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paulb says, A key part of the plot of Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance rests on the [confusion of] pronunciation of, respectively, 'often' and 'orphan', which suggests that in the late 19th century both words sounded similar...
Part of that (I think?) is that the pirates speak in a lower-class accent, so that the "of" of "often" would sound like the "or" of orphan.
And part of the humor is the contrast between their earthy speech and the prissiness of their interlocutor, Major General Stanley. The humor of rough men speaking in high-falutin' language recurs throughout the libretto.
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It's a while since I saw a production, Keiva, so forgive my hazy memories, but I thought the ongoing joke was quite the other way around: they are all noblemen living a life as pirates, yet speaking in u/c accents, aren't they? [but confused!] I am sure you are right, whichever, that the accent is to do with class or its pretentions - "Are you orffen heuh?" can still be heard on the terraces at Glyndebourne 
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the [confusion of] pronunciation of, respectively, 'often' and 'orphan', which suggests that in the late 19th century both words sounded similar...
Part of that (I think?) is that the pirates speak in a lower-class accent, so that the "of" of "often" would sound like the "or" of orphan.
But -- one of the corners of my junk drawer memory has an item about often:
The t was added during the inkhorn days to reflect some etymological concern of the inkhornists and was not to be pronounced. Pronunciation of the t was a hypercorrection that has insinuated itself into a state of inertial correctness.
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maverick: forgive my hazy memories, but I thought the ongoing joke was quite the other way around: they are all noblemen living a life as pirates
The "concealed noblemen" gag isn't ongoing. Only at the very end of the operetta does Ruth pull out that claim (that the pirates are actually noblemen), as a deus ex machina to save the pirates from being punished for their life of crime. Until the very end of the play you have no notion that the pirates may supposedly be, as Ruth claims, "all noblemen who have gone wrong".
The Pirate King's song, near the beginning, sets the tone that the pirates are not aristocracy: "Many a king on a first-class throne, / If he wants to call his crown his own, / Must manage somehow to get though / More dirty work than ever I do."
EDIT: Mav, forgive me - my quotes were right but my conclusion was wrong. Although the "fact" that the pirates are noblemen isn't revealed until the end, it is foreshadowed from the very start. (The play opens with a song whose first line is, "Pour, oh pour, the pirate sherry" - and what kind of a pirate would drink sherry, of all things?)
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From seeing "oft" in poetry so frequently, I have tended to pronounce the "t".
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Apparently they can wear their own choice of waistcoat.
Ah, now -- do you pronounce it waist-coat or weskit or as US'ns do - vest!
Or do I understand correctly that vest is an entirely different garment to Brits ?
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waist-coat. I believe a vest is called an undershirt in the US. At any rate it's a mainly male undergarment something like a singlet or T-shirt.
Bingley
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Okay, what the heck is a singlet, please?
I'm in a bit of a rush right now, so maybe I missed it,
but what on earth are "inkhorn days", or should I perhaps ask what is an inkhorn?
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Partly me running with the language again, Jackie, but inkhorn terms were words that came popping out of the rediscovery of Latin and Greek in the Renaissance. Not content to let the language proceed as it had, propelled only by winds of political conquest, some scholars dug through the mine field of the ancient languages and produced a horde of neologisms; some made it and some didn't.
cohibit - inhibit
expede - impede
Ah! Those were the days.
The words flowed from the scholars' inkhorns like manna from the cornucopia of the gods.
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