The British always like to talk about
what class a person’s in. A lot of people think they
aren’t in any class – but the British can always put them
in one! The class you’re in comes from the work that you
do and the work that your parents did. Factory workers,
miners, waiters and shop assistants are the working
classes. Cousins of the Queen, people who live in castles
and everyone whose family has been rich for more than a
hundred years are the upper classes. Between the working
classes and the upper classes, there are millions of
people. These are the middle classes, and they’re the
people who talk most about class. A lot of them are
businessmen doctors, teachers and lawyers. They say that
they’re the upper middle class, and think they’re much
better than the lower middle class. The lower middle
class is the class of shopkeepers, clerks and skilled
workmen. All this is called the class system. It started
in Britain about a hundred and fifty years ago, and the
British haven’t seen yet that the world today is
different from the world a hundred and fifty years ago.
Workmen don’t like their bosses, and bosses don’t like
their workmen; but, if you ask them why, they’ll tell you
that they don’t like each other because their
grandfathers didn’t like each other. The British think
they can always tell someone’s class when they hear him
talking. They listen to his accent, and then they say:
"Yes, he speaks working-class English," or "He speaks
very good English. I think he comes from an upper-class
family. " Working-class people usually speaks with the
accent of the where they live. Most of them say "at" for
hat and "ungry" for hungry: when they do this, the
British say that they’re dropping their hs. The middle
classes speak the upper classes. The upper classes speak
with their mouths nearly closed; their English is like
English spoken under water! A lot of people go from one
class to another, and then they try to change their
accent. But they can’t often hide their old accent, and
you can usually tell which class they come from. People
usually try to go up into a higher class; but today the
British think it’s very good to be born in the working
classes. So a lot middle – class teachers, writers and
politicians try to speak like the working classes. They
tell people they were born poor and have worked hard.
Today, the upper classes haven’t got much money. They
must pay large taxes, and it’s very expensive to repair
their big houses and castles. So they show their homes to
tourists to make enough money to pay their bills. But the
wages of the working classes get bigger every year,
because there aren’t enough people to work in the
factories. The working – class man often has a bigger car
and better clothes than the upper- class man!
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