Proof that Don Draper was a social climber…

“What?” … “Huh?” … “Excuse me?” … “Can you [please] repeat that?”

Those are some of the ways an American might ask you to repeat something when they didn’t hear you. And apart from their varying degrees of politeness, there’s not much to distinguish between them.

But it’s a different story on the other side of the Atlantic. Brits are inclined to judge you by how you say “huh?” — as much as by the clothes you wear, where you went to school or what accent comes out of your mouth.

“Pardon?”

Yes, it’s sad but true. Pardon is very non-U. (See Glossophilia’s earlier post on U and non-U language.) If you say pardon in the UK, you’re considered “low-class”. I know, it’s counter-intuitive: doesn’t pardon sound more posh than what? But it doesn’t make you posh.

“What?”

Now you’re talking (or asking). That’s more U. If you’re aspiring to be a middle-class Brit, then say “what?”, and you’ll be on the right track. Or rather, on the right side of the tracks.

Kate Fox in her book Watching the English confirms that pardon is still an undisputedly non-U way to say “what did you say?”:

“This word is the most notorious pet hate of the upper and upper-middle classes. Jilly Cooper recalls overhearing her son telling a friend ‘Mummy says that “pardon” is a much worse word than “f*ck”’. He was quite right: to the uppers and upper-middles, using such an unmistakably lower-class term is worse than swearing. Some even refer to lower-middle-class suburbs as ‘Pardonia’.”

And this is from the country where everyone says sorry — all the time, when someone bumps into them or when they can’t hear you.

“Sorry?” I didn’t quite catch that.

It’s probably safer to be sorry than to beg someone’s pardon …

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