Hello..

Can someone give me the exact meaning of "Bünzli"
It seems it has a derogatory meaning..but don't know exactly what it means..

Cheers

I think it means a hick.

Hillbilly..

In British English we would call such a person stodgy, old-fashioned, a 'three-flying-ducks-on-the-waller'. Bünzli is an excellent example of a Swiss German word that fills a gap better than English. It is based on a family name, much in the same way hooligan is in English (a noisy Irish family who lived in London).

The Forchbahn, the train from Zurich up the Forch is known as the 'Freda Bünzli' by the way...

I think it's more than that - or maybe it's the Swiss equivalent.

Bünzlis are people who play by the rules but also wants to make sure that others, specifically their neighbors also do!

A Bünzli person typically has many garden gnomes and is always watching from behind their lace curtains. They will gossip and speculate and report any perceived wrong doing to the Gemeinde or Police. Extreme examples would be someone going through your rubbish and reporting you for not recycling glass or paper or perhaps complaining about flushing toilets at 22:01 in an apprtment block.

While skyping with CH, I asked - the right answer is - there are
different meaning for Bünzli, depening on where you are.

In my neck of the woods, Rheintal, it means a person that lives in
thier own world and nobody can change that. Similar to Jekyll's
reply.

A Bünzli is also a Füdlibürger which in fact has a special place reserved just for him/her over there in the Complaints section.

edit: of course they exist only in the Swiss German part. Ha !!!

High german equivalent - Spiesser or Spiessbürger

Probably several

Thanks. That's what I thought it meant too. I deleted my post because I thought that I was completely wrong

So, that makes you a Bünzli for deleting your own post and not playing
the EF game. tsk, tsk, tsk...

After all the hillbilly posts I thought I had to be wrong. I thought that it didn't add anything to the thread, so I deleted it. Someone gave me bad rep in the past for posting something that was once correct, but had since changed.

Frieda, not Freda, of Tante Frieda if you like. Probably because in the old days before it became the S18 trains had a big F on the front, hence Frieda, a name which sounds like somebody's rich but boring great aunt or grandmother in law, reflecting the stereotype of the type of person who supposedly inhabits that part of the world from the point of view of city dwellers.

Because tram 11 follows the same route for its urban part, this is sometimes called Tante Elfrieda, because elf = 11.

And by deleting my post you just proved my point. Cheers Scott. you are the ultimate in expat Bünzlis.

Thanks, glad to be among the few.

However, when you derail a thread, it would appear to me that you
yourself are also a Bünzli. Welcome!

Pointing out that what you said is like the pot calling the kettle black... and then asking a perfectly reasonable question based on the original topic is hardly derailing the thread. After all this is a "discussion forum".