Saying "Pardon?" or "What?" ??

[Mandalin]

I frequent an Australian parenting a forum and I posed the same question. Personally I prefer a politely said "what?" and teach my children the same.

They are all going off their rockers with outrage that I could teach them something so rude and that "Pardon?" or "Pardon me?" is well bred Australian.

I'm sticking to my guns.
I hate "Pardon?", and find it a bit LMC or low brow if you like but then I was brought up in England.

I would love to get your opinions.

I'm still reeling from this morning's discovery that I am in fact very common.

I have been uttering, "It's pardon not what" to my DSs at least 5 times daily and now I find that they were right all along.

[fstupid] [fcommon]

I live in Oz and the amount of times I've heard 'pardon' as opposed to 'say again' 'raising of eyebrows in a "what did you say" way or 'what's that' are few and far between .....

Sorry? or What did you say? is what I use.

See, this is confusing to me. I grew up in Holland and my parents taught me to say 'pardon' but in Dutch (pardon in Dutch is pronounced the same as in French) So that is what I say. When I moved to England I just 'anglosized' the pronounciation. But now I find it is common to say pardon? Arrrrgh......

Well, I will continue to say it, old habits die hard and all that...

I was always brought up to say "pardon", and that "what" was rude. Mostly I now say "Sorry?" or "I'm sorry would you repeat that?" etc.

But the thing I really hate is "Ehhh?" which is what dh says. He is Scottish, so I'm not sure whether this is a Scottish thing or just him, but I find it quite rude. I don't know what anyone else thinks.

Dh is posh, so it seems, & he says "what?" I'm Canadian (no doubt about that) & it's considered very rude in Canada to bark "WHAT?" at people when you don't know what they've said.

Huh?

See now, I'm totally confused.....

I've been nagging at ds (14) to say "Pardon" instead of "what"

When you consider that in Scotland "what" sounds like "whaa" with a sort of silent t from grumpy teenagers you can imagine that "pardon" is preferable.

Dp is very well educated English man and I would have thought that if "what" was correct he would have told me....

Will have to put this to him when he gets home.

Cor blimey if my dd said 'sorry' for mishearing she'd be apologising all day.

Anyway she isn't sorry - she thinks I mumbled, which is actually, maybe true, possibly.

So she should probably say.

'speak up yer daft, muttering old crone!'

I always say what and not pardon! You're not asking for a pardon you're just asking I beg your pardon or what or what did you say? So that's how I say it.

lolmaster - I'm genuinely curious: how did you find this thread (last posted on eight years ago)?

The one about nanna/nana was a resurrected Zombie thread as well, DDD.

Someone in Site Stuff said a lot of Zombie threads had started to show in the "trending" sidebar. Yet another glitch on the site I think, so people are posting and not noticing the date on the OP.

Yes, I spotted that, so seeing another piqued my curiosity. Maybe it's the date (ie Hallowe'en) that is encouraging people to raise the zombies.

Sorry, I was probably meant to use this smiley:

This being Pedants' Corner, I made sure I put the apostrophe in Hallowe'en.

Quite right too!

I change which I use depending who I am talking to. I think many, many people don't really know about this 'issue'. If I mentioned it at work say, I would probably be looked at with disbelief.

Doh!