Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 November 3

= November 3 =

Slurs for Swiss people
Do there exist any offensive terms specifically referring to Swiss citizens, especially in German or French? I couldn't find anything by googling, but I don't speak German or French, so perhaps those languages have terms I wouldn't be aware of. L ANTZY T ALK 23:22, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * "Hash-browns eaters"? That's about as bland an insult as the Swiss themselves are perceived to be. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:21, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Harry Lime might say "cuckoo clock inventors" ( least ad-infested youtube video I could find ad-less youtube video of Lime's speech). Clarityfiend (talk) 07:47, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Actually, Harry Lime never said that. Well, he did in the movie, obviously, but it was never in the script. Orson Welles just dreamt it up on the spot as a bit of a joke, assuming it wouldn't make it to the final cut. How wrong he was. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  08:55, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Swiss mercenaries used to be much in demand, having a reputation of being fierce and capable in battle. --Lambiam 07:58, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
 * There are of course the Gnomes of Zurich, but these are only a sub-set of Swiss people. DuncanHill (talk) 09:10, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

de:Kuhschweizer ('cow Swiss') in German. Across the border in southern Baden sometimes 'Schwiizerlööli'. --Terfili (talk) 12:53, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
 * "What a bloody country, even the cheese has got holes in it!!" --ColinFine (talk) 13:52, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Better to be called a cow than a Nazi. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:00, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The historical slur de:Kuhschweizer (= 'cow Swiss') had some more explicit variants describing actions for which it is hard to elicit mutual consent from bovines (Kuhgeheier = 'cow mater'). But in current German usage, slurs for Swiss people are virtually non-existent, except for dialect terms like the aforementioned 'Schwiizerlööli'. –Austronesier (talk) 14:19, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
 * How does "Schwiizerlööli", a term unknown to google, translate? DuncanHill (talk) 23:06, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The spelling "Löli" gives a number of results, including on Wiktionary. The word roughly means "fool, stupid person". I agree with Austronesier though that there aren't really any slurs specific to Swiss people. When Germans in the border area are upset at Swiss people, they're likely to use compounds prefixed with "Sau-" ('sow, pig'), "Drecks-" ('dirt, garbage'), "Scheiß-" ('shit') and similar. That is what someone once shouted at my sister, who lives in Zurich and has a Swiss license plate, when she was at a supermarket in Germany, and a German shopper was angry at the Swiss cars taking up parking spaces. The ironic thing of course being, that my sister is herself German and was shopping at a supermarket in her own hometown...--Terfili (talk) 09:21, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 18:30, 11 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Wiktionary has wikt:Category:French ethnic slurs and more broadly wikt:Category:Ethnic slurs by language, either of which may be a good starting point for research. -- Jayron 32 17:17, 4 November 2020 (UTC)