t cough

(where the hell was my train of thought?)

I think Fiona is pretty much on the money, though

No, no. Because, you see, had it been any *other* character, the assumption of middle class would have been just fine. No one assumes Dru was the daughter of royalty or at least minor gentry. Very few fics assume high and mighty origins for Giles and Wesley.

It's just that the Spikefen found places other than B.org can be... peculiar. And given to a complete lack of logic and rational behaviour. Their Spoike is a shiny, misunderstood hero of noble birth who has been hiding his light under a bushel for all these years, and doesn't deserve the cruel, cruel treatment he's received at the hands of his beloved Buffy (that horrible bitch!).

Heh.

I should perhaps avoid my general fandom surfing before I've had my coffee. I get... cranky.

What Angus Said. William was fringe at that party (you could tell because the idiot was wearing country tweeds, not evening dress. Or maybe that could have been a costuming glitch. Naaah.). He was lower status than everybody else. A baronet would by definition be comfortably midstream unless there was actual nobility present.

Cecily couldn't say "You're beneath me" to a baronet unless Cecily was nobility herself. It seemed crystal clear to me that Cecily and so on were upper middle-class, while William was clinging to middle class by his fingernails. And NOBODY is more keenly aware of social status than the middle classes. The upper classes know they win. The lower classes don't really care. It's the people in the middle who worry about it.

Actually, I was listening to some random British professor the other night on NPR and thinking how much I love *any* kind of British accent, and the pauses, and the wry understated self-deprecating humor.

In my mind, you are all intelligent, funny, and literate. You'll just have to bear up under the burden.

reminding self to never, never, let Betsy meet British family members.

I was thinking that Cecily might have been from a family that made a lot of money in trade, but didn't really have a history of great manners, so as far as she knew, her behavior was all right. In fact, my fanwank was that William was of an upper middle class background, but of teacher or ministers, so there wasn't much money, so he was sort of a buttmonkey leech - he got invited to the parties because of his name, and because there might have been a title in the family, but because he was poor and dependent on whatever those wealthy "friends" gave him (like maybe his clothes were always wrong because he was wearing cast-offs, and it didn't include the right evening suit) so they felt free to dump on him.

Actually, I was listening to some random British professor the other night on NPR and thinking how much I love *any* kind of British accent, and the pauses, and the wry understated self-deprecating humor.

I'm spoiled by the fact that so many of the Brits I'm exposed to are actors, and most of those have a good actor-education, so they can both read and enunciate when called upon to do so. (It's a consistent irritation, listening to Hot Young Things from the US speaking in marble-mouthed fashion, and I don't mean accent or dialect, just lack of care.)

Then again, I like watching Jamie Oliver's cooking show, because he's on the bare edge of intelligible sometimes, and he punctuates his sentences with "yeah?" where an American would say, "you know?" and it's sort of funny to listen to. Also, he always looks like he just woke up, rolled out of bed, put some pants on, and started cooking.

Then again, I like watching Jamie Oliver's cooking show, because he's on the bare edge of intelligible sometimes, and he punctuates his sentences with "yeah?" where an American would say, "you know?"

Mmmmm. I think this was one of the things that made me fall in love with Handy Andy.

Then again, I like watching Jamie Oliver's cooking show, because he's on the bare edge of intelligible sometimes, and he punctuates his sentences with "yeah?" where an American would say, "you know?" and it's sort of funny to listen to. Also, he always looks like he just woke up, rolled out of bed, put some pants on, and started cooking.

On the bare edge of intelligible? Gosh. We have so very many many different lovely accents in the UK - I'm a total sucker for Geordie, myself, but I can't think of an accent I don't like. Brum, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Any flavour of Welsh, Sheffield, Leeds, Cornish - most people aren't posh or RP, but I do love British accents. Wish I had a proper one, sometimes - but I can do accents, kind of. If it's in character. If I get some chance to practice.

Actually, the chief thing that makes Jamie hard to understand is the vocabulary difference. There are a lot of vegetables that have completely different names, and some of the ones with the same names are pronounced differently. Sometimes it's only when he holds up the fruit in question that I'm like, Ohhhh, that thing.

The US doesn't get that much exposure to non-Beeb English, except maybe when Mystery! does a British series. I'm only now in my old age gotten to the point where I can parse Geordie without having to think about it. I still (Beatles notwithstanding) sometimes lose a sentence in Liverpudlian, because my native system of tonal variation is so different.

(Although the funniest English/American sight in my life was watching a British linguistic teacher try to reproduce mountain Kentucky vowels -- you know, the kind of dialect where "house" is three syllables.)

Having lived in the UK for some time, I love most British accents, and can usualy differentiate them. On the other hand, I just plain hate Jamie Oliver.