.

The northern MC children with regional accents would probably pick up southern RP if they moved to schools in the south. Many pick it up in southern universities.

Ive traced my best friend's family back to the late 1700s. They are descended from a Manchester cotton baron family. They were one of the richest self made families in the country at one point. Every generation in her family so far, have been as middle class as they come.

She has a regional accent.

Saying mc people don't have regional accents is massively ignorant

@ZednotZee

I'm flabbergasted at the sheer number of people who consider themselves middle class.

A regional accent does preclude you from being considered MC. You were obviously raised by WC parents.

Social class has little to do with earnings, wealth or educational attainment/professional qualifications. It is wholly about culture.

MC parents would not raise their children to speak with a regional accent. It simply doesn't happen.

Gosh, how parochial of you. Perhaps you should travel north of Watford sometime.

Not many people speak traditional RP nowadays but lots of people speak modern RP (think Emma Watson, Duchess of Cambridge, Phoebe Waller-Bridge as opposed to the Queen and BoJo). I saw a relative at the weekend whose wife is from the Midlands but she has a modern RP accent, as do I (from Hants) and many of my friends.
I agree that having a regional accent doesn’t preclude you from being MC though, Edinburgh being a good example.

@ZednotZee

I'm flabbergasted at the sheer number of people who consider themselves middle class.

A regional accent does preclude you from being considered MC. You were obviously raised by WC parents.

Social class has little to do with earnings, wealth or educational attainment/professional qualifications. It is wholly about culture.

MC parents would not raise their children to speak with a regional accent. It simply doesn't happen.

By “regional accent” I’m thinking you mean “non southern English accent” - in which case by your reckoning there is no middle class in Northern Ireland? (There definitely is)

Or Scotland.

I was late teens before I realised that some people had to pre pay gas and electric.

Then in my 30s met a middle aged man who hadn't realised there was any other way to pay for it!

I was a bit naive as a child and assumed that as long as you worked you'd never be in poverty but then in work poverty has become more of a thing in the 21st century.

I'm still sometimes stunned when people make spending choices that I feel are surprising given their overall income/lifestyle eg people who pay £80-100+ pcm on sky/TV packages but can't afford a car or spend loads on taxis because they don't have a car. Or people who live in tiny houses in downtrodden areas but spend thousands on Florida holidays. Or spending £1k+ on a child's Christmas/ designer clothes/ trainers but wouldn't pay for a tutor to help them at school.

@ZednotZee

I am northern, I went to a private school on a scholarship. The only children with a hint of the local accent were also there on a whole or partial scholarship.

In my adult life I have come across many established MC people who are as northern as I. You would never know it from their accent though.

I thinknits the working classes who have diversified and grown since larger numbers of us entered the professions and/or became graduates.

The middle class have always been the smaller demographic and that continues today despite the working classes matching them in l
acquisition of education and wealth in a lot of instances.

For the avoidance of doubt; middle class does not confer superiority in any way, they are simply historically different social class and it takes far more than a couple of generations earning a professional salary to become MC.

I am northern, I went to a private school on a scholarship.

And clearly haven't had that much life experience as a result.

Get out. Meet more people. Learn some social history.

Wow at someone really thinking that there's not mc people with regional accents.

Northerners (and Midlanders) can tell the town or even area of town where people live from their accent if they really know somewhere. Thats not restricted to wc /mc lines. Stronger accents tend to be more working class but middle classes definitely have accents. DH grew up about 50 miles from where we live. He's spoken to people at work and identified they lived in the same nice mc area as he did from their accent and had people do the same to him.

Southerners would all think it sounded the same. It doesn’t.

It pisses me off. Massively. And its reduced to working class stereotypes by lazy southerners for a southern audience for television. I can name examples.

@RedToothBrush

I simply don't agree with your assessment of the middle class.

Are usually so rude when faced with a simple difference of opinion?

@queenmeadhbh

No, not at all.

The MC northerners and southerners whom I know personally have accents which would make it extremely difficult to place them to a particular region.

I have a regional accent, it isn't broad by any stretch of the imagination but it firmly denotes my social class as working class.

I would never think that somebody who spoke like I do had middle class lineage.