Socio-linguistic identifiers

We're trained by parents and school to judge people partly by their use of the English language. And the great thing about English is that it has two built-in social identifiers that allow people to judge others without having to ask awkward questions like 'what does your father do?' which happens in some other societies.

The two identifiers are:
Accent - basically regional OR public school
Vocabulary - Anglo-Saxon, French or Latin

Accent is probably pretty self-explanatory, but Vocabulary is a little more complex. English has three main roots - the three languages listed above - and for most pre-Renaissance concepts there are several alternative words one could use. These have all become jumbled up over time and sometimes have come to mean specific types of a thing, rather than different words for the same thing.

More to follow...