h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I remember them from a children's book called something like 'The Amazing Hatmaker' in the seventies, but I never knew that they had gone into production.

They were..picturesque.

Doesn't it rain pretty much all the time in Ireland? Instead of everyone wearing umbrellas or hats, couldn't they put one big umbrella over the whole country.

Eh... no, and no.

I was just kidding, by the way. Nobody makes an umbrella that big.

Understood. Umbrella would not be the word.

Strategic Defence Initiative?

One of Jack Vance's Demon Prince novels ("The Face", 1979) is set on a desert planet where people are living under giant parasols, single ones for small settlements, clusters for larger villages.

It's like a planet-wide Christo project, with oases of parasols instead of palm trees.

Reminds me of the '70s film, _Logan's Run_, (and many other SciFi stories of that era) in which they lived underground and under transparent domes.

Underground? Like "City of Ember"?

'Logan's Run' takes place in a mall.

A roof of any kind is a parasol/umbrella...

Why do we call it the "roof" our mouth? A roof is on the outside. Our scalps are more like roofs. We should call it the ceiling of our mouth.

From the Online Etymological Dictionary:

Old English hrof "roof, ceiling, top, summit; heaven, sky"

I remember the poetic line 'heovon to hrofe' - 'heaven (the sky) as a roof (or ceiling)' from Caedmon's Hymn.

So maybe that's why - since our use of the word for the vault in your mouth is probably that old?

There is no knowing all the roots of english. Limit a word we use a lot today speed limit, weight limit etc comes from the Roman frontier forces, The Limitantei the soldiers that guarded the limit (Hadrian's Wall and others) of the Empire. It's interesting.

So far as that goes, the 'Gallic' (Gaelic) languages were already 'Romance' languages even before Roman times.

Interesting most

Posted to soon
Most seem to class Romantic languages as post Roman derivatives Oxford Companion to the English language.
Apart from Ogam are there any written examples of Pré Roman literature not of an oral tradition that confirm any notable Pré Roman literature of any note. If there examples I would be interested in reading some if translated.

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/celtiberian.htm

Brilliant must have a search through this some of the research seems fairly recent. Thanks for the lead