BBC 6分钟英语学习 文化如何影响悲伤

From BBC learning english dot com.

Hello. This is 6 min English from BBC Learning English.

I'm Sam, and I'm Neil. When Helen Russell was three years old, her newborn baby sister died.

Suddenly. Looking back at that sad time, helen remembers making a big decision.

She wanted to be happy. She became a best selling author and wrote a book called The Atlas of Happiness.

She got married and even moved to the famously happy city of Copenhagen in Denmark.

But the sadness Helelen felt didn't disappear, and the longer she lived abroad, the more she wondered whether her feelings were somehow connected to being born in England into a culture where traditionally expressing your emotions was discouraged.

In this program, will be investigating how the way people express sadness is influenced by their culture, and as usual, we'll be learning some new, useful vocabulary as well.

But 1st, I have a question for you, neil.

In English, there are many idioms which describe being sad, including down in the dumps, meaning that you feel miserable and depressed.

Also, emotions are often associated with colors, e.g.

you might go red with anger or turn green with envy.

But which color is associated with sadness?

Is it A yellow, B blue or C brown?

I think the answer is blue.

OK, now, we'll find out later in the program.

Around the world, cultures express emotions very differently.

In Spain, flamenco performers expressed their emotions with colorful displays of song and dance, whereas in Japan, crying is considered weak and shameful.

To discover more about how British people express their feelings, helen Russell interviewed Thomas Dixon, a professor at the Center for the History of Emotion, for BBC World Service program.

The documentary the word sad. As you will know, helen um literally means sated or full.

So its earliest uses in English, it means being literally fed up.

Being full of something. Sad or sated means heavy and full.

Then of course, we have this huge vocabulary of melancholy, sorrow, grief, depression, and many, many other terms, and they all may say different things.

Professor Dixon explains that the original meaning of the word sad was full or fed up, a phrase which today means being unhappy, bored or tired of something which has been going on for a long time.

E.g., everyone is fed up of covet But fed up is just one of many words to describe feelings of sadness, each with a slightly different meaning.

One of them is melancholy, a kind of intense and thoughtful sadness.

Another is grief, a strong sadness often caused by the death of someone you love.

In Irish culture, melancholy is expressed artistically in poems or songs.

And in other cultures India, E.G., grief can be expressed by professional mourners who are paid to cry by the family of the person who has died.

In England, however, big public displays of emotion are uncommon.

But according to Professor Dixon, that wasn't always the case.

Here, he explains to BBC World Service Program the documentary, how it was only quite recently, during the time of Queen Victoria and the British Empire, that the English got a reputation for being repressed, unable to show their true feelings and emotions, by and large, is it's a Victorian.

And then it audience And 20th century characterization, as you can imagine.

You know, it fixed with the era of Empire of white British men going around the world, conquering and having a stiff up a lip, and ruling over the people um in other parts of the world, and believing themselves, the white Europeans to be superior and one sign of that superiority.

And Darwin writes, englishmen rarely cry, except under the pressure of the acuteist grief.

Professor Dixon says that the Victorians who ran the British Empire had a stiff upper lip.

These men believed they were better than everyone else, and that to cry was a sign of weakness.

When we cry, our top lip starts to wobble.

And so this gave rise to the idiom A stiff upper lip meaning to not show your feelings when you are upset, even though it's difficult not to.

Fortunately, most spirits are less repressed nowadays, but it's still hard for some people, especially men, to express their feelings.

Sometimes, drinking alcohol gives people the courage to say what their feeling, but this is not so healthy, and can even increase feelings of depression.

It's talking to someone about your feelings that can really help and keep away the blues.

And in saying that, I think I've answered your question, sir, I ask, neil, which colour is often associated with

a feeling sad and I said it was

blue, which was, of course, the correct answer.

And it gives us another idiom

about sadness, feeling blue. OK, let's recap the vocabulary we've learned from this program, the emotion of sadness, or, in other words, feeling down in the dumps.

If you are fed up of something, you're unhappy, bored or tired of it, especially if its been happening a long time.

Melancholy is a type of intenses and thoughtful sadness, while grief is a strong sadness, usually caused by someones death.

The ajective repressed means unable to show your true feelings and emotions.

And finally, the uniquely British idiom to keep a stiff up.

A lip means not to show your feelings when you're upset, even though it is difficult not to.

Hiding your feelings definitely won't make you happy.

But making friends and learning something you might.

So remember to join us again soon here at 6 min English by fan out Goodbye.

6 min English from BBC Learning English dot com.

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