The Queen's Tropes

In tropes such as The Queen's Latin and Smart People Speak the Queen's English, would there be a change in naming like "The King's Latin" and "Smart People Speak The King's English", considering Queen Elizabeth II has passed, her son Charles is on the throne, the next Prince of Wales is William, William's children are still young, and Britain will take a while for a female heir soon?

No? We don't change titles unless the tropes are misused, and people still know what "Queen's English" is referring to outdated or not.

You mean, we want to speak like Queen Camilla?

Come on, you know what the tropes actually mean. Changing it every time the monarchy switches is silly. "Queen's English" / "Queen's Latin" are still normal terms.

You do know that England has had more than one queens, right? I'm pretty sure "the Queen's [blank]" has been in used since Victoria's reign.

Yeah, I would have thought the reference was more to Victoria or Elizabeth I than Elizabeth II.

You would be correct; Oxford English Dictionary lists "queen's English" as having been in use since 1592, Elizabeth I's reign, and Google Ngram lists it as being very much in vogue in the 1800s, Victoria's reign.

Again, a reminder that our titles are not prescriptive in nature. We aren't going to consider making "king's English" the favored term on here there is a concerted effort outside the site to make "queen's English" fall out of favor. Judging from what I have just linked, that would be hugely unlikely. It's just looking for a problem where there is none.

We can probably keep Queen's English and say it refers to Elizabeth I or Victoria.

Fair point, and thank you for the insight on this. I guess we'll keep The Queen's English, only because Queen Victoria held a better grip.

It isn't that silly, it is an established convention in the UK regarding idioms and official titles with Queen or King in them.

The wiki doesn't run on such conventions though; it takes a lot of work to do renames and this simply isn't a valid enough reason.

We could justify keeping the names of such tropes and have them refer to Queen Victoria for the sake of future-proofing.

In fact, the term "The Queen's English" originated during Queen Victoria's reign.

Edited by Nen_desharu on Mar 6th 2024 at 11:57:10 AM

There's no need to justify it that way. It's a longstanding turn of phrase (see my previous post in reference to Liz 1) that was also used in reference to Liz 2.

I could see The Kings Latin, etc. as gendered redirects, but that's as far as I'm willing to entertain a rename without other problems presented.

Edited by Synchronicity on Mar 6th 2024 at 12:30:46 PM

Maybe Smart People Speak the Queen's English could be renamed to "Smart People Use Received Pronunciation" or something like that? I was the one who originally created that trope page and I think I just went with "The Queen's English" because it was being used that way in The Queen's Latin and I wasn't sure if most people would know what "Received Pronunciation" is (linguistics term for the upperclass English accent).

There's no reason to change it. We don't "update" terms like Keep Circulating the Tapes or Vindicated by Cable even if they are "outdated".

"The Queen's English" is a common English expression, so there's even less reason to change it.

I agree that the title is fine, because England has had famous queens in the past even if the current monarch is a king. I mainly wanted to give another suggestion for a trope name if people did want to rename it, but that doesn't seem to be case now.

Edited by Rainbow on Mar 6th 2024 at 1:08:37 PM