More non-U-ishness!

[pne]

Separated by a common language blog had an article on "diapers" vs. "nappies", touching on verbal inferiority along the way, and included a footnote on "napkin" vs. "serviette":

Then there's the old napkin versus serviette drama in BrE and related Es. In some (e.g. South African and some BrE speakers), the former is reserved for cloth table napkins, and the latter for paper. Elsewhere, serviette just marks you out as being 'non-U'--i.e. not upper class. Serviette is virtually unknown in AmE.

So since I grew up with "serviette" (even for cloth ones, which is what we usually had at home), there's yet another pointer that we weren't U :)

Comments

[asciident]

Serviette sounds much more like trying to be "upper class" to me as a speaker of AmE. (Well, I don't know anyone who would use it, but it sounds for lack of a better word, foreign. Like someone learned peppering their speach with French to sound sophisticated.) We (as in people I know) use napkin for everything from the scratchy barely-paper-not-cardboard napkins you from cheap fast food places to the nicest cloth ones.

*shrug*

[arthur-sc-king.livejournal.com]

"Serviette", OTOH, is insanely common in Canadian English. There's a bit of the paper/cloth thingy, and it seems to be fading among the current crop of kids, but Canadians my age and older regularly use "serviette" for any sort of napkin.

[tungol.livejournal.com]

Hm. I'm also Canadian, but "napkin" is more normal to me. I do think I've heard "serviette", but it seems less familiar. The paper/cloth division is something I hadn't heard of before.

(I likely count as one of "the current crop of kids", though.)

[nitaq.livejournal.com]

yay! I've got the book separated by a common language, and I loved to read it. Subscribed to that blog :).

[pne.livejournal.com]

Also on LiveJournal as sepcommonlang.

[nitaq.livejournal.com]

thanks :)

[entirelysonja.livejournal.com]

Wow, I had no idea there were english-speakers who used the word "serviette" at all. :-)