People who call their gran, or nana, their “nan”
Sir Woke XR Re… 17 Jun 21 04:43
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I’ve never met anyone who does this irl but on social media it seems to have become the standard way of referring to your grandmother.

Is it a mancunian thing? I’ve often thought that social media english-english is actually a form of meta-manc. Calling people “melts” and so on 

Nan is fairly standard working class lingo across lots of the UK. 

My step mum (whom for these purposes we shall call Susan though that is not her name) insists on being called 'Nanny Susan' by our kids as she called her Grandmother Nanny.  This resulted in much subpar BBC sitcom style hilarity when my daughter one day questioned why Grampa needed a nanny even though he is a grown up... 

My mother's family used this term. It's a pretty standard working class thing, just like "tea" for an evening meal, which is erroneously described as "northern". 

I'm probably the most working class person on ROF apart from Bentines, and frankly Bentines counts as posh in Grimsby. My solidly working class mum and dad chose "gran" and "nana" for what my sister and I would call our grandmothers.

"Tea" for the evening meal is also some north western shit. The NW always likes to represent itself as "The North". There is even a book called "The North" which is basically entirely about Manchester. We always called the evening meal dinner.

I thought it was a common manc thing - it was not unheard of when I was little in Glasgow but gran was the norm and nan was maybe a 1 in 20 thing

feels more widespread now 

Laz, the working class across most of the country call "dinner" "tea" this is as true in the south as the north.   If they dont in the NE, that is an exception.

I don’t think it’s Manc particularly, “melt” certainly isn’t, I’ve only ever heard southerners use that term. 
 

I had Nanna and Granny, dinner in the middle of the day and tea at teatime, ftaod. 

Maternal one was Nan, paternal one was Grandma.

Interestingly the former was working class and the latter middle class. Neither was northern tho. 

So I think the class hypothesis is looking stronger than the manc one. 

Our kids call my mum "grandma", which she chose but now thinks has Little Red Riding Hood implications, and my wife's mum "nanny", which I thought was weird at first because a nanny is an 18-30yo french or scandinavian hottie that you pay to look after your kids.

So, laz could you talk us through some of the more working class features of the private school you attended?
 

Heh. Yeah “most working class on rof” might be a bit of a stretch m7.

I’m sure I’ve told this story before, but it bears repeating. 
 

I’m from the south and went to uni in the south. I started work in Liverpool having not really known many northerners, and even fewer working class ones. I went to clerk in this solid scouse patient who started talking about her dinner time insulin dose and her teatime insulin doses. 
 

I naturally assumed the dinner time was the 6pm dose and that the tea time must be some kind of high tea but I was surprised that the patient had high tea as she didn’t strike me as the sort but I put it down as 2pm. 
 

The ward sister, also solid scouse, ripped the drug chart up and told me in no uncertain terms what a moron I clearly was! 

Lollers at Laz claiming to be working class having gone to a private school.

As an actual working class northerner I had a nan and a grandma and called the evening meal tea (and still do) 

Gran was normal in Glasgow as was tea to refer to the evening meal.  The latter also in Edinburgh as in "you'll have had your tea?"

Supper was also widely used but always to refer to  a takeaway fried meat or fish product accompanied by chips.

Supper was also widely used but always to refer to  a takeaway fried meat or fish product accompanied by chips

 

As in fish supper?  The fish and chip kind not the act of performing cumulonimbus. Preferably not on your Nan. Or Gran.

"And working class people in the south most definitely do not call dinner tea."

Probably not nowadays, but my maternal grandparents did and I don't think they'd ever been north of Watford.

During the week as a child your evening meal was tea, because you'd had school dinner at lunchtime 

the exception was packed lunch days, when the evening meal would be more substantial and therefore dinner 

Sundays we had Sunday lunch at 2pm and supper of (usually) crumpets with melted cheese and pickle at around 6pm 

I was once asked by my future mother-in-law what my plans were for the day.... My now wife is from a council estate in Bristol. Here two sisters were close by too.

"The first thing we're going to do is go out for a spot of lunch"

Cackles could be heard as we walked to the car, along with parroting of the words "Spot of lunch, spot of lunch"

It lasted years.

Well that's definitely not me Guy - raised in a council house by a single parent in the SE. I've no idea why we say supper instead of tea, but we always have, with no discernible aspirations of poshness. 

Yes we do say fish supper, but most people round here seem to say chippy tea. None of the others. 

I feel sorry for any forrins trying to learn this nonsense. 

Nan all the way in Liverpool. My colleague is Welsh and she also talks about her Nan. The Mrs is from Yorkshire (LMC/ working class) and refers to her Grandma. 
 

If you really want to get confused start asking various hues of northerner what a bead roll is called. Barm, bap, batch, etc. 

I remember a partner walking into an office I shared with another trainee, and asking me where he was. 

It was gone 12pm and I replied "He's gone for his dinner". 

Partner looked at me and said "Oh, you're from the North, aren't you?"

 

And for the record, Nanna and tea. 

 

Lunch is universal surely. I get some northerners would also day dinner bute surely they wouldnt exclusively use dinner.

Their kids dont take a dinnerbox to school do they? 

No problem with them saying it but it is fundamentally wrong. 

I often say supper but I wouldnt say to someone shall we go out for supper i would say shall we go out for dinner. 

@Crypto, we're near Liverpool and my south-eastern mum ignores any request from the nipper that has a suspiciously northern-sounding word in. "Can I have a cheese barm please nan?" <tumbleweed>  "Will you pass me that brew?" <stinkeye>

I still say roll, which apparently makes me posh. This stuff is fabulously bonkers. 

"Partner" seems to be another fool that cant distinguish between regional and class dialect.   I think this arises from privately educated southerners who never actually come into contact with the southern working class...