Britainology 18: Poshness (feat. Charlie Palmer)
Okay, okay, maybe you've heard the term 'posh' or 'posho' when referring to fancy British people. You're aware that this country has a reputation for its class system. But what does it actually mean? To answer this question, we brought in TF founding cohost and knower of fancy tendencies Charlie Palmer to discuss. It's all here: getting ripped at 11 am on Dubonnet, wearing a straw hat every day at school, absurd nicknames, gibberish words for everyday items, and the profound sorrow of clinging to the cultural artefacts of feudalism.
Comments (35)
I grew up in rural, inland Washington state in the Pacific Northwest, and I had a friend who grew up north of Seattle and he would get angry at me because he thought I was affecting a Southern accent. It was his first time hearing rural American accents, and the drawl really stood out to him. It was stark how deep the class/linguistic/political divide was inside the same state, due to us growing up 300 miles apart, one on a desert farm and the other in a port city, both broke as shit and separated by a mountain range.
Oh god flashback to a Burns Night Supper I went to in Cumbria, bunch of poshos saying they considered themselves more scottish than english. Kid of the family I was staying with was down from Edinburgh Uni.
Listened to this a second time. Britainology is so good, if I ever go all in on the Trashfutureverse it’ll be because I don’t get all of them. But Nate isn’t one to speak about posh accents in the US. There absolutely are subtle class distinctions in East and west coast accents, from environment and school, that are huge tells about where someone grew up and where they were educated, or their aspirations to same. The kind of flat midwestern accent Nate has is neutral, but he clearly didn’t go to school in Boston.
(Riley here) We release/unlock all Britainologies on this feed eventually so you will get all of them in the fullness of time! Also, I agree with your point re: classed American accents.
Needs to be an episode of Britainology on the love for the 3 quid meal deal
Loved the episode. Note: the citadel is a public school in the US. 1/3 commission into the military.
One of my colleagues, who has just bought a house, was telling me about a nightmare he had that involved him finding out his freehold house was a leasehold. Kind of says it all really... If only we could all have such trivial nightmares.
Wait is rugby posh? I played on a club team in high school (in the states ofc) and it was the biggest group of misfits and degenerates I have ever had the pleasure to associate with...was I accidentally a fancy lad??
On Milo's accent: from what I remember of my linguistics training at uni (we also say it in Switzerland!), to underline the difference with the astonishingly posh version of RP (like the Queen's old accent where she says "ket" for cat) we would call "non-regional pronunciation", or NRP, kinda like the English equivalent to what you were referring to when talking about Nate's Midwest newscaster accent, which is often called General American!
I'm convinced that centuries of vigorous inbreeding it's what cause the ruling class to sound like they do. Their breathing sounds restricted, like Pugs.
The freehold v leasehold thing fucks me up so much. If you told me despite being hundreds of thousands of £s deep in debt to a home loan lender I was technically still in the same place as I had been in uni (broke and renting), I would parody minecraft with my own hands everyone in the country that has landed gentry in their lineage.
ofc ideally land is owned communally housing should be free and so on but like even by the prevailing capitalistic standards this is insane and perverted
Nate: 'The House of Lords seems insane to Americans.' US Senate: *incredibly suspicious whistling*
Egg on my face: I literally didnt know the House of Lords had hereditary appointments, still. I thought it was just the whole 'openly existing to fight for the rich at the expense of the poor' thing. My bad, Nate!
Masters student at Edinburgh here from a very working class background. Can confirm the posho levels are off the scale, especially among undergrads, though some have lingered on into the masters programmes too. It makes for a good laugh with my almost entirely Scottish friend circle when we're at the pub and a game of "spot the Edinburgh student" lasts all of 5 seconds however.
I go to Wisconsin now and god damn it I want to redacted Scott Walker to badly in Minecraft
nvm paused literally 5 seconds before where Virginia is mentioned lmao.
In the discussion of the U.S. university system, you forgot to mention the "5 public Ivies," which are the 5 public universities that are considered elite schools: Michigan, Wisconsin, UC-Berkley, etc.
I didn’t know the Union Club was THAT posh. My dad and granddad are members.
The saddest coterie of Anglo poshness must be Canadians who claim lineage from United Empire Loyalists.
Agreed with milo on nate CNN voice, I always thought nate kinda had a us news broadcast type voice, in a dark universe I could see him doing a natsec show on npr
Re: recreational sports of American inherited wealth around 12:30 - playing squash and sailing regattas are the biggest markers for me.
Asking about what high school someone attended in the US is a big thing in smaller cities like St. Louis and Cleveland, and for the same reason. It's a class thing to figure out out how to interact with someone. You can't do that with colleges or universities since there are so many in the US.
I think you can. There are schools that matter to US poshos- Ivies (except Cornell, land grant college, what?) and SLACs, but only certain ones, NESCAC & a few others. The idea of “public ivies” is mostly a joke in terms of the themes of this episode. The US has world class public and private colleges and in terms of career success going to a top UC or UVA might be similar to going to Harvard or Yale but the class issues are different. And the US is so big that like Duke or Vanderbilt or Wake Forest might be posh in the south but not in NY, and the accent certainly wouldn’t be, no matter how patrician or rich the student. There are as subtle barriers here as there are in the UK, the country is just so big it seems like less of a deal than in a tiny island with a hundred accents.
Correction: The Citadel is a freak South Carolina public university, not a private school. When I was a kid in SC, it was a news story that a woman tried to enroll and the other students sent her death threats, so… yeah
Lol, my dad had a Northern English accent (my grandmother was from Lancashire. He spent his summers in Bolton of all places) and his American public school thought it was a lisp so they sent him to ESL (what they would later be called) classes in the 50's.
I really hope Britainology ends up doing a mini series of Milo teaching Nate how to do British regional accents so he can expand his repertoire past David Baddiel
longtime listeners will note that any attempt beyond very limited Baz voice one-liners will trend towards full Australian very fast
I feel like you could have an entire addendum episode on Oxbridge specifically. I looked at going to Cambridge but just got baffled by the college system and gave up because it was so arcane to me
Honesly (as a snivelling colonial) this was very helpful
Years ago at a friend's 30th party, me (middle class) and my pal (working class) are chatting outside in the smoking area and talking about Spoon's burgers being made of Zebu a few years prior. Another guy at the party, a posh Uni friend of the bday boy, joins us with the incredibly relatable topic of his time in Africa hunting Zebu. The guys just live a different life lol
I appreciate the mention of Brisbane Boys Grammar, the first time I caught the train with a bunch of those straw hatted teens I experienced an almost physical reaction of bewilderment
Same
About permanent landlords: My American dad, while having tea in the Cotswolds said he enjoyed the twee-ness of it all, but it felt wrong to know some royal owned everything
I just finished what has been released of the crown and this is really helping my Midwestern brain digest that, particularly the scene of princess anne singing Bowie.