Talk about English - England pt.3 | Текст песни

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• Talk about English
• England pt.3

Callum: This is Talk about English, live from London. I'm Callum Robertson, with me
is Jackie Dalton and Amanda Smyth from Visit Britain.

Jackie: Now we're going to look at a word which has fairly recently become popular in
the English media to describe a certain kind of person.

Jackie: Professor David Crystal is one of the world's leading experts on the English
language and here he is to tell us about the word Chav. What does the word
mean and where does it come from?
PROFESSOR CRYSTAL
Chav. It came to the fore as a word in 2005 really, I didn’t remember hearing it much before
that. It refers to a type of youth, supposedly uncultured, maybe a bit anti-social, perhaps even
violent, but certainly marked out, at least from the point of view of the critic, by very bad taste.
Chavs are supposed to wear a lot of flashy jewellery, white trainers, baseball caps, sham
designer clothes, girls expose a lot of mid-rift … nothing racial about it all, I should say.
Now, whether it’s cool or not to be a chav, I couldn’t say, at least, not at my age! I find the
linguistics much more interesting. It’s a problem though, the linguistics. Where does the word
come from? It’s been around since the 19
th
century. Lexicographer Eric Partridge mentions it
in his huge dictionary of slang and unconventional English. He talks about it coming from
Romany (the language of the gypsies), ‘chavy’ – a child, or ‘chaval’ – a boy. And then later it
was used for ‘men’ as well.
But nobody knows who’s reactivated it in recent times. It’s a noun, ‘a chav’, ‘chavs’, and also
an adjective - people talk about ‘chav behaviour’ or ‘chav insults’ and that sort of thing. O,
don’t believe the popular etymologies that you read sometimes in the press and on
websites … I saw one the other day, people said, ‘It’s an acronym, ‘chav’, from council house
and violent’ – well, no, it isn’t, that was made up in recent times. Appealing as these
etymologies are, they’re nothing to do with the real Romany history of this very interesting
word.

Callum: That was David Crystal on the word Chavs. Its etymology, its history is from
the Romany language, the language of the gypsies.

Jackie: While we were visiting people on our travels we played this to one of the
groups we met and we were able to find out a bit more about this word. One
person we spoke to, who goes by the name of Professor Poppycock was from a
Romany background himself and he gave us some more interesting information.
Which language does he say Chav comes from and where does he say the name
gypsies come from to describe Romany people?


PROFESSOR POPPYCOCK 1
Well the word 'chav' is from Hindi. Obviously the original gypsies were from India, they were
thought to be from Egypt so they were called gypsies, but a lot of gypsy language today is
based on the old Hindi words. They say paani, if you ask a gypsy man what paan is it's water,
if it's raining, it's paanying.

Callum: Gypsies were originally from India, he says, but people thought they were from
Egypt, which is why they were called gypsies – gyp from Egypt.

Jackie: And as they were originally from India a lot of their words come from the
Indian language Hindi. The 'Professor' continued to tell us more about the word
Chav.

PROFESSOR POPPYCOCK 2
Chav I've always known to be, if you say to a gypsy woman, How many kids have you got?
"I've got five chavvies" she will say. But quite why a couple of years ago it suddenly appeared
on the popular, amongst the young as a burberry-wearing, argos shopping, clubbing teenager I
don't know, the Chav culture sun-reading, bingo-playing, benson and hedges smoking , but it
means child.

Callum: So Chav originally means child, from the the romany – as Professor Crystal
said.

Interesting use of compound adjectives, groups of three

Explain burberry-wearing, argos shopping, clubbing teenager / sun-reading, bingo-playing,
benson and hedges smoking

Callum: Finally we asked if coming from a Romany background he was annoyed that
the word Chav had taken on a new meaning.


PROFESSOR POPPYCOCK 3
No, not really. Our language is such an ebullient moving thing. It'll disappear I'm sure, it
won't stay I don't think, it won't enter into the popular culture. Like so many words it's
fashionable then falls away.

Callum: So he's not annoyed, it's all part of the way the English language is changing
and evolving, but he doesn't think the word will stay and become a permanent
part of the language.

N ow it's time for our quiz, it's time for Jackie to take on Amanda to see who
knows most about England! Our quizmaster is Caroline Dunton, who has just
joined us. Hello Carrie.

Carrie: Hello – rules
Choose easy question for 1 point or hard question for 2 points

Quiz – Jackie and Amanda

Callum: That's all from today's Talk about English.

Jackie: Remember there is no webcast next week but we're back on November 9th.

Callum: Thank you very much to our guest today Amanda Smyth.

Goodbye

All: Goodbyes

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