The Secret Passwords of Middle-Class Grammar

English is the only language in the world that is divided by class, where middle-class people everywhere all use the same words of the standard dialect, and all the other, regional, non-standard dialects are spoken only by people who are working class. There are relatively few differences between the two sets of dialects -- the most obvious are very common words from the basic, core grammar. These provide the secret middle-class passwords.

If you don’t use the middle-class versions, you don’t get into the middle class.

This doesn’t just mean not being invited to dinner parties. This means being denied entry to any profession. It means making no progress in any conventional career. It means always being judged uneducated and unintelligent.

The middle-class ban on working-class words applies not only in class-bound Britain but throughout the US, Canada, Australia and every other country where English is spoken as the first language. In the US, there’s also a racial segregation, working against the 90% of African-Americans who speak their own banned dialect.

This ban is complete and absolute. It applies in speaking as well as in writing, not only in school but in every area of adult life, in every middle-class context, from official company report to casual chat – no non-middle-class English accepted, ever. So one slip, one non-middle-class form, a single youse is enough to have middle-class membership refused.

This applies to every aspect of language – accent, vocabulary and grammar. We are all vaguely aware of the class associations of accent and vocabulary, so it’s the grammar that’s crucial, because that’s where the never-explained, never-openly-acknowledged passwords lurk.

It doesn’t matter how gifted or talented or hard-working or determined you are – if you say things like I seen or they was or you have took, you will not pass Go. You will always be stuck on the lower rungs of the social ladder.

There is no justification for this ban, no good reason for it – only deep class prejudice.

Middle-class speakers think that working-class forms like I done or I seen youse are mistakes but they aren’t – they are perfectly valid and grammatical. In fact, they are more rule-abiding and grammatically correct then the middle-class equivalents which are always the wonkiest.

So if you use a non-middle-class version of English, you don’t make horrible errors or speak in a somehow worse way. You are talking in a fully respectable, proper, coherent, entirely grammatical dialect – a dialect which is every bit as good as the middle-class one.

However you speak English, you speak it wonderfully well. No matter what words you use or how you say them, no matter your class, education, income, race, religion or hairstyle – you are a brilliant speaker of English. The trouble is that you and everyone else think exactly the opposite.

We have all accepted the rejection of working-class English as obvious and natural – of course you’ve got to talk proper(ly) to get on. But it’s not natural – it’s actually very weird. In fact, it’s unique – there are about 6,000 languages being spoken on this planet; English is the only one to have anything like this password system. Because English is the only language in the world which is divided by class.

And not only divided but segregated – middle-class good, working-class bad. English isn’t just vaguely class-ist. English is thoroughly and secretly rigged – with a class language barrier and a set of passwords hidden in the core grammar.

The main password fails - words in working-class grammar which middle-class people mistakenly reject as mistakes

Youse

(or you all in some American dialects) – it’s a very useful form lacking in middle-class English where it’s you for both plural and singular. In working class it's you for singular, and youse for plural. (More on middle-class pronouns below.)

Them

Using them before nouns – them tables, them cars. (In some Scottish dialects it’s they). In middle-class English it’s those.

See Determiners in Real Rules

Double negatives

I never done nothing, or he never seen nobody. As in the majority of languages, all working-class dialects of English use more than one negative in a negative statement. In middle-class English, single negatives are used I didn't do anything, he didn't see anybody.

See Double Negatives in Made-Up Rules

Not adding an -ly ending for some adverbs

She's done it up real beautiful. Some middle-class adverbs have an "ly" ending, and not using them is seen as a mistake. However, the working-class dialects are perfectly grammatical without the "ly" ending for those adverbs - in fact, middle-class English is the only dialect of any Germanic language with a special adverbial form.

See Adverbs in Made-Up Rules

No plural with measurement

It cost fifty dollar, or she ran for three mile. The good reason for this is that the nouns aren't being counted (one mile, two miles, three miles) but measured, taken as a whole, so they become the kind of nouns known as "uncountable", like "salt" or "weather", which are always singular. In middle-class English, the nouns of measurements go into the plural – it cost fifty dollars.

See Nouns in Made-Up Rules

Ain't

Using ain't instead of isn't, aren't, hasn't and haven't. Scottish and some northern English dialects have their own forms, like hasna and havenae.

See Negatives of Verbs in Made-Up Rules

Regularising the verb “to be”

"Be" is very irregular in the middle-class dialect with five forms – am, is, are, was and were – as well as been and being. But it is usually much better behaved in working-class dialects, which, for example, tend to use one of was or were throughout the simple past tense, giving forms like "I were" and "they was". In the simple present tense, non-middle-class dialects often make "be" a normal, regular verb with one form throughout. African-American English and dialects of the rural west of England use "be" itself throughout the present tense – I be, you be, he/ she/ it be, we be, you/you all be and they be. They are always logical and grammatical but any variations from middle-class's wonky "be" are stigmatised.

Regularising the past tenses of irregular verbs

Some of the most obvious differences in working-class dialects are irregular verb forms such as has took and have forgot. Most verbs in English are regular, using a straightforward “ed” ending in the simple past and the past participle (the form used with “have” as a helping verb) – I walk, I walked, I have walked. However, a couple of hundred of our most commonly used verbs are irregular, going into a past form by another method, such as changing the vowel – “give / gave”, “take / took”, “break / broke”. Almost all the class differences happen because the middle-class version adds a second irregularity (given, taken, broken), where working-class verbs follow the pattern of regular verbs by using the same form for both the simple past and the past participle – I take, I took, I have took; I break, I broke, I have broke. There are a few differences among the various working-class dialects – in many, verbs like “see” are often simply regularised (I seed it; I have seed it), and, for example, in some American dialects and Glaswegian, it’s “did” for both past forms, giving I did it and I have did it. I suspect that my Scottish bias might show in a few verbs like "give" and "go", but otherwise I think that the forms I’ve given apply to working-class dialects throughout the English-speaking world.

List of top 20 irregular verbs

	Middle-Class		Working-Class
	Simple Past	Past Participle	Simple Past	Past Participle
Be	was + were	been	was or were	been
Begin	began	begun	begun	begun
Break	broke	broken	broke	broke
Choose	chose	chosen	chose	chose
Come	came	come	came	came
Do	did	done	done	done
Drink	drank	drunk	drunk	drunk
Drive	drove	driven	drove	drove
Forget	forgot	forgotten	forgot	forgot
Give	gave	given	gave	gave
Go	went	gone	went	went
Mistake	mistook	mistaken	mistook	mistook
Ride	rode	ridden	rode	rode
Run	ran	run	ran	ran
See	saw	seen	seen	seen
Sing	sang	sung	sang	sang
Speak	spoke	spoken	spoke	spoke
Swear	swore	sworn	swore	swore
Take	took	taken	took	took
Write	wrote	written	wrote	wrote

A full list of the passwords in the irregular verbs is given in the ebook, The Rules of English .

The middle-class dialect’s extra oddities are marked in italics – these are the class passwords. They usually appear in the list’s third column, the past participles, which are the forms used with “have” and “had”.

Middle-class pronoun table

	Subject	Object	Possessive with a noun	Possessive instead of a noun	Reflexive
First person singular	I	me	my	mine	myself
Second person singular	you	you	your	yours	yourself
Third person singular	he	him	his	his	himself
	she	her	her	hers	herself
	it	it	its	its	itself
First person plural	we	us	our	ours	ourselves
Second person plural	you	you	your	yours	yourselves
Third person plural	they	them	their	theirs	themselves

There are lots of different versions of this pronoun table in non-middle-class dialects. For example, where the middle-class version has “their”, African-American English often has “they”, and where the middle-class dialect has “I me my”, in the working-class dialect of the northeast of England it’s “I us me” (”Give us me coat”) and instead of “we us our” it’s “us we wor” (“Us took it worselves”).

However, there are also a couple of very significant occasions where all non-middle-class dialects share the same conspicuous difference from middle-class, because it is the middle-class form that is odd. The most obvious divergence happens when middle-class has “you” for both singular and plural and most other dialects have “youse” or, in parts of the US, “you all”. It’s a perfectly sensible addition but in the real world “youse” in particular is deemed unfit for middle-class ears.

The other, less obvious, universal difference happens in the third person, where middle-class reflexives break the pattern of being formed from the possessive (“my” + “self”, “your” + “self” / “selves”, “our”+ “selves”) by using the object form instead – “him” + “self”, “them” + “selves”. Working-class dialects keep to the pattern by using the possessive form – “hisself” and “theirselves”. These are regular, rule-obeying words – it’s only because they are spoken by working-class people that these perfectly valid reflexives are frowned on and banned.