Accent aside, it is a very clever show, and has sparked quite a bit of discussion. Just finished episode 6 last night, and HOLY CRAP kind of a dark ending for the first run.
It is a stereotypical chav, ‘White kid trying to sound black’ kind of accent. I hear a lot of it where I live (The Medway Towns, Kent, allegedly the birthplace of ‘chav cultcher’) and it is also prevalent in east London and south Essex.
I don’t watch the show, but from what I have seen on YouTube she does have an East Midlands accent (group of accents around Derby, Nottingham, Leicester). Her real-life accent seems to be stronger than in the show.
I had always been under the impression that the Chav accent was an affectation, like White suburban kids suddently sounding like guest hosts on Yo! MTV Raps as soon as they get into the “scene”.
To me it often seems to be applied as a derogatory term for people who live in social housing, or who have a certain accent, and by extension to “working class” people. The Scottish near-equivalent is “ned”.
Your actual ned or chav is a street thug - underclass.
World class Babylon’s on that bird - is all I know. It’s not just the accent, doesn’t she have a small lispy-ish type defect as well?
Quite an interesting show, very distinct.
Yeah, it’s an unpleasant term. I’ve used it myself in the original sense but only among people who know what I mean - I wouldn’t use it in wider company, partly because if they agreed they might just be laughing at poor people.
I’m glad I’m not the only one whose eyebrows raised when the OP used that term as if it was neutral, though I can understand why he did.
There is also no ‘chav accent.’ ‘Chavs’ by any definition can come from anywhere in the country. I know what the OP means, though - Estuary English. this has become associated, in some people’s minds, with chavs and/or with posh people trying to sound less posh, but it’s also an actual dialect that people grow up with.
Broadly speaking, it’s a mixture of Cockney and the various local accents of the home counties, especially South Essex and North Kent, which became a lot more prevalent after a lot of the bombed-out people from East and South-East London were rehoused in those parts of Kent and Essex. The original local accents have mostly died out now.
People like Russel Brand get chastised for having a put-on Mockney (mock-Cockney) accent, but that’s just the way people talk where he grew up.
I always thought chav was just a more insulting way to say stuck-up jerk. And that it originally meant something like hipster, but, again was somewhat derogatory.
Does it not just sound like a derogatory term, though?
“Chav” is pretty much the exact opposite of “hipster”, BigT! It is meant to be derogatory, though. The best American translation is probably “trailer trash”, the sort of people you see on Jerry Springer–loudmouthed drunken scum who refuse to work and have litters of children to various fathers. It doesn’t refer to normal people who just happen to be poor, as others have claimed above.
Chavs aren’t poor. How would they pay for meat for the bull terrier, a hairy-sounding exhaust for the VW Golf hatchback and 4 inch hoop earrings for Chardonay?
As for ‘uneducated’ - well, don’t uneducated people deserve mockery?:rolleyes:
Yep, by definition it’s judgemental and, at the same time, derogatory and snobbery. Says rather more about the person using it than those they intend to categorise.
Last night’s took an unexpected bent. Offbeat show but I always look for it.
When I were young “chavvy” was used as a generic term, like mush or mate or duck or something along those lines.
As for the girl there, strange accent. I’d expect something different from Derbyshire, although I myself am from Nottinghamshire. To me it sounds a bit estuary english/london chav, but I’m having trouble recognising the bits I hear in everyday conversation. I suppose to someone foreign, from somewhere like Suffolk, say, it’d sound like East Midlands.