I still internally laugh at men who use umbrellas.
Why?
I honestly don't know. They're very practical.
The Public Shaming of England’s First Umbrella User
71–80 of 152 posts
Re: The Public Shaming of England’s First Umbrella User
#72Someday, maybe it's already happened, someone will market an umbrella drone that floats above your head. And something similar will happen.
The Slack ad :-)
Re: The Public Shaming of England’s First Umbrella User
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
> At least the English tolerate all kinds of foreign mangling pretty well. That's because they mangle their own language awfully enough. I'm not a native English speaker but I've heard quite a few native Englishmen and their accents are horrible. Received Pronunciation is obviously nice to hear and quite clear, but those local accents... oh my! I'm not saying that my accent is any better, but at least I try to make m…
There's no letter-to-sound correspondence in English. English probably - at least compared with other European language - is one of the most irregular languages in terms of pronunciation: http://www.wordsmith.org/awad/english1.html This is simply due to the language having been heavily influenced by a host of other - quite different - languages over the centuries, Old Norse and French in particular. There's also the…
> There's no letter-to-sound correspondence in English.
There is, it's just very complicated (hundreds of rules), as well as accent-dependent, and there are lots of exceptions.
Re: The Public Shaming of England’s First Umbrella User
#74"In the minds of many Brits, umbrella usage was symptomatic of a weakness of character, particularly among men. Few people ever dared to be seen with such a detestable, effeminate contraption. To carry an umbrella when it rained was to incur public ridicule." This sentiment is very much alive today. I'm always surprised how I seem to be the only person carrying an umbrella in London when it rains. Especially bankers…
In Dublin, I think it's considered, if not rude, at least not the height of courtesy, to use an umbrella in dense areas where you will be bumping in to people and essentially pushing your water on to them. However, my feeling is that the real lunacy here is having very narrow pavements (sidewalks) carrying dozens or hundreds of people while having streets, which might be carrying ten or twenty people along the same s…
The same crowded street problem happens where I live in NYC, but it generally works out as people get into a rhythm of either raising their umbrella up over the level of the other person's umbrella or lowering it down below the level of the other person's umbrella.
But then in NYC you develop a much closer "personal bubble" when you have to endure being crammed onto the train like a sardine during rush hour, so in comparison a little umbrella bumping is barely noticeable.
Re: The Public Shaming of England’s First Umbrella User
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's worse, that or not speaking a perfect Frankish language of when in the land of Franks? At least the English tolerate all kinds of foreign mangling pretty well.
> At least the English tolerate all kinds of foreign mangling pretty well. That's because they mangle their own language awfully enough. I'm not a native English speaker but I've heard quite a few native Englishmen and their accents are horrible. Received Pronunciation is obviously nice to hear and quite clear, but those local accents... oh my! I'm not saying that my accent is any better, but at least I try to make m…
Accent preference is subjective. There's nothing intrinsically pleasant about RP - it's just more likely to be heard on broadcast media than other accents. In Great Britain and Ireland, there are many different accents, some of which might make it difficult for someone not used to them to understand the speaker.
Re: The Public Shaming of England’s First Umbrella User
#76"In the minds of many Brits, umbrella usage was symptomatic of a weakness of character, particularly among men. Few people ever dared to be seen with such a detestable, effeminate contraption. To carry an umbrella when it rained was to incur public ridicule." This sentiment is very much alive today. I'm always surprised how I seem to be the only person carrying an umbrella in London when it rains. Especially bankers…
> In the minds of many Brits, umbrella usage was symptomatic of a weakness of character, particularly among men
Why isn't driving a car, or any motorized vehicle, similarly seen as a weakness?
Re: The Public Shaming of England’s First Umbrella User
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
If Portland is anything like up here in Seattle, it also doesn't actually rain that much (usually). More just a continuous drizzle for 8 solid months.
Yeah, I moved to Seattle about 6 years ago from the Midwest and was teased often by some Seattle natives for having an umbrella, which seemed to be fairly arbitrary to choose to pick on given that rubber rain boots were common enough to have fasionable variants made. Not everyone, of course, but quite a few of my colleagues would try to make it a point of pride. Tangentially, most Seattle-lites also didn't understand…
Seattle can get some bad soaking storms in October/November. Portland also! Umbrellas are taboo because you can't use them easily on your bike, so a nice rain coat (was gortex?) works better. If we did use an umbrella, it was usually the collapsible one that you could fit in your bag, full size British/Japanese style umbrellas were rare.
Nothing as bad as my mom's hometown a bit further to the north (Ketchikan).
Re: The Public Shaming of England’s First Umbrella User
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
If Portland is anything like up here in Seattle, it also doesn't actually rain that much (usually). More just a continuous drizzle for 8 solid months.
Yeah, I moved to Seattle about 6 years ago from the Midwest and was teased often by some Seattle natives for having an umbrella, which seemed to be fairly arbitrary to choose to pick on given that rubber rain boots were common enough to have fasionable variants made. Not everyone, of course, but quite a few of my colleagues would try to make it a point of pride. Tangentially, most Seattle-lites also didn't understand…
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Re: The Public Shaming of England’s First Umbrella User
#79i wonder what they'll say about the first city enclosed in a climate-controlled glass dome
Re: The Public Shaming of England’s First Umbrella User
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
> sounds be as close as possible to the actual letters used in the word So you'd pronounce "ghoti" as "fish" then?
Well, this got downvoted into the ground by people who aren't familiar with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti The point is that the "letters used in the word" are a really bad guide to pronunciation of English. They're not consistent across words or the place of the letter within the word. It's just consistent enough to make people think that might be the case. Then you get placenames like "Loughborough", "Worceste…
> The point is that the "letters used in the word" are a really bad guide to pronunciation of English.
But it's the only available clue, so people will use it!