Rednecks outside of the USA?

Factual Questions
21

Many people in the south of England, particularly in London, regard Northerners as sub human. A Northerner is anyone in between the Watford Gap service station on the M1 and the Scottish border. For reference, someone from Birmingham is a Brommy, someone from Liverpool is a Scouser and someone from Manchester is a Mancurian. These are not terms of endearment. If anything, a Northerner is the closest English equivalent of a Redneck, because to some extent, it also symbolizes a north south divide. That said, here are some other similar regional perceptions:

Although I can’t speak so much from experience, Northerners often regard Southerners as snobbish. Cannot imagine why.

Football ‘ooligans are not held in high regard by anyone, themselves excluded.

Essex and its inhabitants are commonly regarded as the worse place in the South, embodying all that is bad about England. The Essex stereotype is ignorant, tracksuit wearing (preferably with white stripes down trouser legs), gold chain sporting and heavy accent possesing.

In southern England, various cities, usually those heavily developed in the sixties, may be used as starting points when discussing how bad something is. Popular favourites include Milton Keynes, Slough, Swindon, Convetry and Hemel Hempstead.

Cornwall and Devon (counties) are suspected to be backwards, poor since they only appear on T.V. in connection with clotted cream or some dubious architectural project. That said, its no problem for half the South to go there for their holidays.

English people generally imagine Wales to be one big coal mine with very depressing weather. Ireland is where the IRA come from, Northern Ireland is a permanent source of bother and Scotland is just too far North to think about.

Most people on television speak with what is known as received pronunciation (also know as BBC English because the BBC do this the most prominently). This is the posh stereotyped British accent. However, apart from some areas of London and the Home Counties (counties that surround London, giant ring of suburbs) and a few other regions, this accent is not in the majority. A throwback to Victorian pompousness? You judge…

22

Noone uses the word skanger any more?
A friend coined the word “snax” as a synonym for skangers due to a neon sign in The Harp bar (at O’Connel bridge) saying “Snax available all day”.
Anyhoo, Sweden being the most americanised country in the multiverse they not only have an equivelant to rednecks, they have actual rednecks! This is a subculture called “raggare” who worship the rural american 50’s. www.teddyboys.nu is a site belonging to one of the “raggare clubs”. Where I live in rural Sweden they drive into town on a saturday night and drive around the town square playing 50’s music from their cars. Some of the cars are really beautiful, customised hot-rods etc. others are complete beaters, but bíg and old. I work with a guy who restores raggare cars and has a ducks-ass hairdo.

We just had the local summer fair, and the amount of tat on sale with confederate flags on it had to be seen to be belived.

FTR, a huge hobby amongst non-raggare rural kids is souping up completely normal cars. This again is something that has to be seen to be believed, for example an 87 Volvo with full spoilers, double exhausts, turbo thingy on the hood and tinted windows.

23

Oh, yeah, you do hear “skanger”.

24

(hit submit too soon)

… but The Harp is long gone!

25

South Africans have the term Redneck (rooinek(I think?)) but it is slang for a British person (sorta like our ‘redcoats’ from days of ol’). But they most certainly have the type of Redneck that you mean. Rural Afrikaans people have a lot in common with your average American redneck. Big trucks, farms, guns and racism - Gotta love 'em.

I would then go onto say that of all the cultures I have experienced, the closest one to the US have been white South Africans as a whole. Everytime I go there I’d swear I was in one of the southern States except for the language. Eating at a Saddles restaurant is like a space/time continuum warp to Western Sizzlin’ back home in Colorado. Same food, same atmosphere, same mom yelling at her 6 kids to stop running around the restaurant and spitting in the salad bar…

-Tcat

-Tcat

26

Sure, in the Cuban culture we have “cubanazos”, or ultra-Cubans. These are the guys who wear all the gold chains, gold bracelets, white shoes, and thick white belts. They are also a caricature of all the latin male stereotypes you can think of, and typically speak with a thick Havana accent. That’s right, Cuban rednecks are city dwellers.

27

Hmmm. Tschild seems to be a real German, and I’d not like to contradict him, but without strain I can tell you where to find four Wal-Marts within an hours drive of my home.

Wal Mart didn’t so much move in as it took over an existing chain. All of the “Wertkauf” stores turned into Wal Marts. Maybe they didn’t have many “Wertkaufs” in Tschild’s part of Germany.

They’ve got rednecks here, too. You’ll find lots of truck drivers who are into American country music - and the horrid stuff that some German “artists” have produced along those lines. For some reason, these guys also have Confederate flags - either as American style license plates behind the windshield or as a real flag hanging in the back of the cab. I’ve even seen one guy who had a confederate flag hung up on a flag pole in his garden.

The guys who like fast cars but can’t afford the real thing drive Opel Mantas. Imagine a not especially whoopy Chevy Nova, and you know what a Manta is. These are the guys who tramp around in Italian made cowboy boots (with the cockroach zapper toes and silver fittings) and whose girlfriends are usually hairdressers with (fake) blond hair.

The guys do wear mullets, and their cars sometimes have five-point seat belts in them like a real racecar - they need the safety belt becuase they are such poor drivers, not because their cars are so fast.

In refinement not often seen in the US, these folks often put their names (or nick-names) on the driver’s side door with stick on letters. You may also find the name stamped into a license plate lying behind the front windshield in front of the steering wheel. If the girlfriend is capable of more than cutting hair and f…ing, then you may also see the names embroidered into the seat covers. The girlfriend’s name will often be found somewhere on the passenger side - done in the same style as the guy’s name naturally.

With the more stringent German laws, you won’t often see one with a weed grown yard full of dead cars, but it does happen. Hell, I know where to find a guy who lives in an old gas station, and has a couple of dead cars and a rusty old bus converted to a billboard parked in the weed grown (concrete) parking lot.

Because of the minimum drivers license age of 18 - and the expensive schooling that goes with it - young rednecks concentrate on hot-rodding their mopeds instead of working on cars. They’ve gotten it down to such a science that I’ve seen kids pulled over on the highway with the cops writing them a ticket for speeding and a second ticket for having modified the moped so far from its registered specs. A moped with a 50cc motor and brakes and other parts made for a top speed of 30km/h is a frightening thing to behold at 70km/h. One of these clowns even passed me one day. I was driving along at about 60km/h because the road was kind of curvy. This yo-yo came blasting past (downhill with a tail wind) and passed me. I laughed so hard, I forgot to call the cops. The guy was wearing a long black leather trench coat and a black full-face helmet with a tinted shield on it. Think Keanu Reeves in “The Matrix” on a moped. Funnier than hell.

CB radios are also common amongst the truck driving redneck types - not that they know anything about radio. I’m minded of one fellow who had a great huge CB antenna plopped on top of his (ragged out) old Manta. That might have been okay, but he had rain soaked toy bunny rabbit spitted on the thing - which does your antenna matching absolutely nothing good on a rainy day.

Redneck types abound, and I think you’ll find them in any culture.

28

sigh My wife’s family comes from Cracker Bottom. It’s like a holler, but not quite as upscale.

29

Ah, so that’s why the Irish graduate student I worked with used “Shite-town” as a synonym for “Dublin”.

30

As to the UK, our brand of redneck tends mostly to come from suburban council - or ex-council - estates. Fairly recognisable type: close-cropped hair to hide incipient pattern baldness, tattoos with naff designs, big dog, Estuary accent regardless of actual region of origin, car with internal stereo that goes thoomp thoomp thoomp, drinks Stella, and thinks dressing smartly involves black moccasin-style shoes with white socks.

31

In Poland, this kind of person would be called a wieœniak, literally “village person”. Although the word is now often used to describe any corny dumbass you meet on the street, it was originally a reference to a member of the uneducated lower class living in a small village, usually a farmer, usually drunk. There is also a term, burak (“beet”), which I believe came from the usually beet-colored face of a chronic alcoholic. Burak and wieœniak are pretty much interchangable.

32

Two more terms:

skid: the 80’s metal version of a redneck
wally: a term for skids that I think is specific to Dartmouth, NS, Canada.

For a hilarious look at Canadian rednecks, check out the TV show Trailer Park Boys

33

>someone from Manchester is a Mancurian.

Mancunian, is it not?

34

Yes, and someone from Birmingham is a Brummie, not “Brommy”. And raygirvan means “as to England”, not the UK - Scottish and Welsh rednecks don’t speak with Estuary accents.

35

Yep - the very same White Van Man I mentioned earlier in the thread. Often called Wayne. :smiley:

Julie

36

Sadly but hilariously, Rick, you are sooooo on the money in your observation.

37

Ahahaha, dolphins and wolves…that was classic. And oh so true.

38

According to the National Lampoon’s “Lemmings,” the Hillbillies originally immigrated from Switzerland.

“Hell, I’m a Baptist. I don’t wanna guard no Pope!”

39

Sorry, ruadh; yes, I meant England.

40

I’ve met a few Puerto Ricans who hold the same “hick” stereotypes (marrying cousins, etc.) about Mexicans that other Americans hold regarding rural Southerners.