FredTransit wrote:MarkM wrote:Names change over time to include way more than they were ever intended to, look at Chav's short for chavvies which to you will mean children? If I remember correctly. The rest of the country doesn't take a chav to mean a child now though even if the people they aim the term at are youngish.
To some extent you have to just cut us other people some slack like as it annoys the hell out of me that a black man is 'allowed' to call a fellow black man the N word but if a white man use the term it is automatically an insult??? even if contextually it is being used correctly (see Rush Hour if you want correct contextual use, but still frowned upon by Chris Rock)
So who are the women that try and sell me heather in the street? Romanys, Gypsies, or Pikeys? *NOTE* this is a Question as I don't know which is the correct term
Can't help you with the Gypsy thisn Mark, but as far as Chavs go (slightly OT sorry) it originated from Chatham in Kent and was shortened to Chat, then somewhere along the line it changed to Chav. That's how I heard it on the radio anyway. Chav is to do with the Burberry embelished ones, not kids as in chavvies.
Chavvies is people from Chatham Kent BUT also Gypsy/Romany slang for kids

Lots of terms are shortened from the original, so the meanings get blurred. When someone use the wrod chav...to me it means a scroat who wears fake Burberry or wears tracksuits bottoms they should have replaced as they have grown up and to 'hide' this fact they tuck the legs into their socks. The Baseball caps at the wrong angle as well is a 'steal' from the american hiphop scene so it all is laughable. The girls wearing the velour tracksuits also makes me laugh as they again are a hip hop thing but in the states (unless it is a G-Unit or similar brand) as they are a cheap item of clothing from K-Mart (yes K-Mart not Wal-Mart) or the Flea markets they have there.
To follow on with the shortening of names , I hate with a passion the shortening of peoples names (by the same people that are now 'chav's') Like Mary = Maz Barry = Baz etc etc.
But then things fall into popular use for all the wrong reasons, many years ago I lived up north and never did we use the phrase Crimbo for christmas but since Brookside it as fallen in to widespread usage, much like in Eastenders things are 'sorted' again as in the Eastend it was never used in the same way until Eastenders started it.
Catherine tate makes me smile in the use of 'Am I bovvered' as the woman is taking the piss out of these kids and the kids have missed the sarcasm and think it is cool to act like that, guys/girls she was making an observation of how stupid you are! Stop carrying it on. Ali G with the phrases etc is the same thing, black people don't talk that way...well they didn't until Ali G popped up

What makes this worse is that England is thought to be a nation where sarcasm is understood...America is one where it isn't but we have missed the boat on these two examples.