Let’s all take a moment to gawk at this picture and note how people in Alabama talk funny.
First and foremost: the devil has a wife? Edward Snowden’s girlfriend thinks that’s a particularly unfortunate choice of partner.
Secondly, there’s an amazing wikipedia section of the page for “sunshower” that reads as follows:
In the United States, particularly in the Southern United States, and in Hungary as well, a sunshower is said to show that “the devil is beating his wife” because he is angry God created a beautiful day. The rain is said to be his wife’s tears. A regional variant from Tennessee is “the devil is kissing his wife”. In French, the phrase is “Le diable bat sa femme et marie sa fille” (i.e., “the devil is beating his wife and marrying his daughter”). In the Netherlands they say that there is a “funfair going on in hell”.
A funfair! I bet that’s when all the Dutch people dance around a maypole in a field of tulips as someone* reads from the Rhinelandic Rhyming Bible.
But mostly, this linguistic chestnut fills me with regret: while I come from the civilized world part of the country that doesn’t use this term for SunRain, I do feel regretful that I’ve gone my whole life without a word to describe this weather phenomenon that apparently exists.
So, with that in mind, I did some digging and found a few more common Alabama phrases you never knew you needed. As it turns out they have all kinds of phrases for everyday occurrences.
- “God’s wife has a urinary tract infection” – meteor shower”
- Angels are dancing on the moon” – when you see those spots after rubbing your eyes for a while
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