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im loving how MR has people from everywhere...makes it interesting and u can learn others culture....sort of.
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Chundles said:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/black_friday said:
and also, the shot heard round the world here in America refers to the American Revolution - both the colonies (US) and the british were prepared to battle but didn't, basically standing with their weapons ready and fully armed. Then, no one knows who, but someone fired their gun, and the war began, thus the name "The Shot Heard Round The World."
Chundles said:
I thought it was Bobby Thomson homerun off Ralph Branca on October 3, 1951 at the Polo Grounds?
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/hero/hero0101.shtml
I always assumed that there were more people from the UK on this site than any other nation.
I even thought this was a UK site for a while.
guess not...
I even thought this was a UK site for a while.
guess not...
raggedjimmi said:
You're are certainly welcome to talk about chavs, Ashes, pounds, Armistice Day, poppies, the Queen, and Keira Knightley on here.
We pride ourselves on the cultural learning around here. Instead of getting confused, why don't you ask about our culture, and we'll be glad to learn about yours.
Lacero said:Some threads are definitely written in english but I've had to read several of them twice, thrice or more just to understand what's being said. Sometimes, I just leave in confusion.
Damn those British people!
p.s. What's a chav? <--- You don't have to answer that one.
I like that! White melarky; but seeing as i started ..I shall now go "over the top!"
http://www.worldwidewords.org
The press in Britain has recently been having fun mocking a group for which pejorative descriptions have been created such as non-educated delinquents and the burgeoning peasant underclass. The subjects of these derogatory descriptions are said to be set apart by ignorance, fecklessness, mindless violence and bad taste.
To illustrate the last of these, critics point to their style of dress: a love of flashy gold jewellery (hooped earrings, thick neck chains, sovereign rings and heavy bangles, which all may be lumped together under the term bling-bling); the wearing of white trainers (in what is called prison white, so clean that they look new); clothes in fashionable brands with very prominent logos; and baseball caps, frequently in Burberry check, a favourite style. The women, the Daily Mail wrote recently in a characteristic burst of maidenly distaste, pull their shoddily dyed hair back in that ultra-tight bun known as a council-house facelift, wear skirts too short for their mottled blue thighs, and expose too much of their distressingly flabby midriffs.
This upsurge of popular distaste towards one group may be evidence for a cultural shift back towards a class-ridden British societyat least the fear that it might be so is causing some alarm in liberal circles. Critics point to the copying of the style by many younger television celebrities as a further dumbing-down of that medium. Much of the attention is due to the experience of a Web site, which was intended to be humorous but which was infiltrated by extremists who threatened to turn it into a hate site.
From a linguistic perspective the most interesting aspect is the wide variety of local names given to the type. Scots call them neds (often said to be an acronym of non-educated delinquents, but thats a folk etymology, given credence by being mentioned as fact during a debate in the Scottish parliament in 2003; its actually from an abridged form of the given name Edward, which was attached to this group in the period of the teddy-boys, who dressed in a version of Edwardian costume), while Liverpudlians prefer scallies (a term of long-standing for a boisterous, disruptive or irresponsible young man); Kev is common around London (presumably from the given name Kevin, common among this group and popularised through the portrayal on his television show by the comedian Harry Enfield of an idiotic teenager with that name). Other terms recorded from various parts of the country are smicks, spides, moakes and steeks (all from Belfast), plus bazzas, scuffheads, stigs, skangers, yarcos, and kappa slappers (girls who wear Kappa brand tracksuits, slapper being British slang for a promiscuous or vulgar woman).
The term that has become especially widely known in recent weeks, at least in southern England, is the one borrowed for the name of the Web site, chav. A writer in the Independent thought it derived from the name of the town of Chatham in Kent, where the term is best known and probably originated. It is also commonly said that it's an acronym, either from Council House And Violent or Cheltenham Average (the word being widely known in that area). As usual, we must treat supposed acronymic origins with the greatest suspicion; these examples are definitely recent after-the-event inventions as attempts to explain the word, though very widely known and believed.
But it seems that the word is from a much older underclass, the gypsies, many of whom have lived in that area for generations. Chav is almost certainly from the Romany word for a child, chavi, recorded from the middle of the nineteenth century. We know it was being used as a term of address to an adult man a little later in the century, but it hasnt often been recorded in print since and its derivative chav is new to most people.
Other terms for the class also have Romany connections; another is charver, Romany for prostitute. Yet another is the deeply insulting pikey, presumably from the Kentish dialect term for gypsy that was borrowed from turnpike, so a person who travels the roads.
Did chavi die out, only to be reinvented recently? That seems hardly likely from the written and anecdotal evidence, and many correspondents report that it is well known to them as a spoken term in various parts of the country; what were seeing is a term that has been in active but inconspicuous use for the last 150 years suddenly bursting out into wider popular use in a new sense through circumstances we dont fully understand.