In the UK, “Chav” was a popular term in the 2000s, but no one seems to use it anymore. I’ve read in Australia, people say “Bogan”, but what about mainland Europe?
What are the most popular words for low-class people in your country? What are the words newspapers and magazines use versus what people actually say?
This is not in an attempt to troll but genuine interest.
20 comments
Russian words. If you use them often – very big sign of “low-class”
Particular outliers:
“Karočia” – russian for “in short”, written in Lithuanian.
“Zdarova” – very common greeting.
“Nu” – russian interjection. Lithuanian equivalent is “na”. Very very common, I use it a lot.
Also russian prefixes. Although there’s debate if they are actuall Russian, since Lithuanian has had them for as long as there has been written record of it. But still for some reason they are considered as “barbarisms” The most common one is “da-”
For example, “damesti” – to reach something with a ball. “daeiti” – to come near something. It’s basically a prefix used with verbs that signifies an action that is close to being finished or accomplished.
Proll or Prolet maybe? From the word proletarian obviously.
Some clichés: he (yes, mostly male) drives a Golf GTI. The louder, the better, by the way. On vacation, he goes to Mallorca (Ballermann) and drinks Sangria out of big plastic buckets with a straw and his Proll friends. Normally when at home he drinks cheap beer from a can. He also thinks women are way stupidider than him and belong in the kitchen.
The only term I can think of is “Bünzlis”, though that does not exactly mean low class. Bünzli means really Swiss, conservative/right, mostly low class, complaining about everything and extremly rule abiding Karens. Those people often come from the working class (not exclusively though) and from rural villages.
I don’t think there exists a term for actual low class and I belive we don’t have clear cut “classes”. At least people don’t make it obvious how much they earn and what they do for a living.
I can only think of blatant insults that are much harsher than Chav. I think labels are only applied when people are engaging in bad behavior rather than just being of a lower socio economic background.
Scumbags, Skangers, Scrotes, Scobies etc.
Assis, maybe? It means Asoziale/r (Antisocial person), but what is actual meant is low-class, undignified, no taste, etc
Twenty or thirty years ago, low-class people were called [Johnnies & Marinas](https://www.google.com/search?q=johnny+en+marina&client=ms-android-oneplus-rvo3&prmd=ivn&sxsrf=ALiCzsYYqTq7W-sIVbMfS40o2iuWLFe-mw:1654888204933&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjY7eP8yqP4AhVOPuwKHRRtDSEQ_AUoAXoECAIQAQ&biw=384&bih=745&dpr=2.81) in Flanders. I’m not exactly sure where those two names came from, but certain English names, especially those ending in a ‘y’ are seen as lower class and the Italian one might be because of the miners that immigrated from Italy.
People of my generation (twenty somethings) barely use those names and instead call low-class people [‘marginaal’](https://www.google.com/search?q=marginaal&client=ms-android-oneplus-rvo3&prmd=imsvn&sxsrf=ALiCzsbrHB7zZ21dhXlwHQZAXQR3mmFciA:1654888623572&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiLxLPEzKP4AhWF_6QKHYvaB_4Q_AUoAXoECAIQAQ&biw=384&bih=745&dpr=2.81), i.e. people living on the margins of society. There’s even a music festival in Flanders, called [Kamping Kitsch](https://www.kampingkitschclub.be/), where people dress up as ‘marginalen’.
chunga/guna/mitra they all mean the same thing, but different regions use different worda
The usual Sicilian word is ‘tascio’.
Un tascio is a low class, uneducated person who wears ‘strange’ clothes and jewellery, very visible,lots of designer labels (often fake).
They are loud,use lots of obscenities when they speak.
They usually listen to Neapolitan ‘neomelodic’ music… and are ignorant, and proud of it! They usually speak dialect, not Italian.
When they drive they blast music at very high volume.
’90s – Jõmm (no translation)
early 2000s – Rullnokk (meaning – one who wears a bent trucker cap)
late 2000s – Oss, Jorss (no translation)
now – ??? I’m not down with the lingo so much these days
disclaimer: only for males and less to do with income and more with perceived low intelligence
‘Knacker’ (silent k) is probably the most common one.
It was originally a derogatory and very offensive word for travellers or gypsies, but over time it just became used to describe lower class troublemakers.
Does anyone remember when “Guido” was made to be “fashionable” by MTV for Jersey Shore? Describing young Italian-Americans from
New Jersey & New York in USA?
Does anyone use that word in Italy/Sicily or regions around there?
– Chunga or Xunga
– Mitra
– Guna
– Azeiteiro / Azeiteira
Canis (for mostly men)/Quillos/ Txonis (for mostly women).
They’re not like Chavs, but they’re similar enough.
Tokkies. It stems from a reality show which aired years ago featuring a family with the surname “Tokkie”, who were living up to all the stereotypes about lower class, uneducated white trash.
Chav’s is still a term occasionally used in schools
im sure there are others as well, but “kela-rotta” is the first one I think of. KELA is the social insurance institution in Finland, rotta means rat. kela-rotta is someone who lives on benefits & mooches off the society, at least stereotypically without any intention to find a job. this is obviously an insult
classism isn’t as big in finland as it is in the UK, so newspapers wouldn’t really use other expressions than “low-income” & some variants of that. The press also is quite tame compared to the UK so they would not “name call” anyone
funnily enough, being a road man has become a cool thing among certain teenagers in the capital region. It’s like how being a “gansta” was cool at some point, but now they’ve taken the road man concept from the UK and it’s the new cool thing
Chav is definitely still used although in Scotland we use ned more often
They don’t, what I’ve seen is a member of a gang or but not really a term, I would happy if someone as something more to say from France!
In Parma they have a special name ‘capannoni’ (sheds), because when part of an ancient poor neighbourhood was demolished in the 1930s, the inhabitants were relocated to some areas outside the city, made up of shed-like structures. The sheds were demolished after World War II, and the social phenomenon disappeared, but in Parma slang, the term ‘capannone’ has remained to indicate a rough, noisy, trivial and violent person, sometimes with a derogatory meaning, more often in a joking tone.
No word comes to my mind for what you mean.
We say “*juntti*” when we mean a person (usually from the countryside) who has a poor sense of style and perhaps a bit of clumsy manners. It is also possible to be a city “*juntti*”. I do not necessarily see *juntti* as a low-class person, but they might be.
We say “*köyhä*”, is someone is poor but it is a very neutral word.
Fellow Finns, do we have a word for low-class people?