Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of the
understandable English podcast. I'm Oliver.
And today, we are going to be talking about the British class
system. So what is a class system?
A class system is a phenomenon or something, which a cure
occurs as separating different categories or groups of people
within In a society, this can be the way people behave.
It can be based on their income. So how much money they earn and
also other aspects of their life often these class systems come
from the time periods in history, when there were clear
separation between Kings and the working people.
So, there was the wealthy Or very rich people, the people in
the middle and perhaps the people who did a lot of the
manual work. So work in the fields or
factories. And in many cases, in many
different countries, these classes them's, still to an
extent exist today. The UK is no exception and in
fact it is one of the most divided country Countries in
many ways by class in the world. Of course these categories.
And separations are not as important as they once used to
be, but if you travel or live in the UK for a long time, you will
start to notice some clear differences between groups of
people within Society. We can simply categorize Society
into Man classes, the working class the middle class and the
upper class. But there are much more
complicated and specific ways to separate these groups as well.
But for Simplicity and to explain today, some of the
differences we are going to just use those free simple
categories. The upper class is seen as the
rich. Gist most wealthy and most
comfortable people within the UK.
They might have a lot of money from their parents and their
grandparents passed down through generations.
Often they do a variety of cultural activities like going
to the theater ballet. I am and lots of other things
which in the past would have been associated.
If wealthy and rich people, this group of people, often own their
own property. In the vast, majority of cases,
they might even have multiple houses, they could be land
owners. So they own their own land, a
more other houses, which they rent or allow people to live in.
For money, the middle class can be categorized by, Why are
people who have a high level of income?
So, they have Financial Security.
It means they aren't really worrying about money for the
most part. These people also own their own
houses or property, but a lot less than the upper class often.
They won't be landlords or renting property to other
people. And finally, The working class
is seen as people with the lowest level of income or
salaries in the UK often, they will do jobs, which require
manual labor, for example, working in a factory.
But, of course, as times have changed, this can be seen as,
you know, basic office jobs or jobs, which don't require a
higher level of Education. Of course, there is a lot of in
between, with these categories. That's just a simple explanation
of what, some of the differences might be.
But today, I want of the things I would like to focus on and
talk about is how language changes between these two
groups. And this is where the old
British class system is still very clear even today.
In 2022. It is clear from things, such as
accent, Soho people, speak people from higher classes, tend
to prefer certain signs. When pronouncing words, they
have more of a specific accent. And in the past, this was often
associated with RP, accent pronunced pronunciation or as
some people call it The queen's English.
It is the kind of accent that you might often hear on BBC News
or in Parliament from, for example, a prime minister or
members of parliament MPS politicians, like a lot of the
wealth and the upper class in the UK.
It is heavily concentrated or focused in the south of England.
So, the southeast of England around London and the home
counties. These are the wealthiest richest
counties in the UK. So today I wanted to look at a
few common English words and show you the two differences.
So, with many of these words, there are often three different
ways of saying them in English one option.
In is preferred by the working class or middle class and
another is often preferred and used by the upper class are.
But today we're going to look at two options for each word.
So the upper class and the known upper class because really the
difference between working class and middle class is a lot more
blurred or not clear anymore and the Words used can move between
the two, but the upper class words are still very separate
and different from what a lot of us use today.
So I'd like to tell you a few of them, the most clear and common
example, is often known upper class or non rich, people will
call it will say, movie movie, like in America.
And in the upper class, they tend to prefer the word film
film. Of course it can be used in both
but film tends to be used more in the upper class and never
common word which I'm sure. You know is the word toilet
toilet, a very common word in English in the upper class or
the wealthiest areas of society they tend to use Word lavatory
lavatory instead of toilet and never common word is Desert.
So the food that you eat after the meal often sweet, like a
cake or a bun or something, nice and sweet in the upper class or
the wealthiest areas, they tend to use the word pudding pudding
and the final, Example, I'd like to give you today is a word, you
probably know quite well. So living room or line JH, this
is the room in which you might watch TV, maybe entertain some
Ghasts, and have a cup of tea in the wealthier or upper classes.
They tend to say sitting room or drawing room, drawing room and
lined or living room is Not quite popular.
These are just a few small examples of language use and it
gets even more complicated. So when we get into the very
elite class of British Society. So the top four or five percent
or even by some studies 6% of the richest, wealthiest people
in the UK they use an Most entirely different way of
speaking. A lot of almost specific slang
words which are almost not understandable to other native
speakers outside of this group. It can be very confusing and
difficult to understand even for most of British Society.
So all of this might sound a little bit strange to you but
don't worry in To, although it is still present and clear in
many ways at the class system and the divides in Britain are
not as bad as they once were. And it isn't a serious, a
distinction. Of course, there are still many
problems which come from the system and the history behind it
and these social separations within the UK.
But the reality is we live in a time with me.
More opportunities than ever, people can get access and
opportunities to education at an unprecedented rate.
So I read which they never seen before.
But as I always think we can move towards improving these
divides. I think that separating people
in terms of perspective and how you view them based on the
amount of money they have. Of what kind of family they came
from is bad. Ultimately, it's bad and quite -
we should judge. And look at each person for who
they are. What they've done, what they do
and their own personality and beliefs.
We should not judge them based on their family, their
ethnicity, their skin color, or any of these things.
So I hope this was interesting. Interesting for you.
It's a little bit of a different podcast topic today, but
something that I was thinking about recently, when I was
watching a lot of content about British politics and really,
looking at how different our politicians are from the average
people, the average person in the UK because in the UK are
politicians are often seen as from this upper class.
So the small minority of the population and the rest of the
country is really not. So, similar to the politicians
who are making our laws. I am, and really deciding the
future of the country. So, I hope you have a fantastic
day, whatever time of the day you're listening, and wherever
you are have a wonderful day and I will see you in the next
episode. Goodbye.