{"id":36645,"date":"2019-04-11T18:09:39","date_gmt":"2019-04-11T16:09:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inlingua.ad\/april-showers-bring-may-flowers\/"},"modified":"2021-07-14T18:43:58","modified_gmt":"2021-07-14T16:43:58","slug":"april-showers-bring-may-flowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inlingua.ad\/en\/april-showers-bring-may-flowers\/","title":{"rendered":"April Showers Bring May Flowers"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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April Showers Bring May Flowers<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\"\"April is an odd month which represents many things to many people.\u00a0 In business, with its dry \u201cbusiness speak\u201d, it\u2019s the beginning of the year\u2019s 2nd<\/sup> quarter.\u00a0 In academics, it marks a halfway point where the clock counts down to the end of school and the beginning of summer time fun.\u00a0 The \u201chump\u201d day (or month as it where) \u2013 something that\u2019s endured before the pleasant slide into the weekend, or in this case, summer.\u00a0 For proud parents of a new-born baby daughter, it\u2019s just a cool name.<\/p>\n

However, for everyone in Northern Europe and vast sections of the North American continent, it has a more tangible meaning which impacts their everyday life.\u00a0 April means unstable, dreary, often plain miserable, weather.\u00a0 Why is that?\u00a0 For that, let\u2019s take a look at a little science and a little literature.\u00a0 Let\u2019s start with the latter first.<\/p>\n

Most English speakers have heard the phrase \u201cApril showers bring May flowers<\/em>\u201d.\u00a0 Where did that phrase come from?\u00a0 Why is it even around?\u00a0 Well, it has been around, in one form or another, for years.\u00a0 Like hundreds of years.\u00a0 It can be found in that classic of early English literature (and the bane of school kids everywhere) \u201cThe Canterbury Tales<\/em>\u201d by Geoffrey Chaucer.\u00a0 Here\u2019s Chaucer\u2019s opinion of April:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
\nThe droghte of March hath perced to the roote\u2026\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Now, if you didn\u2019t understand any of that, you\u2019re not alone.\u00a0 Unless you were born in the 14th<\/sup> century or are a nerdy English teacher (like me) who knows Middle English, you fall into the 99.9% of the population that is completely baffled.\u00a0 From Chaucer\u2019s time, our little phrase appears in various writings off and on over the years up to the most commonly referenced version.\u00a0 That would be a poem written in 1610 by Thomas Tusser, an English poet and farmer, which contained the line:<\/p>\n

“Sweet April showers, do spring May flowers.”\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

However, this was a little \u201cwordier\u201d than the one from 1610.\u00a0 We English speakers like our proverbs shorter and even easier to memorize.\u00a0 So, it was changed almost immediately to the phrase we know and love today (minus the March wind part):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

O.K.\u00a0 So, we know (kind of) the history of the phrase, but why would Chaucer and everyone who wrote this little line even bother?\u00a0 What\u2019s the point?\u00a0 Here\u2019s where the science comes in.<\/p>\n

In various parts of the world, April has a bad (or good?) reputation as being one of the rainiest months of the year.\u00a0 This is especially true in the United Kingdom and Ireland.\u00a0 In late February\/early March, the jet stream shifts its position northward.\u00a0 This causes large masses of low pressure air to move across the North Atlantic and bring strong winds and rain across both the U.K. and the Emerald Isle.\u00a0 Why wind and rain?\u00a0 This is because the area covered by land begins to warm much faster than the ocean.\u00a0 This creates a volatile mix of warm land, cold seas, and still cold atmosphere which, in turn, results in growing storming clouds. \u00a0And growing storm clouds have that habit of raining \u2013 a lot.\u00a0 In fact, the weather can change hourly from springtime sunshine to winter sleet, snow, and blustery winds.<\/p>\n

As this was the \u201cweather world\u201d of Chaucer and all the other influential English writers, the tendency was to write about what they experienced.\u00a0 This weather pattern holds somewhat true in the parts of the North American continent which were inhabited in the 17th<\/sup> and 18th<\/sup> centuries by European settlers, who then also wrote about the terrible April weather.<\/p>\n

This combination of science, which give us a lousy (slang English \u2013 don\u2019t use it<\/em>!) early spring with the promise of a more beautiful middle\/late spring, and literature (i.e., people with plenty of time to write about the weather), is the source of our immortal little phrase.\u00a0 Now, the true scientific fact is that air temperature has more to do with flowers blossoming than rain but let\u2019s not let that little bit of knowledge ruin a good story\u2026or proverb.<\/p>\n

So, when the weather is dark, rainy, with a cold wind blowing in your face, just cheer up and remember the words and music of Hal David and Burt Bacharach from 50 years ago:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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Raindrops keep falling on my head
\nBut that doesn’t mean my eyes will soon be turning red
\nCrying’s not for me, ’cause,
\nI’m never gonna stop the rain by complaining<\/em><\/p>\n

Because I’m free
\nNothing’s worrying me<\/p>\n

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If you don\u2019t know this personal favorite of mine, check out the link below and enjoy:<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

April Showers Bring May Flowers April is an odd month which represents many things to many people. In business, with its dry \u201cbusiness speak\u201d, it\u2019s the beginning of the year\u2019s 2nd quarter. In academics, it marks a halfway point where the clock counts down to the end of school and the beginning of summer time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4919,"featured_media":35495,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[349,346],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-en-2","category-blog-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inlingua.ad\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inlingua.ad\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inlingua.ad\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inlingua.ad\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4919"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inlingua.ad\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inlingua.ad\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36646,"href":"https:\/\/inlingua.ad\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36645\/revisions\/36646"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inlingua.ad\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inlingua.ad\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inlingua.ad\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inlingua.ad\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}