Kenneth is but one out of scores of journalists who think they’re being so hip and cool by going Full British.

Then they fall flat on their face.

A few days ago I saw a headline in Times of Malta, about some Maltese public official who’d died: “One of Malta’s foremost gents”.

Gents?!

Then you have the sports pages of Times of Malta and The Malta Independent, with their contrived Estuary and Merseyside English, again thinking they’re so hip and cool because they’re using tabloid language: “Birkirkara boot sorry Marsaxlokk.” “Rollicking Stripes sweep the field against Valletta.”

It’s terrible. It sounds artificial, is artificial, and clashes so badly with the rest of the paper.

There is yet another version of Maltese fake-British English which is Civil Service English, full of “Your good self”, “As per the below” and “Kindly” do this and that.

We may think it’s a harmless bit of national idiosyncrasy. But it isn’t. It’s extremely dangerous, because it’s cutting us off from the rest of the developed world.

Jack?

Yes, register is the key word here. Kids is colloquial which is what I have been saying all along. In a formal setting, for example on a notice or any official document one would use children. In a spoken context one would use kids. In any case this whole business of needing to size people up on the basis of social class has been turned on its head. For years the BBC has made efforts to rid itself of the prejudice towards non-south east accents and people from higher class backgrounds go to great lengths to sound less posh. The Queen even attends classes on sounding less posh for her speeches. Bottom line, children formal, kids informal. Or we can do what we normally do and agree to disagree.

[Daphne – I am tired of this endless discussion. The fact of the matter is that yes, you can tell a lot about people who will always say kids when they mean children, and when they are neither American nor Australian. I hate to disappoint you, but learning how to ‘dumb down’ one’s accent when around or speaking to people who might get chippy or upset or feel alienated by what it says about you is actually an act of superiority: ‘I must learn how to sound less posh so as not to upset the proles, but when the chippy proles are not around, I will revert to the default position.’ Far from turning on its head “the need to size people up on the basis of social class”, changing your accent while temporarily in the presence of their social inferiors is one big act of sizing them up and behaving accordingly. In sum, if an English person with one of those accents which upsets you because of its ‘poshness’ talks to you in a dumbed-down accent, he is not doing it for reasons of fashion or democracy, but because your accent marks you out to him as socially different and he is, in his mind, going DOWN to your level. You have mistaken patronizing behavior for something else.]

I agree completely with the points that you made. I was thinking along more simplistic lines, as to whether some day in the future, we could have a common vocabulary.

Certainly the combination of a person’s accent, vocabulary and grammar gives away a wealth of information. My very British father has always said that in England, you could tell immediately, by the way a person spoke, their background and education.

Your story about the two Norwegian ladies reminded me of a similar experience my sister had years ago. There aren’t that many Maltese people in southern California. Someone at my sister’s work-place knew a young man who was Maltese and she passed on my sister’s number, thinking they would have a lot in common and might want to get together.

He did call her and when I asked her how it went, she said that he was nice enough to talk to but she could tell immediately that he was not of our kind of background and there was no way she was going out with him.

So my sister’s American friend made the same mistake you made with the Norwegians. She too thought that because they were from the same country, they would have a lot in common and they didn’t.

As my American daughter would say,”Baxter, you crack me up !”

On our way from Southampton to New York, our ship struck an iceberg. Over the tannoy, the crew were ordering “Women and kids first.”

Now I live happily in Manhattan with Ritienne and our pet goat.

They are less and less common right across the Anglophone countries. It is the result of cuts in funding. That is why most programming is now American commercial rubbish. Compare the programmes of the 60s right up to the 90s, even, if not especially, those from the US and see the difference in quality, wittiness, storyline etc and compare it to the dumbed down sensationalist crap we get today.

The UK, Australia, New Zealand produce close to nothing these days. Britain is still holding out, but barely. Probably France is the only coumtry still willing to publically fund quality programming.

I would not take it the wrong way at all. There are different registers in most developed languages and I agree when you say that ‘kids’ is not the right register for this blog.

That register is more at home on the Times of Malta comments board. But to suggest that the use of the word ‘kids’ is the preserve of uncouth illiterates is to deny the importance of register and context in any conversation.

If I said ‘children’ at the pub, and this applies right across the UK and the former Empire, I’d be risking a kick in the mouth.

[Daphne – Wrong. Truly wrong. The very idea that somebody would kick you in the mouth for saying ‘children’ is so ridiculous I don’t know where to begin. On the other hand, you will be assessed on your use of ‘kids’ in anything other than a throwaway remark like ‘he’s just a kid’. Have you asked yourself why, when you’re lining up to board at a British airport, a request is made for “those with young children” to board first? Children, not kids. ]

I agree, it is complex and I know the many nuances associated with the word, do not doubt that.

Language is dynamic and the English being spoken in Britain these days is heavily influenced by American English.

[Daphne – It really isn’t, apart from a word here and there. That’s a complete misconception. It is those who learn English as a foreign language who are heavily influenced by American English, whether they are European or Asian. Maltese people, oddly, are influenced by neither British English nor American English. Their English is influenced by Maltese.]

Also, this tendency to refer to the English spoken in England as British English, as though to ignore the many variants throughout the country, is to ignore the fact thatso-called British English is nothing other than the dialect that was spoken in the South-East later to be adopted by the rest of the UK as the standard English.

[Daphne – Again, another misconception. Standard English is not the “dialect that was spoken in the south-east” (have you heard some of the thick and heavy dialects in the south-east?) but the English spoken by the better-educated classes. This was not because posh people imposed their language on the rest of the country, but because posh people – in the years before compulsory education – were the repositories of proper usage and correct grammar.]

By the way, yes, thanks for calling me a prollie. I’ve always been called a try-hard in that respect in my attempts at being recognised as one. Now I can show them proof of having been called one online. Lining up for the badge.