28 FEBRUARY 2004, Page 24

Spot on, Dot

From David Davies Sir: In her column, Dot Wordsworth tentatively suggests that the word chav might be of Romany origin (Mind your language, 7 February).

My wife, who was brought up in southern Hungary, supports this argument and informs me that csavo pronounced chavo is a gypsy word for 'lad' which has entered into mainstream Hungarian. It is used as a slang word by teenagers to describe the Hungarian equivalent of the British chav.

David Davies

Monmouth