Rejoice: British class distinctions are finally crumbling. Yes, the gap between rich and poor is as big as ever and I am, inexplicably, unhappily, aware that Tatler’s “most eligible singles” list exists and features a princess, a lord, a lady, a Getty and a Goldsmith. But forget all that: it’s practically Scandinavia here now that the Prince of Wales has been heard saying “Pleased to meet you” – a phrase, I learn, that is traditionally considered social death. (What should one say instead? Perhaps nothing, just fix the person with an icily underwhelmed stare? I could get into that.)
On top of that, new research suggests different social classes have stopped using different words for the thing we sit on in front of the television. The non-U (U as in upper class) “settee” is dying out and we all mostly say “sofa”. Then there’s the other thing we all sit on: we call it the loo or toilet indiscriminately now, irrespective of where we went to school.
It’s amazing that U and non-U, the 1950s set of linguistic class signifiers popularised by Nancy Mitford, is still knocking around. Surely those distinctions stopped making sense in the 1960s, around the time Mick Jagger perfected his mockney accent? That cringey affectation is going stronger than ever, incidentally: social media is full of posh youths pretending to be “roadmen” (“a young person who spends a lot of time on the streets and may use or sell drugs, or cause trouble”, the Cambridge dictionary explains, sounding an awful lot like posters on my NextDoor app).
The giant pit of words that is the internet means we live radically less linguistically siloed lives, too. Perhaps this study will finally bury U and non-U. Of course, it won’t stop us judging each other based on how we talk; plenty of words and phrases make me clutch my pearls in horror. I have started compiling a list of my most irredeemable for 2024: Substack, sleepmaxxing, fridgescape, “passionate about content creation” and microbiome. Also dolphin (more a lifelong prejudice than a 2024 bugbear). Maybe this is what a truly classless Britain will look like: everyone arbitrarily judging everyone else’s vocabulary.
• Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
