It is hard to believe that an almanac would be “unputdownable!” But Schott’s Original Miscellany by Ben Schott is exactly that… “unputdownable” according to miscellanies.info. It is a book of vital trivia, uncommon knowledge, and essential irreverence. Here is an interesting excerpt:
In 1954 Prof. Alan Ross published his essay ‘Linguistic class-indicators in present-day English’ in the renowned Finnish philological journal, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen. Here, Ross attempted to codify the spoken and written linguistic rules which demarcated upper-class language. His premise was that very subtle norms of phrasing, pronunciation, or vocabulary would instantly distinguish an upper-class (‘U’) speaker from the working or aspirational middle-class (‘non-U’) speaker – as below:
NON-U U
to take a bath to have a bath
dinner lunch
supper dinner
dress suit dinner jacket
home house
mirror looking-glass
perfume scent
note-paper writing paper
pardon? what?
preserve jam
toilet lavatory
wealthy rich
wire telegram
If this were the measuring rod today, it would make me half upper-class and half-middle class speaker, using words like telegram, rich, lavatory, jam, writing paper, but also using perfume, mirror, home, dress suit, supper, and dinner.
Stuff like this is fascinating to me.
Ben Schott has also written the Miscellany 2008 almanac if you’re interested.
