Not half bad

If you want to check the class status of a new acquaintance (and which English person doesn't, if a trifle guiltily, want to do this?) I offer a simple test. Tell them a friend saw a film/watched a play/read a book and told you it "wasn't half bad." Ask them how your friend rated the experience.

Middle-class folk, as well as most Yanks, will tell you your friend thought the film/play/book was pretty good. Working class people will understand that it was worse than bad, it was execrable ;   the same interpretation will be put forward by those of working class origin who are merely pretending to be middle class.

Double negatives

This has bugged me since I was a lad: most languages accept the double negative (as in "I never saw none of them") simply as a more emphatic negative; pedantic teachers of English insisted - perhaps still do - that "never seeing none" meant the speaker had at some time seen at least some of whatever was referred to. Speakers of everyday English, as opposed to commentators on the language, use the double (or triple, quadruple, even quintuple) negative as increasingly emphatic versions of the simple negative. Where I grew up, a speech such as "I ain't never seen ne'er a one of 'em, not never" would be accepted as a vigorous denial. It might also provoke suspicion that the speaker was protesting too much, but that's beside the (linguistic) point.