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.