I appreciate that the BBC left the swearing in. If you can't swear about the Troubles, what the fuck can you swear about?

Besides, telling someone from here not to swear when they talk is like telling them not to blink. You'll only make them uncomfortable and they'll end up doing it anyway.

It's always a bit jarring to me when I see folk complain about bad language online, using phrases like "nobody has to use those words" and "it's always vulgar" and "it sounds uneducated".

Please understand: that is cultural bias.

it's also classist as fuck, imo, but I am told I need to stop turning everything into a class issue

(everything IS a class issue, you can fight me AND the chip on my shoulder)

Every British person does a subconscious class calculation when they meet someone, whether they admit to it or not. You want to know if someone is "like you" so you know how to speak to them and how to relate to them. But I mess up the calculations. I've got too many middle-class indicators now from being highly educated. (That's classism for you!) So swearing is, for me, often a way to reassure someone working-class that we're on the same level and can relate to each other as such.

It's annoying, though. I don't get angry at people much, but a close colleague once tried to joke that the Pulp song Common People was about me, having gotten the impression that my working-class indicators were the pretension, and not the middle-class ones. The idea that I might read as one of those fucking idiots who pretends to be working-class because they think it's "cool" drives me round the bend.

I also feel I need to explain, for Americans and other strange creatures, that class in Britain has absolutely nothing to do with how much money you have. You're born into a class and you're not getting out of it. It's your upbringing and your background and your language and your culture.

Your kids might be of a different class to you. Your grandkids certainly can be. But you're stuck with where you're born, and British society tends not to like it if you pretend otherwise.

Do not take this explanation for approval.

@astronomerritt

This was the wildest realization for me as I started to really dip into classic British lit. I had of course heard the phrase "your betters" before and thought it was a figure of speech; the idea that people actually thought (think!), in the face of a SUPERABUNDANCE of evidence to the contrary, that someone is literally better than someone else because their parents own land …

Even knowing for a fact that it's true, it can't be true.

@stevegis_ssg Oh, you don’t have to go all the way up to landowners. The things middle-class people have said to my FACE about working-class folk, assuming that because I sound educated and intelligent I must be one of THEM and not one of THOSE… christ.

And my partner is from West Belfast so they get it even worse. They don’t have the Westie accent any more because nobody would fucking employ them in a professional field if they did, but what this means is that people will literally mock the people and the accent in front of them. Because nobody from West Belfast could have a professional career, right? Not like any of Those People could be listening.

Anyone who doesn’t think classism is alive and well in Britain (and by association the North of Ireland) is deluding themselves.