Here is the book that I am reading: Kate Fox watching eng
And I should say this is an enjoyable reading due to the style. It is humorously scientific. Must reads for anyone who wants to take a deeper dive in learning English.
I have this strange habit of taking notes to my blog which ends in copying large extracts of the book. And I can't help it: I cherry-picked the best parts the most delicious ones - and you know how irony needs context. So here you go: I copypaste so much text. I hope one can enjoy it as much as I do.
Kate Fox. Watching the English:
I have just spent an exhausting morning accidentally-on-purpose bumping into people and counting the number who said 'Sorry'
Ludicrous - idiotic, unthinkable, daft
Reciprocal /rɪˈsɪprək(ə)l/ mutual, two-way
Why am I doing this? What exactly is the point of all this ludicrous bumping and jumping (not to mention all the equally daft things I'll be doing tomorrow)? Good question. Perhaps I'd better explain.
Spate - a spate of books
A river flood ; an overflow or inundation
- наводнение
alleged [ə'leʤd] - мнимый, предполагаемый
elegy ['elɪʤɪ] - плач, погребальная песня
demise [dɪ'maɪz] - кончина
THE 'GRAMMAR' OF ENGLISHNESS
We are constantly being told that the English have lost their national identity - that there is no such thing as 'Englishness'. There has been a spate of books bemoaning this alleged identity crisis, with titles ranging from the plaintive 'Anyone for England?' to the inconsolable England: An Elegy. Having spent much of the past twelve years doing research on various aspects of English culture and social behaviour - in pubs, at racecourses, in shops, in night-clubs, on trains, on street corners - I am convinced that there is such a thing as 'Englishness', and that reports of its demise have been greatly exaggerated.
Dress-down Friday custom
hair-splitting ['hɛǝˌsplɪtɪŋ] - ссора из-за пустяков, занудство
irreverence [ɪ'rev(ə)rəns] - непочтительность, неуважение
Heresy - ересь, ложь, лжеучение
maverick ['mæv(ə)rɪk] - раскольник, белая ворона, вольнодумец
iconoclast [aɪ'kɔnəklæst] - борец с предрассудками, иконоборец
There is a great deal of agonizing and hair-splitting among anthropologists over the participant-observation method and the role of the participant observer. In my last book, The Racing Tribe, I made a joke of this, borrowing the language of self-help psychobabble and expressing the problem as an ongoing battle between my Inner Participant and my Inner Observer. I described the bitchy squabbles in which these two Inner voices engaged every time a conflict arose between my roles as honorary member of the tribe and detached scientist. (Given the deadly serious tones in which this subject is normally debated, my irreverence bordered on heresy, so I was surprised and rather unreasonably annoyed to receive a letter from a university lecturer saying that he was using The Racing Tribe to teach the participant-observation method. You try your best to be a maverick iconoclast, and they turn you into a textbook.)
salubrious [sə'lu:brɪəs] - благотворный, полезный для здоровья
In the macho field of ethnography, my avoidance of discomfort and irrational preference for cultures with indoor plumbing are regarded as quite unacceptably feeble, so I have, until recently, tried to redeem myself a bit by studying the less salubrious aspects of English life: conducting research in violent pubs, seedy nightclubs, run-down betting shops and the like. Yet after years of research on aggression, disorder, violence, crime and other forms of deviance and dysfunction, all of which invariably take place in disagreeable locations and at inconvenient times, I still seemed to have risen no higher in the estimation of mud-hut ethnographers accustomed to much harsher conditions.
So, having failed my trial-by-fieldwork initiation test, I reasoned that I might as well turn my attention to the subject that really interests me, namely: the causes of good behaviour. This is a fascinating field of enquiry, which has been almost entirely neglected by social scientists. With a few notable exceptions,2 social scientists tend to be obsessed with the dysfunctional, rather than the desirable, devoting all their energies to researching the causes of behaviours our society wishes to prevent, rather than those we might wish to encourage.
when it was safe to overtake.
layman ['leɪmən] - обыватель, неспециалист
A schoolteacher and an estate agent would both technically be 'middle class'. They might even both live in a terraced house, drive a Volvo, drink in the same pub and earn roughly the same annual income. But we judge social class in much more subtle and complex ways: precisely how you arrange, furnish and decorate your terraced house; not just the make of car you drive, but whether you wash it yourself on Sundays, take it to a car wash or rely on the English climate to sluice off the worst of the dirt for you. Similar fine distinctions are applied to exactly what, where, when, how and with whom you eat and drink; the words you use and how you pronounce them; where and how you shop; the clothes you wear; the pets you keep; how you spend your free time; the chat-up lines you use and so on.
crude [kru:d] cruel+rude or crap+rude крайне неприличный, вызывающий отвращение
Immigrants can, of course, choose to 'go native', and some in this country become 'more English than the English'. Among my own friends, the two I would most readily describe as 'very English' are a first-generation Indian immigrant and a first-generation Polish refugee. In both cases, their degree of Englishness was initially a conscious choice, and although it has since become second nature, they can still stand back and analyse their behaviour - and explain the rules they have learnt to obey - in a way that most native English find difficult, as we tend to take these things for granted.
abysmal [ə'bɪzməl] крайний, плохой, беспредельный,неизмеримый
Weather-speak
our conversations about the weather are not really about the weather at all: English weather-speak is a form of code, evolved to help us overcome our natural reserve and actually talk to each other. Everyone knows, for example, that 'Nice day, isn't it?', 'Ooh, isn't it cold?', 'Still raining, eh?' and other variations on the theme are not requests for meteorological data: they are ritual greetings, conversation-starters or default 'fillers'. In other words, English weather-speak is a form of 'grooming talk' - the human equivalent of what is known as 'social grooming' among our primate cousins, where they spend hours grooming each other's fur, even when they are perfectly clean, as a means of social bonding.
In fact, 'Ooh, isn't it cold?' - like 'Nice day, isn't it?' and all the others - is English code for 'I'd like to talk to you - will you talk to me?', or, if you like, simply another way of saying 'hello'.
Agreement rule
in England 'You must never contradict anybody when discussing the weather'. We have already established that weather-speak greetings or openers such as 'Cold, isn't it?' must be reciprocated, but etiquette also requires that the response express agreement, as in 'Yes, isn't it?' or 'Mmm, very cold'.
Failure to agree in this manner is a serious breach of etiquette. When the priest says 'Lord, have mercy upon us', you do not respond 'Well, actually, why should he?' You intone, dutifully, 'Christ, have mercy upon us'. In the same way, it would be very rude to respond to 'Ooh, isn't it cold?' with 'No, actually, it's quite mild'.
If you deliberately break the rule (as I duly did, on several occasions, in the interests of science), you will find that the atmosphere becomes rather tense and awkward, and possibly somewhat huffy. No one will actually complain or make a big scene about it (we have rules about complaining and making a fuss), but they will be offended, and this will show in subtle ways. There may be an uncomfortable silence, then someone may say, in piqued tones, 'Well, it feels cold to me,' or 'Really? Do you think so?' - or, most likely, they will either change the subject or continue talking about the weather among themselves, politely, if frostily, ignoring your faux pas.
Too much snow, like too much of anything, is to be deplored. Even warmth and sunshine are only acceptable in moderation: too many consecutive hot, sunny days and it is customary to start fretting about drought, muttering about hose-pipe bans and reminding each other, in doom-laden tones, of the summer of 1976.
The worst possible weather-speak offence is one mainly committed by foreigners, particularly Americans, and that is to belittle the English weather. When the summer temperature reaches the high twenties, and we moan, 'Phew, isn't it hot?', we do not take kindly to visiting Americans or Australians laughing and scoffing and saying 'Call this hot? This is nothing. You should come to Texas [Brisbane] if you wanna see hot!'
Eventually, there may be an opportunity to exchange names, providing this can be achieved in a casual, unforced manner, although it is always best to wait for the other person to take the initiative. Should you reach the end of a long, friendly evening without having introduced yourself, you may say, on parting, 'Goodbye, nice to meet you, er, oh - I didn't catch your name?' as though you have only just noticed the omission. Your new acquaintance should then divulge his or her name, and you may now, at last, introduce yourself - but in an offhand way, as though it is not a matter of any importance: 'I'm Bill, by the way.'
One perceptive Dutch tourist, after listening attentively to my explanation of this procedure, commented: 'Oh, I see. It is like Alice Through the Looking Glass: you do everything the wrong way round.' I had not thought of recommending Alice as a guide to English etiquette, but on reflection it seems like quite a good idea.
Whatever its origins or dubious logic, the prejudice against 'Pleased to meet you' is still quite widespread, often among people who do not know why it is that they feel uneasy about using the phrase. They just have a vague sense that there is something not quite right about it. But even among those with no class prejudice about 'Pleased to meet you', who believe it is the correct and polite thing to say, this greeting is rarely delivered with ringing confidence: it is usually mumbled rather awkwardly, and as quickly as possible - 'Plstmtye'. This awkwardness may, perversely, occur precisely because people believe they are saying the 'correct' thing. Formality is embarrassing. But then, informality is embarrassing. Everything is embarrassing.
The Embarrassment Rule
In fact, the only rule one can identify with any certainty in all this confusion over introductions and greetings is that, to be impeccably English, one must perform these rituals badly. One must appear self-conscious, ill-at-ease, stiff, awkward and, above all, embarrassed. Smoothness, glibness and confidence are inappropriate and un-English. Hesitation, dithering and ineptness are, surprising as it may seem, correct behaviour. Introductions should be performed as hurriedly as possible, but also with maximum inefficiency. If disclosed at all, names must be mumbled; hands should be tentatively half-proffered and then clumsily withdrawn; the approved greeting is something like 'Er, how, um, plstm-, er, hello?'
I would add that a disproportionate number of our most influential social rules and maxims are concerned with the maintenance of privacy: we are taught to mind our own business, not to pry, to keep ourselves to ourselves, not to make a scene or a fuss or draw attention to ourselves, and never to wash our dirty linen in public. It is worth noting here that 'How are you?' is only treated as a 'real' question among very close personal friends or family; everywhere else, the automatic, ritual response is 'Fine, thanks', 'OK, thanks', 'Oh, mustn't grumble', 'Not bad, thanks' or some equivalent, whatever your physical or mental state. If you are terminally ill, it is acceptable to say 'Not bad, considering'.
It is not considered entirely polite, for example, to ask someone directly 'What do you do?', although if you think about it, this is the most obvious question to put to a new acquaintance, and the easiest way to start a conversation. But in addition to our privacy scruples, we English seem to have a perverse need to make social life difficult for ourselves, so etiquette requires us to find a more roundabout, indirect way of discovering what people do for a living. It can be most amusing to listen to the tortured and devious lengths to which English people will go to ascertain a new acquaintance's profession without actually asking the forbidden question. The guessing game, which is played at almost every middle-class social gathering where people are meeting each other for the first time, involves attempting to guess a person's occupation from 'clues' in remarks made about other matters.
Similar guessing-game techniques are often used to find out where people live, whether they are married, what school or university they went to, and so on. Some direct questions are more impolite than others. It is less rude, for example, to ask 'Where do you live?' than 'What do you do?', but even this relatively inoffensive question is much better phrased in a more indirect manner, such as 'Do you live nearby?', or even more obliquely 'Have you come far?' It is more acceptable to ask whether someone has children than to ask whether he or she is married, so the former question is generally used as a roundabout way of prompting clues that will provide the answer to the latter.
The Reciprocal Disclosure Strategy
If you are determined to find out about your new English friend's own marital relations, or any other 'private' matter, you will probably have to resort to the Reciprocal Disclosure Strategy. There is a more or less universal rule whereby people almost unconsciously try to achieve some degree of symmetry or balance in their conversations, such that if you tell them something about your own 'private' life, the other person will feel obliged, if only out of reflex politeness, to reciprocate with a comparably personal disclosure. You can then gradually escalate the level of intimacy by making your next disclosure somewhat more revealing, in the hope of eliciting an equivalent response, and so on.
Exception to the Privacy Rules
The 'print exception'
A newspaper or magazine columnist may tell millions of complete strangers about her messy divorce, her breast cancer, her eating disorder, her worries about cellulite, or whatever, but she will not take kindly to being asked personal questions about such matters by an individual stranger at a private social event. Her taboo-breaking is purely professional; in real life, she observes the English privacy and distance rules like everyone else, discussing private matters only with close friends, and regarding personal questions from anyone outside this inner circle as impertinent and intrusive.
Just as you would not ask a professional topless model to take her top off at a family Sunday lunch, so you do not ask professional soul-barers to bare their souls over the canapes at a private party.
Nor am I saying that English conversation codes do not allow men to express emotion. English males are allowed to express emotion. Well, they are allowed to express some emotions. Three, to be precise: surprise, providing it is conveyed by expletives; anger, generally communicated in the same manner; and elation/triumph, which again often involves shouting and swearing. It can thus sometimes be rather hard to tell exactly which of the three permitted emotions an Englishman is attempting to express.
Once you have become sufficiently sensitized to these distinctions, the Importance of Not Being Earnest rule is really quite simple. Seriousness is acceptable, solemnity is prohibited. Sincerity is allowed, earnestness is strictly forbidden. Pomposity and self-importance are outlawed. Serious matters can be spoken of seriously, but one must never take oneself too seriously. The ability to laugh at ourselves, although it may be rooted in a form of arrogance, is one of the more endearing characteristics of the English. (At least, I hope I am right about this: if I have overestimated our ability to laugh at ourselves, this book will be rather unpopular.)
unseemly - неподобающ, недостойн
Concur - совпадать, пересекаться
Understatement - недосказанность, замалчивание
The English may not always be joking, but they are always in a state of readiness for humour. We do not always say the opposite of what we mean, but we are always alert to the possibility of irony. When we ask someone a straightforward question (e.g. 'How are the children?'), we are equally prepared for either a straightforward response ('Fine, thanks.') or an ironic one ('Oh, they're delightful - charming, helpful, tidy, studious...' To which the reply is 'Oh dear. Been one of those days, has it?').
The understatement rule means that a debilitating and painful chronic illness must be described as 'a bit of a nuisance'; a truly horrific experience is 'well, not exactly what I would have chosen'; a sight of breathtaking beauty is 'quite pretty'; an outstanding performance or achievement is 'not bad'; an act of abominable cruelty is 'not very friendly', and an unforgivably stupid misjudgement is 'not very clever'; the Antarctic is 'rather cold' and the Sahara 'a bit too hot for my taste'; and any exceptionally delightful object, person or event, which in other cultures would warrant streams of superlatives, is pretty much covered by 'nice', or, if we wish to express more ardent approval, 'very nice'.
My fiance is a brain surgeon. When we first met, I asked what had led him to choose this profession. 'Well, um,' he replied, 'I read PPE [Philosophy, Politics and Economics] at Oxford, but I found it all rather beyond me, so, er, I thought I'd better do something a bit less difficult.' I laughed, but then, as he must have expected, protested that surely brain surgery could not really be described as an easy option. This gave him a further opportunity for self-deprecation. 'Oh no, it's nowhere near as clever as it's cracked up to be; to be honest it's actually a bit hit-or-miss. It's just plumbing, really, plumbing with a microscope - except plumbing's rather more accurate.' It later emerged, as he must have known it would, that far from finding the intellectual demands of Oxford 'beyond him', he had entered with a scholarship and graduated with a First. 'I was a dreadful little swot,' he explained.
The problems arise when we English attempt to play this game with people from outside our own culture, who do not understand the rules, fail to appreciate the irony, and therefore have an unfortunate tendency to take our self-deprecating statements at face value. We make our customary modest noises, the uninitiated foreigners accept our apparently low estimate of our achievements, and are duly unimpressed. We cannot very well then turn round and say: 'No, hey, wait a minute, you're supposed to give me a sort of knowingly sceptical smile, showing that you realize I'm being humorously self-deprecating, don't believe a word of it and think even more highly of my abilities and my modesty'. They don't know that this is the prescribed English response to prescribed English self-deprecation. They don't know that we are playing a convoluted bluffing game. They inadvertently call our bluff, and the whole thing backfires on us. And frankly, it serves us right for being so silly.
https://knigogid.ru/books/127971-watching-the-english/toread/page-17
HUMOUR AND COMEDY
Just because the English have 'a good sense of humour' does not mean that we are easily amused - quite the opposite: our keen, finely tuned sense of humour, and our irony-saturated culture probably make us harder to amuse than most other nations.Whether or not this results in better comedy is another matter, but my impression is that it certainly seems to result in an awful lot of comedy - good, bad or indifferent; if the English are not amused, it is clearly not for want of effort on the part of our prolific humorists.
I say this with genuine sympathy, as to be honest the kind of anthropology I do is not far removed from stand-up comedy - at least, the sort of stand-up routines that involve a lot of jokes beginning 'Have you ever noticed how people always...?' The best stand-up comics invariably follow this with some pithy, acute, clever observation on the minutiae of human behaviour and social relations. Social scientists like me try hard to do the same, but there is a difference: the stand-up comics have to get it right. If their observation does not 'ring true' or 'strike a chord', they don't get a laugh, and if this happens too often, they don't make a living. Social scientists can talk utter rubbish for years and still pay their mortgages. At its best, however, social science can sometimes be almost as insightful as good stand-up comedy.
The 'guiding principles' of English humour are classless. The taboo on earnestness, and the rules of irony, understatement and self-deprecation transcend all class barriers.
There is also something quintessentially English about the nature of our response to earnestness. The 'Oh, come off it!' rule encapsulates a peculiarly English blend of armchair cynicism, ironic detachment, a squeamish distaste for sentimentality, a stubborn refusal to be duped or taken in by fine rhetoric, and a mischievous delight in pinpricking the balloons of pomposity and self-importance.
LINGUISTIC CLASS CODES
One cannot talk about English conversation codes without talking about class. And one cannot talk at all without immediately revealing one's own social class.
There are two main factors involved in the calculation of this position: terminology and pronunciation - the words you use and how you say them. Pronunciation is a more reliable indicator (it is relatively easy to learn the terminology of a different class), so I'll start with that.
THE VOWELS VS CONSONANTS RULE
The first class indicator concerns which type of letter you favour in your pronunciation - or rather, which type you fail to pronounce. Those at the top of the social scale like to think that their way of speaking is 'correct', as it is clear and intelligible and accurate, while lower-class speech is 'incorrect', a 'lazy' way of talking - unclear, often unintelligible, and just plain wrong. Exhibit A in this argument is the lower-class failure to pronounce consonants, in particular the glottal stop - the omission (swallowing, dropping) of 't's - and the dropping of 'h's. But this is a case of the pot calling the kettle (or ke'le, if you prefer) black. The lower ranks may drop their consonants, but the upper class are equally guilty of dropping their vowels. If you ask them the time, for example, the lower classes may tell you it is ''alf past ten' but the upper class will say 'hpstn'. A handkerchief in working-class speech is ''ankercheef', but in upper-class pronunciation becomes 'hnkrchf'.
Upper-class vowel-dropping may be frightfully smart, but it still sounds like a mobile-phone text message, and unless you are used to this clipped, abbreviated way of talking, it is no more intelligible than lower-class consonant-dropping. The only advantage of this SMS-speak is that it can be done without moving the mouth very much, allowing the speaker to maintain an aloof, deadpan expression and a stiff upper lip.
The upper class, and the upper-middle and middle-middle classes, do at least pronounce their consonants correctly - well, you'd better, if you're going to leave out half of your vowels - whereas the lower classes often pronounce 'th' as 'f' ('teeth' becomes 'teef', 'thing' becomes 'fing') or sometimes as 'v' ('that' becomes 'vat', 'Worthing' is 'Worving'). Final 'g's can become 'k's, as in 'somefink' and 'nuffink'. Pronunciation of vowels is also a helpful class indicator. Lower-class 'a's are often pronounced as long 'i's - Dive for Dave, Tricey for Tracey. (Working-class Northerners tend to elongate the 'a's, and might also reveal their class by saying 'Our Daaave' and 'Our Traaacey'.) Working class 'i's, in turn, may be pronounced 'oi', while some very upper-class 'o's become 'or's, as in 'naff orf'. But the upper class don't say 'I' at all if they can help it: one prefers to refer to oneself as 'one'. In fact, they are not too keen on pronouns in general, omitting them, along with articles and conjunctions, wherever possible - as though they were sending a frightfully expensive telegram. Despite all these peculiarities, the upper classes remain convinced that their way of speaking is the only proper way: their speech is the norm, everyone else's is 'an accent' - and when the upper classes say that someone speaks with 'an accent', what they mean is a working-class accent.
https://knigogid.ru/books/127971-watching-the-english/toread/page-19
The Seven Deadly Sins
There are, however, seven words that the English uppers and upper-middles regard as infallible shibboleths. Utter any one of these 'seven deadly sins' in the presence of these higher classes, and their on-board class-radar devices will start bleeping and flashing: you will immediately be demoted to middle-middle class, at best, probably lower - and in some cases automatically classified as working class.
Pardon
This word is the most notorious pet hate of the upper and upper-middle classes. Jilly Cooper recalls overhearing her son telling a friend 'Mummy says that "pardon" is a much worse word than "fuck"'. He was quite right: to the uppers and upper-middles, using such an unmistakably lower-class term is worse than swearing. Some even refer to lower-middle-class suburbs as 'Pardonia'. Here is a good class-test you can try: when talking to an English person, deliberately say something too quietly for them to hear you properly. A lower-middle or middle-middle person will say 'Pardon?'; an upper-middle will say 'Sorry?' (or perhaps 'Sorry - what?' or 'What - sorry?'); but an upper-class and a working-class person will both just say 'What?' The working-class person may drop the 't' - 'Wha'?' - but this will be the only difference. Some upper-working-class people with middle-class aspirations might say 'pardon', in a misguided attempt to sound 'posh'.
Toilet
'Toilet' is another word that makes the higher classes flinch - or exchange knowing looks, if it is uttered by a would-be social climber. The correct upper-middle/upper term is 'loo' or 'lavatory' (pronounced lavuhtry, with the accent on the first syllable). 'Bog' is occasionally acceptable, but only if it is said in an obviously ironic-jocular manner, as though in quotes. The working classes all say 'toilet', as do most lower-middles and middle-middles, the only difference being the working-class omission of the final 't'. (The working classes may also sometimes say 'bog', but without the ironic quotation marks.) Those lower- and middle-middles with pretensions or aspirations, however, may eschew 'toilet' in favour of suburban-genteel euphemisms such as 'gents', 'ladies', 'bathroom', 'powder room', 'facilities' and 'convenience'; or jokey euphemisms such as 'latrines', 'heads' and 'privy' (females tend to use the former, males the latter).
Dinner
There is nothing wrong with the word 'dinner' in itself: it is only a working-class hallmark if you use it to refer to the midday meal, which should be called 'lunch'. Calling your evening meal 'tea' is also a working-class indicator: the higher echelons call this meal 'dinner' or 'supper'. (Technically, a dinner is a somewhat grander meal than a supper: if you are invited to 'supper', this is likely to be an informal family meal, eaten in the kitchen - sometimes this is made explicit, as in 'family supper' or 'kitchen supper'. The uppers and upper-middles use the term 'supper' more than the middle- and lower-middles). 'Tea', for the higher classes, is taken at around four o'clock, and consists of tea and cakes or scones (which they pronounce with a short 'o'), and perhaps little sandwiches (pronounced 'sanwidges', not 'sand-witches'). The lower classes call this 'afternoon tea'. All this can pose a few problems for foreign visitors: if you are invited to 'dinner', should you turn up at midday or in the evening? Does 'come for tea' mean four o'clock or seven o'clock? To be safe, you will have to ask what time you are expected. The answer will help you to place your hosts on the social scale.
Sweet
Like 'dinner', this word is not in itself a class indicator, but it becomes one when misapplied. The upper-middle and upper classes insist that the sweet course at the end of a meal is called the 'pudding' - never the 'sweet', or 'afters', or 'dessert', all of which are declasse, unacceptable words. 'Sweet' can be used freely as an adjective, but as a noun it is piece of confectionary - what the Americans call 'candy' - and nothing else. The course at the end of the meal is always 'pudding', whatever it consists of: a slice of cake is 'pudding', so is a lemon sorbet. Asking: 'Does anyone want a sweet?' at the end of a meal will get you immediately classified as middle-middle or below. 'Afters' will also activate the class-radar and get you demoted. Some American-influenced young upper-middles are starting to say 'dessert', and this is therefore the least offensive of the three - and the least reliable as a class indicator. It can also cause confusion as, to the upper classes, 'dessert' traditionally means a selection of fresh fruit, served right at the end of a dinner, after the pudding, and eaten with a knife and fork.
If you want to 'talk posh', you will have to stop using the term 'posh', for a start: the correct upper-class word is 'smart'. In upper-middle and upper-class circles, 'posh' can only be used ironically, in a jokey tone of voice to show that you know it is a low-class word.
The opposite of 'smart' is what everyone from the middle-middles upwards calls 'common' - a snobbish euphemism for 'working class'. But beware: using this term too often is a sure sign of middle-middle class-anxiety. Calling things and people 'common' all the time is protesting too much, trying too hard to distance yourself from the lower classes.Only the insecure wear their snobbery on their sleeve in this way. 'Naff' is a better option, as it is a more ambiguous term, which can mean the same as 'common', but can also just mean 'tacky' or 'in bad taste'. It has become a generic, all-purpose expression of disapproval/dislike: teenagers often use 'naff' more or less interchangeably with 'uncool' and 'mainstream', their favourite dire insults.
If they are 'common', these young people will call their parents Mum and Dad; 'smart' children say Mummy and Daddy (some used to say Ma and Pa, but these are now seen as very old-fashioned). When talking about their parents, common children refer to them as 'my Mum' and 'my Dad' (or 'me Mam' and 'me Dad'), while smart children say 'my mother' and 'my father'.
Common people go to a 'do'; middle-middles might call it a 'function'; smart people just call it a party. 'Refreshments' are served at middle-class 'functions'; the higher echelons' parties just have food and drink. Lower- and middle-middles eat their food in 'portions'; upper-middles and above have 'helpings'. Common people have a 'starter'; smart people have a 'first course' (although this one is rather less reliable).
