Is 'what?' really the correct thing to say when you don't hear something??

[Twiglett]

as opposed to 'Pardon' or whatever

If it is, why is it?

I remember reading it somewhere

I've heard, not I hear. I don't have the voices...not yet!

LOL NN! Honestly, that was her intonation. God, that woman. Evil on legs. Nasty, nasty, nasty person.

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not quite comme il faut, then

thats pure hypocrisy when you consider how many french words they added to the english language after the norman conquest
pork, mutton, poultry etc etc.

its got to be a bit posh to be a drawing room, surely?
I reckon if your house is 20th century, its got to be a sitting room! You can only get away with a drawing room if youve got 18th or 19th century ceilings!

Sorry lost track here. Are you saying words that originated in french are considered vulgar? Surely not? And are looking glass and sitting room of French origin or their alternatives?

yes, a few x posts ago....I think nancy mitford and her snobbish circle were down on people who used recently imported french words - trying to seem sophisticated.
so serviette, mirror, toilet were out for that reason.

Star bellied sneetches, the lot of'em

Pardon is definitely common...but "what" can sound rude...

Reminds me of the bit in Bottom (God, I am SO upper class!) - Eddie's trying to get his head round Richie talking about the drawing room to the police and he calls it the colouring-in room and the sketching room

Saloon - ROFL! thats nowt but a vulgar import from french....Id expect it to have batwing doors!

Funny, i grew up with serviette (though I have noticed my parents now refer to them as napkins) but toilet was considered rather vulgar - lavatory was (and still is in my parents' book) the correct word. And of course sitting room.

But some of these words are common parlance to all surely, eg mirror. As someone said earlier, who refers to it as a looking glass now?

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is "Are you deaf?" the correct reply to your partially deaf daughter?

Yes they did. Not sure why or when.

My mum used to say that it's common to say, 'pardon?' and correct to say 'what?'.
It's all part of the old U and Non-U rules of language which we're not so hung up on as we used to be. My mum used to call a mirror a 'glass' but she had to drop that because noone knew what on earth she was on about.

I hear kids in the playground saying, 'what?' and their mums saying 'No. It's pardon'.

I prefer 'what?'.

Take your choice. I prefer 'what?'. It's more straightforward.

when do you have supper then?

(I was brought up with breakfast, lunch and dinner btw)

supper is at bedtime or informal late evening if you only had afternoon tea or high tea and not dinner

or supper is bohemian way of having friends round when you don't have dinner parties

I really don't understand this kind of snobbery.

we do usually say "what?" though.

Just looked up Mitford and in her glossary

House is U, Home is Non-U

Rich is U, Wealthy is Non-U

Sick is U, Ill is Non-U

i think it is very hard to say 'what' without it sounding rude. i think the reason for this is it is a very 'clipped' word - if you get what i mean and it is hard to get the right tone for 'please repeat' use!

i tend to say, 'i didn't catch that', or 'could you repeat that' as i think 'pardon' sounds like I've burped or farted!!