Here in the US we have lots of terms (of varying offensiveness) for country folk: redneck, hick, cracker, white trash, trailer park people…
What do folks in other cultures call their rural residents? Are the terms used offensively? I asked my german friend and said they used the term Bauer (Farmer). So I’m not sure if he understood the exact nature of my question or if “Farmer” is used with negative connotations.
In South Africa, they pick on “Freelanders”, IIRC.
You can use bonde (farmer) derogatorily in Norwegian, but if you want to be offensive it’s better to add a suffix. Bondeknøl and bondetamp are the options I can think of, and a quick searh shows bondetamp being used as a translation of redneck.
The only offensive term I can think of in swedish is “bonnläpp”, or “bondläpp”, which literally means “farmers lip”. Presumably this is in reference to the idea that many country folks would use snuff, which you put under your upper lip. Put too much snuff under there, and it will be quite visible, and not very attractive.
Bulgarians call them “selanko/a”, or “peasant”. It comes from the word “selo”, which means “village”. It’s a pretty bad insult.
In French :
Always pejoratives :
What about plain “bonne” in Swedish? Preferably with a “jävla” (damn) in front of it.
In Icelandic we’d say that something or someone is “sveitó” (farmerish) - but that’s used rather amiably.
Sorry, Free Staters. :smack:
In Austria: Burgerlanderen
Literally “those of the castle country”, but used similarly to hillbilly or redneck in the US.
Dutch: " boerepummel". It is a pretty bad insult, but it means “boorish” without the ignorant/racist connotations. However, it is one of those insults you can’t use in Dutch, because the speaker shows himself to be an arrogant uppity towner, which is a far worse sin then being boorish over here.
I never heard that as an insulting term before. It seems a reasonable thing to call someone from Free State province a Free Stater, so it doesn’t seem more insulting then calling someone in the US a Californian or Floridian 
In Ireland, “culchies”.
The Romans also had several Latin names for country folk, but I’d say agrestis - lit. “field squatter” was probably the one most commonly used as an offensive epithet. Cicero has a typical example in his On the Orator: “I don’t mean to say that the art (of oratory) is unable to refine anyone…but their are certain people who, either because of stuttering, or a jarring voice, or because they are fat and rustic (agrestes) in appearance and manner, even if they have talent and skill, will never be admitted to the circle of orators” (de Or. I.25.115).
Paganus - “countryman, villager, peasant” was a later term of abuse for country folk. While early Christianity grew in urban settings of the empire, rural areas were more resistant to the new religion, and soon this epithet–originally applied to “country bumpkins”–came to mean any anti-Christian “pagan” regardless of where he lived.
In Germany
Hinterwäldler (n, m)/Hinterwäldlerin (n, f) - person from a very rural environment/worldview
Provinzler (n, m)/Provinzlerin (n, f) - same, ‘provincial’
Landei (n, n) - ‘land egg’ - person unused to city ways - not always offensive, sometimes used self-deprecatingly
Spießbürger (n, m)/Spießbürgerin (n, f, rare) - originially small-town burgher part of the town’s militia, armed with a spear - now person of a narrow, socially conventional and intolerant outlook
When the occasion offers you can also mention the person’s tribe if it’s not your own (‘He’s an Upper Bavarian, what can you expect?’)
Seeing as “bonde” (not bonne) literally means farmer, I don’t think that it is an offensive term in itself. Put a swearword in front of it, and sure, it may be seen as offensive, and insulting, but that goes for just about any noun, I think.
Mexico is interesting, because, despite its being an increasingly urban (and sometimes even urbane) society, the land-based, salt-of-the-earth peasant has been romanticized since at least the Revolution a century ago. So, no widespread derogatory phrase comes to mind – “campesino” (peasant) is just a neutral designation of one’s “profession”.
The urban Aztecs did call various hick tribal peoples around them “Chichimecas”, which is said to have derogatory roots and shadings.
Perhaps a real Mexican will come around this thread with a good equivalent of “redneck”.
In 'Stralian: bogan
There’s a huge difference in pronouncing bonde and bonne. I’d say bonne is at least a bit offensive (at least in Skåne/Southern Sweden).
Au Canada, on the prairies, I’ve heard stubblejumper.
In Greece the we call them Vlachs: