/// Perhaps I have a wrong understanding of the word "hillbilly", english not being my first language. Is "hick" a synonym for it ? I understand from what you say it means "unlearned, isolated person, without knowledge of the world outside his immediate surroundings". Did I get it ?
To me, it had a much more negative connotation. "Hillbilly" seemed to be a general derogatory term for any group that it less "developped" than the speaker of said insult.
> I think we have a different images of hillbillies! I was imagining a family
> group distantly removed from any town or settlement of size; hunters who may
> never have seen an outsider enter their lands. Folk whose own local history
> barely touches the great conflicts of the time, without grand kings or high
> politics.
/// OK, that means ISOLATED folks. It's a factual statement, not an insult.
> To me the Tarsh Exiles are not inbred hillbillies living in ignorance of the
> outside world. They are Jacobites that were never conquered by the English,
> revanchist Magyars in the Transylvania wild seeking an independant Hungary,
> or exiled Norwegians in Russia seeking to reclaim a usurped throne. They are
> dangerous fanatics, driven by vengeance and hate, hardened and cruel. But
> they are not hillbillies. :)
/// These analogies are fine and well for the exiles : learned as they are about the world, they are living in a time-warp, and not a pleasant one. So if we don't call them hillbillies, what do we call them ? Sore losers ? :-))
Powered by hypermail