时髦英语口语词汇讲解第11期:Chav文化

Chav.
chav（编者注：关于Chav的一种理解是指在政府救济困难住房的大院里长大的青少年。这些人通常是社会的捣乱和犯罪分子。Chav文化通常和青少年怀孕、酗酒、犯罪和生活贫困联系起来。Chav时尚是穿track suit，带点bling——‘金光闪闪的首饰’）。

It came to the fore as a word in 2005 really, I didn't remember hearing it much before that.
chav是在2005年才真正作为单词出现的。在那之前我记得听到这个词的时候并不多。

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.
它指的是那类所谓的没有文化反社会甚至有可能有点暴力的青年，但是，至少在很多评论家的眼里看来，他们当然因为某种不好的爱好而自成一家。

Chavs are supposed to wear a lot of flashy jewellery, white trainers, baseball caps, sham designer clothes.
Chav青年会穿戴很多闪闪发亮的珠宝首饰、白色球鞋、棒球帽以及仿名牌衣服。

Girls expose a lot of midriff.
女孩子会大面积裸露腹部。

Nothing racial about it all, I should say.
我得说，这可跟种族问题没有什么关系。

Now, whether it's cool or not to be a chav, I couldn't say - at least, not at my age!
我不能下定论说，身为chav青年到底是一件酷毙了的事儿还是不是，我只能说，这至少不是我这个年龄能做的事情！

I find the linguistics much more interesting.
我发现语言学是件非常有趣的事情。

It's a problem though, the linguistics.
但是，语言学本身也有问题。

Where does the word come from?
（比如）这个单词是怎么来的呢？

It's been around since the 19th century.
这个单词从19世纪就开始出现了。

Lexicographer Eric Partridge mentions it in his huge dictionary of slang and unconventional English.
词典编纂者Eric Partridge在他的大部头《俚语和非传统英语字典》里提到过这个单词。

He talks about it coming from Romany (the language of the gypsies), 'chavy' - a child, or 'chaval' - a boy.
他谈到这个单词来自吉普赛语：chavy指的是‘孩子’或者chaval‘男孩’。

And then later it was used for 'men' as well.
后来慢慢被用来指‘男人’。

But nobody knows who's reactivated it in recent times.
但是没人知道是谁在近代又开始了这个词的使用。

It's a noun, 'a chav', 'chavs', and also an adjective - people talk about 'chav behaviour' or 'chav insults' and that sort of thing.
它可以是名词a chav——一个chav，或者多个chav。它还可以做形容词，人们会聊到chav behaviour（类似chav的行为）或者chav insults（chav般的粗话）这类的措辞。

Oh, don't believe the popular etymologies that you read sometimes in the press and on websites.
哦，大家不要相信有时候在媒体新闻或者是网上看到的那些流传着的词源解释。

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.
我有天看到了一个，那些人说，chav是个首字母缩写词，来自‘council house and violent’。嗯，不是的，不是这样的。这是最近才出现的胡扯。

Appealing as these etymologies are, they're nothing to do with the real Romany history of this very interesting word.
诸如此类有趣的词源解释跟吉普赛语中关于这个趣词的历史是没有什么关系的。