Who Watches the Watchmen (Our Chit Chat Thread)

Wibbs

Aye, but there's a hierarchy of oddballness. One of those would be - at least in my experience - vintage collectors rarely overlap with new/ current watch collectors. I've no idea why, but there does seem to be a difference.

Lorddrakul

I wonder does Rolex suffer the same brand issues that struck Bentley a few years ago.

The rise of rap culture saw a change in the demographic of Bentley buyers, as the traditional client base shied away from the brash image of rappers and their entourages using Flying Spurs and Bentaygas in their videos.

I think it was about 6-8 years ago.

It caused such an issue that they had to go on a major campaign to realign the brand image, while not alienating those buyers from the new community.

Tricky at best.

I wonder does Rolex have the same issue with Premiership leather worriers, rappers, UFC fighters et al?

Wibbs

Burberry suffered a similar dodgy association. Rolex have an advantage of being a watch brand. In the sense that bugger all people notice if you're wearing a watch or what brand, a Bentley is harder to miss. Plus rappers UFC guys, footballists etc have a very wide appeal in the market. Hublot targets them for that reason. Sure they might lose some of their Mr and Mrs Accountant 8 Acacia Drive types, but they'll hit more of the youth market and hope to generate a new generation of buyers, especially in places like the US and China. They're certainly aiming for the women's market recently. They could over egg that with their designs though. Rolex couldn't be any more Swiss and Germanic Swiss if they tried. Incredibly efficient, but safe to a fault. Often to the point of dull. Their design language is extremely limited and that is part of their cache and charm, but they're not very good when they try to push the design boat out. Some of the new dials are utterly ghastly and for no good horological or design reason. They have some history in ghastly dials too. Then again because of their extremely limited design language dials are about the only thing they can risk changing.

Thirdfox

Wibbs wrote: »

Aye, but there's a hierarchy of oddballness. One of those would be - at least in my experience - vintage collectors rarely overlap with new/ current watch collectors. I've no idea why, but there does seem to be a difference.

Proud to be in the "super oddball" collector category then - collection ranges from 1954(?) Molnija pocket watches (x4) to 2019 Octo Finissimo.

Should really do a SOTC - there are some real oddballs in the collection there which reflect my watch collection journey pretty much from beginning to now.

Thirdfox

Wibbs wrote: »

Burberry suffered a similar dodgy association. Rolex have an advantage of being a watch brand. In the sense that bugger all people notice if you're wearing a watch or what brand, a Bentley is harder to miss. Plus rappers UFC guys, footballists etc have a very wide appeal in the market. Hublot targets them for that reason. Sure they might lose some of their Mr and Mrs Accountant 8 Acacia Drive types, but they'll hit more of the youth market and hope to generate a new generation of buyers, especially in places like the US and China. They're certainly aiming for the women's market recently. They could over egg that with their designs though. Rolex couldn't be any more Swiss and Germanic Swiss if they tried. Incredibly efficient, but safe to a fault. Often to the point of dull. Their design language is extremely limited and that is part of their cache and charm, but they're not very good when they try to push the design boat out. Some of the new dials are utterly ghastly and for no good horological or design reason. They have some history in ghastly dials too. Then again because of their extremely limited design language dials are about the only thing they can risk changing.

It helps Burberry that they went to the Chinese market to escape the chav reputation that was building up in the UK. Hush puppies and Clarks are another brand that sells for much much higher in China - we've noticed it here in that they don't need to offer as many discounts/sales in Ireland because it seems their main markets have shifted from Europe to Asia.

Which kinda puts to bed the "we only buy goods from China" trope - for a lot of European brands I think Asia is a more important market than their "origin" markets - LVMH group I think for sure.

Would be interesting to see a Hublot on an accountant - we did have a law lecturer (elderly, female) with a Big Bang on her wrist in the Law Society - that was fun and fair play to her

Aph2016

Hi All, would Chrono24 be the go to for purchasing a watch that I can't find locally? Seems like they have a good review system for the sellers.

stuchyg

Aph2016 wrote: »

Hi All, would Chrono24 be the go to for purchasing a watch that I can't find locally? Seems like they have a good review system for the sellers.

Iv not used it myself but i imagine the escrow system is somewhat of a deterrent for anyone dodgy

Fitz II

Aph2016 wrote: »

Hi All, would Chrono24 be the go to for purchasing a watch that I can't find locally? Seems like they have a good review system for the sellers.

USed it a good few time and its a really good way to get a watch, and the trusted checkout is good if you are somewhat nervous. However. Chrono24 prices are often quite high.

Aph2016

Fitz II wrote: »

USed it a good few time and its a really good way to get a watch, and the trusted checkout is good if you are somewhat nervous. However. Chrono24 prices are often quite high.

Any other markets you would recommend?

Fitz II

Aph2016 wrote: »

Any other markets you would recommend?

eBay.

Fitz II

Fitz II wrote: »

eBay.

One for thirdfox here...I don't speak Irish but this is a disgrace.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/chinese-couple-told-to-reapply-for-citizenship-in-english-after-applying-in-irish-1.4539492?mode=amp

banie01

Fitz II wrote: »

One for thirdfox here...I don't speak Irish but this is a disgrace.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/chinese-couple-told-to-reapply-for-citizenship-in-english-after-applying-in-irish-1.4539492?mode=amp

Would you believe I saw it posted on Reddit last week, with the caption "Diyu is ainm dom" and completely forgot to post it here.

Absolute stupidity on the part of the State agencies there and complete disregard for the primacy of Irish in out constitution.
The family in the Article, and our own TF put the vast majority of us "natives" to shame with their knowledge and commitment to Irish tbf.

Wibbs

Sadly the language that was already dying off at the foundation of the state has become a political football for some, but mostly cultural window dressing for most. It might have primacy in the constitution, but so does God and we know how popular all that stuff is these days. We pay lip service to the language, but do so as Bearla(or very broken Gaeilge) in the vast majority of cases. In the course of my life I've spent a few months in northern Spain over the years and heard more Basque being spoken and across generations than I've heard Irish spoken in this country. And that language contended with concerted efforts to stamp it out(under Franco it was even illegal to give a child a Basque name) over centuries and competes with a world language that's local. It seems the Basques themselves just want to speak it.

Thirdfox

Oh that news has spread pretty far within the Chinese community here already, I was just mentioning it to my Cumann na nGaedheal friends a few days' ago actually

The sad (and rather poignant) point about the Constitution is that while the Irish version has primacy over the English one, it was drafted in English before being translated into Irish... kinda says it about the "primacy" of any language

I have a lot of thoughts about the Irish language (and how it *was* taught back in school - I hear things are better now). It's why my Chinese friends see Yu Ming as a comedy when I tell them to us Irish it's really quite a tragi-comedy. "I didn't know ol' Paddy could speak Chinese!" Ha ha...sigh

Hearing someone speak Irish in my local Dunnes does bring me some joy - though I can't claim any sort of fluency at all in it (quite the opposite ). I can hope that Sólás does a little to help (we're working with CnaG too as an organisation to support and spread the knowledge that Irish isn't just "English with a funny Irish accent".)

Though Wibbs on the Basque point - we've had the English trying to stamp Gaelige out too and we speak *THE* business language of the world so that does make it difficult to preserve the native language (and to be fair - English is now a native language - so preserving the "other"/"primary(!?)" native language.) Trinity still allows Irish to be regarded as a foreign language for its entrance requirements :pac: (or at least it did back in 2010).

The spark of hope is that - exactly - it may be possible still to make it "cool"/interesting to speak as Gaelige again, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it speak Irish if it doesn't want to is the issue.

Fitz II

Thirdfox wrote: »

Oh that news has spread pretty far within the Chinese community here already, I was just mentioning it to my Cumann na nGaedheal friends a few days' ago actually

The sad (and rather poignant) point about the Constitution is that while the Irish version has primacy over the English one, it was drafted in English before being translated into Irish... kinda says it about the "primacy" of any language

I have a lot of thoughts about the Irish language (and how it *was* taught back in school - I hear things are better now). It's why my Chinese friends see Yu Ming as a comedy when I tell them to us Irish it's really quite a tragi-comedy. "I didn't know ol' Paddy could speak Chinese!" Ha ha...sigh

Hearing someone speak Irish in my local Dunnes does bring me some joy - though I can't claim any sort of fluency at all in it (quite the opposite ). I can hope that Sólás does a little to help (we're working with CnaG too as an organisation to support and spread the knowledge that Irish isn't just "English with a funny Irish accent".)

Though Wibbs on the Basque point - we've had the English trying to stamp Gaelige out too and we speak *THE* business language of the world so that does make it difficult to preserve the native language (and to be fair - English is now a native language - so preserving the "other"/"primary(!?)" native language.) Trinity still allows Irish to be regarded as a foreign language for its entrance requirements :pac: (or at least it did back in 2010).

The spark of hope is that - exactly - it may be possible still to make it "cool"/interesting to speak as Gaelige again, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it speak Irish if it doesn't want to is the issue.

I saw a funny one in a airport in Spain. A bunch of native speaking people were arguing what way a rotating door turned.....Eventually there was a huge pileup of people and about 12 got stuck in the middle.

Suppose the moral of the story is "Dont put all your Basques in the one exit"

There you go Wibbs how you like dem pun onions

Thirdfox

Fitz II wrote: »

I saw a funny one in a airport in Spain. A bunch of native speaking people were arguing what way a rotating door turned.....Eventually there was a huge pileup of people and about 12 got stuck in the middle.

Suppose the moral of the story is "Dont put all your Basques in the one exit"

There you go Wibbs how you like dem pun onions

Think Vostok fever/anticipation is getting the better of you

Wibbs

Thirdfox wrote: »

Though Wibbs on the Basque point - we've had the English trying to stamp Gaelige out too

Oh certainly, but the joke is far more people spoke it natively in say 1900 when under the yoke of London than speak it now under the yoke of our own making after billions and a century spent promoting it as "ours".

and we speak *THE* business language of the world so that does make it difficult to preserve the native language (and to be fair - English is now a native language - so preserving the "other"/"primary(!?)" native language.)

Oh very true, but like I say Basque has Spanish or French to contend with in its region, both world languages spoken by billions. An uncle of mine is fluent in Irish and a retired civil servant. He told me that when he started they had to do most of the job in Irish and that was fine. Then that was done away with as a requirement. he told me the very next day beyond a few hold outs pretty much everybody switched over to English and as he pointed out these were people who could already speak Irish. Even among Irish speaking people it wasn't enough to keep it going if it wasn't a requirement from on high.

English for good and ill is now our native language and Irish is the foreign language. Languages change of course. Chaucer's English would be bloody hard to understand as a spoken language to a modern speaker. Old Irish would be a struggle to a modern Irish speaker. What happened here is rather than changing our existing language we took on another. It's a pity, but I can't see it dying out either, but can't see it ever reaching more than a small minority who will speak it daily and fluently.

Cyclingtourist

Wibbs wrote: »

English for good and ill is now our native language and Irish is the foreign language. Languages change of course. Chaucer's English would be bloody hard to understand as a spoken language to a modern speaker. Old Irish would be a struggle to a modern Irish speaker. What happened here is rather than changing our existing language we took on another. It's a pity, but I can't see it dying out either, but can't see it ever reaching more than a small minority who will speak it daily and fluently.

We have two 'native languages' Gaelige and Hiberno-English. According to the constitution we have two official languages Irish (Gaelige) and English.
IMO as someone with only a copla focle it would take about 20 years of Sasanach suppression of the Irish language to fully restore it.

blue5000

Since brexit the 4m of us are the only ones left in the EU with English as our first language, probably the most used language in the EU.

893bet

I rang Dornbluth and Sohn today. They answered in German. I started speaking our native tongue and she responded immediately.

Wibbs

Cyclingtourist wrote: »

IMO as someone with only a copla focle it would take about 20 years of Sasanach suppression of the Irish language to fully restore it.

I honestly think any hypothetical suppression would be bought into by 90% of the Irish population. With the exception of a small minority, we essentially turned our back on the language. We felt we had no use for it. And we have been pretty proactive about that. If it weren't compulsory in our schooling, how many would chose to take it as a subject?

We can even see this in our diaspora. More Dutch Americans, who number around the 3 million mark speak Dutch than Irish Americans who number ten times that speak Irish. Not as a percentage either, overall. Italian Americans and Jewish Americans held onto more language and bits of their language than the Irish did. Today same goes for Chinese Americans and Hispanic Americans. German Americans spoke German, had German newspapers and schooling in the language right until the anti "unAmerican" stuff in WW1 when they dropped it. Many, if not most of the Irish who went to American post Famine would have hailed from Irish speaking areas and they were barely past the gates of Ellis Island before they dropped it. A few tried to set up Irish language newspapers and the like, but they faded away in short order due to lack of interest. There is even a colony of Welsh descendent people who live in Argentina who speak Welsh.

It's actually quite startling how quickly and deliberately we walked away from the Irish language as a culture, while on the other hand the revival of sports and music was far more successful.

blue5000

Wibbs wrote: »

I honestly think any hypothetical suppression would be bought into by 90% of the Irish population. With the exception of a small minority, we essentially turned our back on the language. We felt we had no use for it. And we have been pretty proactive about that. If it weren't compulsory in our schooling, how many would chose to take it as a subject?

We can even see this in our diaspora. More Dutch Americans, who number around the 3 million mark speak Dutch than Irish Americans who number ten times that speak Irish. Not as a percentage either, overall. Italian Americans and Jewish Americans held onto more language and bits of their language than the Irish did. Today same goes for Chinese Americans and Hispanic Americans. German Americans spoke German, had German newspapers and schooling in the language right until the anti "unAmerican" stuff in WW1 when they dropped it. Many, if not most of the Irish who went to American post Famine would have hailed from Irish speaking areas and they were barely past the gates of Ellis Island before they dropped it. A few tried to set up Irish language newspapers and the like, but they faded away in short order due to lack of interest. There is even a colony of Welsh descendent people who live in Argentina who speak Welsh.

It's actually quite startling how quickly and deliberately we walked away from the Irish language as a culture, while on the other hand the revival of sports and music was far more successful.

I think the famine had a lot to do with it. So many Irish people were emigrating to places where they needed English to get a better job. They encouraged their children to speak English at that time, that's when I think the language declined rapidly.

Cyclingtourist

Well I don't speak Irish but all my friends (cyclists) speak it fluently. They view it as something distinctive and worth preserving in a globalised world. My wife can speak it and is a member of an Irish language choir. No you don't hear it used much in Dublin but it's out there waiting to become trendy.

Time

I don’t have any meaningful Irish nor have I any interest in it. It serves absolutely no useful functional purpose anymore, English is the international language of business, and is far far more useful to have. Even as a second language there’s at least 10 languages that I can think of that would be more useful.

If people want to keep it alive for some sort of nostalgia or because they feel it’s culturally important that’s fine, but forcing it on the rest of us in school is a waste of time.

Fitz II

Time wrote: »

It serves absolutely no useful functional purpose .

Well there is one.....the Gaelscoil. The most acceptable bit of socioeconomic engineering and racial discrimination in Ireland.

Wibbs

Fitz II wrote: »

Well there is one.....the Gaelscoil. The most acceptable bit of socioeconomic engineering and racial discrimination in Ireland.

Ooooooh jaysus Fitz you daren't suggest that.:eek:;)

Wibbs

blue5000 wrote: »

I think the famine had a lot to do with it. So many Irish people were emigrating to places where they needed English to get a better job. They encouraged their children to speak English at that time, that's when I think the language declined rapidly.

Sure, but that applied to Germans, Italians, Jews, Chinese, Russian etc in America and yet they kept more of their languages in play.

Cyrus

Fitz II wrote: »

Well there is one.....the Gaelscoil. The most acceptable bit of socioeconomic engineering and racial discrimination in Ireland.

Roycropper63

am slowly relearning irish courtesy pf my 2 year old grand daughter. the look on her face seems to say " gaga are you thick or what"

Thirdfox

blue5000 wrote: »

Since brexit the 4m of us are the only ones left in the EU with English as our first language, probably the most used language in the EU.

Everyone always forgets about the Spanish Inquisition Malta

You could say they are a small insignificant country on the periphery of the EU but... :pac:

Similar nice tax breaks there too - though you even get Irish government ministers and the like saying we're the only English speaking Eurozone member pre-Brexit too... but little Malta generally isn't in someone's mind when considering English speaking EU countries.

I'd definitely be considering sending my children to Gaelscoil too - I think language is an important cultural aspect of a nation - and being a polyglot is always handy - maybe being son/daughter of Yu Ming should count for something come Irish orals