可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Okay, we've talked so much about the word dandy itself and also Beau Brummell, but still I think our listeners probably just can't really imagine in their mind’s eye how a dandy would dress, is it more like you have feather there and really like flamboyant, really out there, all the colors? No. OKAY. In the past, men would wear very bright colors, dandies would focus more on the material, design, and the overall fit of the clothes. They would actually wear dark colors. Oh yes, because before the aristocratic the upper class in Britain or in England would draw influence from the French court where everything's like puffy and bright color and really kind of out there. But...so dandyism actually made it a little bit more sophisticated. Oh yeah. People used to take the time because if you think about it in the past, people didn't really care about their personal hygiene. They didn't wash, because all they had to do was put on a wig, put on something bright, cover themselves in perfume and they're done. Whereas dandies would focus for hours on their hair. They would actually try to make themselves clean and they would focus on just getting the clothes looking just right. So it's... dandies are not trying to look effeminate. They're not trying to look feminine. They try to look like a very sophisticated men. Yeah, and it's the dandies who have had the biggest influence over how men dress nowadays. You know what it reminds me of, I don't know if our listeners have heard of the idea of 绅装. 安澜, have you heard of the Chinese words, 绅士的绅, 服装的装, if you check on Chinese social media or just any of the online store, you check 绅装, you will see lots of the stores, lots of the actual clothes. I think that is very much linked with dandyism. It's just fitted clothes and sort of bespoke, there’s actually a bespoke有一个定制西装的品牌就叫做MR Dandy actually in China. Yeah, I've heard about it. So is that the case. It is, and as I was saying before, the clothes that they wore are the clothes that we wear nowadays. So for example, they made trousers popular for men. OKAY. So what did they use to wear, skirts? They used to wear breeches. Breeches are shorts? Like shorts, with tights. Oh. So those pictures that you see was the French court. Yeah. SO they would have breeches that go down the knees and then they wear tights. 就是那种短裤. 大家看到原来法式宫廷那种puffy breeches, 底下那种紧身裤袜. Sometimes puffy breeches. But most of the time just very well fitted breeches. Oh Yes.of course .of course. So then they started abandoning those, and they started wearing trousers as we see today. Yes. And we talked about cravat became ties and they would wear dark coats which later became blazers. You know All of these stereotypes about British gentlemen how would they dress, it sounds like it started from this whole dandyism. I would say that's where a lot of the modern suit comes from, the whole idea of this is how a man should dress. What about the perfume? Did they change that, I... before it was just to cover the smell. But now they focus on their own personal hygiene more, so they probably use a bit of perfume but not too much. Sounds like a nice way to sort of like to change into, to be honest. Well. I don't have the time, but I do like the idea of men really focusing on how they dress, kind of get in their outfits right making sure that they're wearing kind of clean presentable clothes. I'm not dandy by any stretch of imagination. I would say you're more dandy compared to the average men. I do think a lot about how I dress, yes I do. I probably wouldn't call you metrosexual, 安澜, but you are getting there. Well I don't care about my hair sufficient enough to be metrosexual

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ In Rome there was once a poor slave whose name was Androcles. Androcles was a kind young man but his master was a cruel man, and so unkind to him that Androcles finally ran away. He hid himself in a wild wood far away from Rome for many days; but there was no food to be found. Androcles grew so weak and sick that he thought he would die soon. So, one day he crept into a cave. Androcles was exhausted and weak with hunger. He laid down on a pile of leaves, and soon he was fast asleep. After a while a great noise woke him up. A large, ferocious lion had come into the cave, and was roaring loudly. Androcles was terrified, for he felt sure that the beast would kill and eat him. Soon, however, he saw that the lion was not angry, but that he limped as if his foot hurt him. The lion carefully sat down in the cave staring at Androcles with sad eyes. Then Androcles grew so brave that he took hold of the lion's lame paw to see what was the matter. The lion stood quite still, and rubbed his head against the man's shoulder. He seemed to say,-- "I know that you will help me." Androcles lifted the paw from the ground, and saw that it was a long, sharp thorn which hurt the lion so much. He took the end of the thorn in his fingers; then he gave a strong, quick pull, and out it came. The lion first looked in pain but then when he saw that his paw no longer hurt, he was full of joy. He jumped about like a dog, and licked the hands and feet of his new friend.

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Hi, everyone and welcome back to Britain Under the Microscope. 欢迎回来【闲话英伦】. Hi 安澜. Hi, lulu. Hi everyone. And welcome back to the studio. Thank you. So how was your holiday? Really really good. Very wet, very cold, there were two storms in the UK, but I stayed at home . Binge eating and binge drinking Pretty much. I think all holidays around the world are pretty much the same, food oriented, family oriented, that's about it. Exactly. When I came back to china, I did find that my clothes were a little bit snug, let's say snug. That's better than saying I’ve got fat. So what are we going to talk about today? As I was struggling to put on my clothes, Okay. I started thinking about something from British history and I started thinking about the dandies. The dandies, the best dressers. 首先解释下 dandies, 你知道在中文里其实不是特别好翻译这个dandy. 我看过直接音译的叫 “丹迪主义”, 我也看过它被翻译成 “绅士”, 或者有一种直接翻译成”纨绔子弟”. 翻译是也有点奇怪. Yeah, because a very specific type of men and it's got its own context, historical context. Yeah. I would also say, but even British people and English speakers don't really quite understand what a dandy is or what a dandy was. Well, I guess it's just part of the history. Nowadays nobody really says that, I mean would they say he's such a dandy, you wouldn't say that, would you ? Well, you would say he's such a dandy, but it's always negative. So what does that mean now if you say he's such a dandy. If you say he’s such a dandy, then you are saying he cares too much about his appearance. He worries too much about how he looks, how he dresses. It has the connotation of he's acting a little bit girly. okay, 精致男那种感觉, but you know let's dive in history and let's go back to the origin of these words and then let's start from there. Okay. So I would say first of all, that what a dandy originally was is very different to what we perceive them as today (okay). I would say that dandies were the original metrosexual men. Metrosexual. For our listeners you probably heard of heterosexual, homosexual, sapiosexual, but what is metrosexual? Do you know back in university when I was doing my translation degree, (yeah) we actually had this huge discussion, two-hour discussion as in how to translate the word metrosexual. It’s a difficult word to translate. Metro means metropolitan right? (yeah) City, urban life; and sexual, just sexual. Metrosexual的那个意思, 我们最后决定把它翻译成“都市欲男”或者”都市花美男”.

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Hi, everyone. And welcome back to our new segment 【It means what?】 Yeah~ 安澜, this is going to be a very interesting word that we're going to talk about today. Okay. 欢迎回来我们的新板块【词源考古研究所】. In this segment, we will bring you interesting origin stories of some of the most common words and phrases. So today we're going to talk about the word “companion”. Yes. I know a lot of Chinese learners they like to say “I want to accompany you to do something” 我陪你去做什么事情. Yeah, I've noticed that. Yeah. It doesn't sound very natural. No. We wouldn't say accompany someone. If we say something like the best translation for like “陪”, I would say it's like “spend time with”. Or “keep you company”. Or “keep you company”. 但不管是company还是accompany, 都和这个词有点关系, 就是companion. Yes. 也就是同伴这么一个意思, 就是可以陪伴你的人. Sometimes we also say pets are our companion. Well. Exactly. It's someone you spend time with. That's it. Where does this word come from? Because it's very different from like friends or family. Well. Yeah, it's actually from two words, two Latin words. “Com” I think you can probably recognize what that means. “Com” is, I think in Latin used to be written as “c” “u” “m”? Yeah, or like “c” “o” “m”. “c” “u” “m”, “c” “o” “m”, which means “with” “together”. Yeah. So combine example. Companion前面这个com, 它的意思有“和”, 就是 with, 在一起的这个意思. And “panion”? It comes from the Latin word “panis”. “penis”? Not that. Oh, “panis”.

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Hi, everyone and welcome back to Britain under the microscope. 欢迎回来【闲话英伦】. Hi, 安澜. Hi, Lulu. Hi, everyone. So 安澜 you just got back from the UK, what you’ve been doing apart from binge eating and binge drinking? Well, same as everyone during Christmas, watching TV, being with family. I didn't even know you watch TV. I thought you just watch really old movies. I do sometimes watch TV, I do sometimes. So what kind of TV do you watch, soap opera? No. My mom does. I don't. What else? Well. I would say the things that we really just can't escape from in the UK, which are reality shows. 真人秀. That's exactly the same as in China. I think that's pretty much exactly the same anywhere in the world at the moment. People are so fascinated with reality shows and those of you who are listening to this episode, I'm pretty sure you have watched reality shows, sometimes maybe not even realizing it's a reality show. Yeah. Reality show I think by definition is just any show without a script. Yeah, but I would say reality shows have become so specific now. I know some really bad reality shows. I know some terrible ones which are exactly the ones that we’re gonna talk about. So I know a lot of you watch like综艺节目, actually they say variety show like综艺节目, but they're not variety shows. No. There are more reality shows. Yeah. And today we're going to talk about popular, trashy, bad, good reality shows in the UK and you can compare to some of the reality shows that you watch in China. Some of these you might have already watched. Emm. Okay. And the whole trend started at least 20 years ago. Well, yeah. Around the early 2000s, you had shows like Big Brother and Survivor that came from the US. Yeah. I was gonna say Survivor is from the US. Big Brother is just like the bunch of people living in the same house? Yeah. With cameras everywhere. Oh. Hence big brother, they’re being watched, monitored the entire time.

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Hi, everyone. And welcome back to our new segment【It means what? 】 Yeah~ I'm not convinced. Okay. 欢迎回来我们的新板块【词源考古研究所】. In this segment, we bring you some of the very interesting origin stories of words and phrases. So the word for today is a word, I'm sure a lot of people have heard of, this is the word ‘candidate’. Oh. Yes. Like presidential candidate. PhD candida

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Hi, everyone and welcome back to Britain Under the Microscope. 欢迎回来行闲话英伦, Hi 安澜。 Hi, Lulu, hi everyone. Now as we are recording this, we're in October after the National (Day), so basically we've used up all of the public holidays of the year. Yeah, that is true, (YEAH) but look on the bright side at least it's better than it would be in the UK. What do you mean? Well, the last public holiday in the UK was in August and our next public holiday is the end of December. SO 4 months without any public holiday. That's right. Is that our topic today? Public holidays in the UK. YEAH. I thought, you know we’ve talked about Christmas, we’ve talked about Halloween which instead is not a public holiday. So I thought would be a good idea just to talk about public holidays in general. Yeah. I guess knowing that you guys have even fewer public holidays did make me feel better. In the UK there's only eight public holidays. 只有8个公众假日? Do you mean public holiday days or eight different public... because you know some of our public holidays are... 8 public holiday days. Throughout the year? Well, in England. if you go to Scotland and you go to Wales, they actually have slightly more public holidays than we have in England. You only have 8 days. That's right. Does that include Christmas? YES. If I remember correctly, Christmas is not just one day, it's a... Christmas eve? Not Christmas eve. Christmas eve is a workday.You have Christmas day and you have Boxing day. Christmas eve is not a holiday? No. So technically you still have to work. You still have to work. But most companies they'll let you finish a little bit earlier. 安澜, did you hear that this year there's gonna be a change in China, I think. They just announced the New Year's Eve is not going to be a public holiday this year. Really?

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Hi, everyone. And welcome back to one of your favorite segments 【The sound of musicals】欢迎回来【曲外之音】. Hi, Oliver. Hello. So today we’re gonna continue to talk about Wicked. Yes. We're gonna keep going. And you did the impossible, in the last episode by summarizing a brief summary of the story. There's a lot to it. Of a very long story. It is. It is. I think it's only fair that I take the lead in this part as we move on to talk about the themes because there are a lot of themes and quite powerful themes, really all the way through this musical Wicked. Yeah. It's one of those things, isn't it? Like on the surface. It's still quite lighthearted. It's probably based on a children's book. But there are many big themes, heavy themes. There are, yeah, definitely, there's a quite a few things to talk about. I mean, the most obvious one straight away is good versus evil. This idea of is someone completely good and somebody else completely evil in any situation. It's one of the most obvious ones I feel. Yeah. Hence the name Wicked, wicked means evil, right? Yeah. It does. It means evil, not very nice, maybe not completely evil, but certainly they do bad things. Yeah. So Oliver, do you think Wicked - it does - because obviously Elphaba is called or tagged as the Wicked Witch of the West? What do you think of Elphaba the character? I don't think she is wicked at all. I think that the way that the musical shows her is she did do a lot of things with good intentions. That's the thing. To be evil and wicked, you have to have bad intentions. And I don't feel that Elphaba did. I feel that she was trying to make the best of a situation in a way. And, it didn't go her way, which is a little bit tragic really, it's quite sad that these things as they unfolded turned against her. There was a lot of discussion about whether good intentions but still bad ending. Does that make you wicked? Does that make you good?

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Hi, everyone and happy new year. 一年前的今天, 我们在新年特辑里讲到了new year resolution新年的决心. In this episode, Lulu is gonna walk you through some very interesting and natural expressions to do with starting and beginning. We're also going to look at some inspiring quotes about new beginnings. Let's get started. To talk about the word “start”. It's usually about something new, exciting. For example, start up a new company. Nowadays you look around, there's so many startups. 初创公司就被叫做startup. And in English, when you say start a family, it doesn't mean getting married. It actually means having a child. For example, a married couple would say we're planning to start a family next year. That means they are ready to have a baby. But apart from these basics, there are many idioms in English with the word “start”. The first one is a fresh start, to get off to a fresh start. This means everything's new, everything's exciting. For example, you might say I'm excited to get off to a fresh start with my new job. 新工作, 全新的开始. Same can be said about new relationships, new homes, a new stage in your life or a brand new year. In comparison to a fresh start, we can also have a head start. Getting a head start means to get ahead of schedule or to start before other people. To have a head start. 有抢得先机或者提前做某件事的意思. For instance, the report isn't due until next Friday, but I'm going to get a head start on it by doing some research over the weekend. The report isn't due until next Friday, but I'm going to get a head start on it by doing some research over the weekend. Although getting a head start is a great attitude, it is a huge Challenge for a procrastinator like me. 如果你也和璐璐一样, 是个procrastinator拖延症患者, a head start might be a bit of a Challenge to you. In addition to fresh start and head start, you also hear the expression, jump start or kick start. Sounds very vibrant, doesn't it？You have jump and kick. Actually to jump start originally means to jump start a car that is connecting the car to another car's battery using cables in order to restart it. 其实jump star的原意是指一辆汽车上电池没电了, 发动不了, 就可以用两根电缆线把没有电的电池和另一辆车上的好电池相连, 帮助这辆车启动. 这个就叫做 jump start. You might have seen it in TV shows and movies a lot. In day to day speech when you say jump start something or kick start something. It means to put things in motion, especially if they were previously stopped or slow. For example, this seasonal promotion might help jump start sales again. 这一季的推广活动应该可以刺激销售额重新增长. This seasonal promotion might help jump start sales again. As for kick start. An example would be we need to find ways to kick start this project, 要想办法启动这个项目. Actually, I once mentioned in the buzzword segment, there is a website called kick starter, which is a crowd funding website that helps fund creative projects. 之前我在buzzword里面也提到过, 其实有一家很有名的支持创意项目的众筹网站, 就叫做 kick starter. So far we have talked about fresh start, head start, kick start, jump start. And perhaps a more common expression you would hear in day to day speech is to start over. If you start over, it means you begin again. Usually because the past wasn't so great, you experienced some difficulty, some challenges, mistakes or even failures. You might say she is planning to start over after her divorce and move on with her life. 离婚之后她计划重新开始自己的人生. Actually nowadays it is getting rather common for people to start over later in their life. And that I find to be really inspirational. I guess it's never too late to start over. As long as you have enough determination. Sometimes people would also say they want to start over with a clean slate, a clean slate. It's like a blank board. Basically, everything has been erased. Clean slate 白板一块, 其实就是零过去, 重新开始.

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Hi, everyone and welcome back to one of your favorite segments, the Sound of Musicals. 欢迎回来 , 你们最喜欢的板块之一, 曲外之音. Hello, Oliver. Hello. So welcome back to the show. And since I have been proposing some of the musicals, so now it's your turn. Which one would you pick? Well. I've got a couple of questions actually, before we begin, my first question is, do you like witches and magic and things like that? Oh. I love witches. They're pretty good. Wizardry witchcraft. My thing, that's totally my territory. Okay, okay, what about if I give you some characters? Could you tell me the show that they're from? Do you think? Okay. Interesting How about a lion, a scarecrow, a tin man. Any ideas? Ah, we're gonna talk about Wicked. Yeah. Wicked. Wicked. So Wicked中文名叫魔法坏女巫. It sounds like a child's show, but it's actually not. Wicked is a musical based on a novel of the same name, which was published in 1995. But this story is actually based on an older novel, and the film named The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. 很多人应该听过中文名叫绿野仙踪或者奥兹国或者Oz国历险记. Oliver, let me ask you the original story, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, how popular, how well known it is in English-speaking culture? It is incredibly popular. I am certainly the movie is, I think it's one of the most watched movies, it's up there in the what most watched movies of all time category. It is so popular, certainly in the UK, I'd imagine in the US as well. And probably all around the world. The characters - easy to kind of get along, to understand that easy to like and it's got a very clear, good, bad type of type of vibe to it. So everyone can kind of support the hero and against the evil wicked witch. Yeah. Did you watch or read it as a child? I have watched the movie. I watched it a few times as a child, but I’ve never read the book. The book is a new one for me. Okay. So the original book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, follows a Kansas farm girl named Dorothy. And I'm sure many of you recognize the name Dorothy陶乐丝或者陶乐西. And so, she's just an ordinary farm girl, but one day she ends up in a magical Land of Oz after she and her pet dog Toto are swept away from their home by a cyclone. Yeah. Dorothy, Toto and their house all get taken away in a big tornado or cyclone or something and placed in this magical world with talking scarecrows and Tin Man, robots and lions who are terrified of everything, cowardly lions and it's very very good. Yeah, and she was trying desperately to get back home. And she ran into a lot of adventures. It sounds almost like very similar to the whole idea of Alice in Wonderland. It does feel very similar to that, yes, getting a young girl lost in a magical world just trying to get home. Yeah, so apart from those characters that Oliver just mentioned, the Lion, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman. They're also the Wicked Witch and the Good Witch and the Wizard of Oz. 这里面还讲到什么坏女巫, 好女巫. If you have read the book or watched the movie, I'm sure you know which ones I’m talking about. But this musical, interestingly, is told from the perspective of the two witches, it's not focusing on Dorothy at all. No. Wicked takes the original story of The Wizard of Oz and it flips it around. It happens, I've seen it happening a lot in movies and things nowadays. The movie Magnificent did something similar where the evil traditionally evil character, we see the story from their point of view and from their perspective and it's not quite what we assumed it was. And Wicked, does it very well.

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Hi, everyone. And welcome back to 【It Means What? 】 Yeah. Thank you, 安澜. Every time. 欢迎大家回到我们的新板块【词源考古研究所】. Hi, 安澜. Hi, Lulu. Hi, everyone. So 安澜, if I ask you about the hottest topic in the world of technology, what do you think it would be? Well. Two letters. It is gotta be AI. Yes. And to talk about AI就说到人工智能的话, of course, we need to talk about robots. Yes. 机器人. I know a lot of you probably have trouble pronouncing that word, although it's very easy, but I've heard many mispronunciations. So for American pronunciation, you would pronounce it Robot [ˈroʊˌbɑt], and British pronunciation? We will say robot [ˈrəʊbɒt]. Roughly the same. Yeah, but it doesn't really matter, because it's not an English word anyway. Oh. Is it not? Nope. It actually comes from Czech. 就是捷克, 捷克语. Was it also robot in Czech? In Czech, it’s - there's a word “robota”. Robota, let me guess, this gotta be a word related to machine, automation, technological advances, all of those fancy things. No, it means forced labor, slave or serf. What? That's what it means. Okay. Forced labor, 强制劳动, slave奴隶 Yeah. Serf我记得的话s-e-r-f对吧? Yeah. That's right. 是农奴的意思. Yeah. That's what it means. By the way, what is the difference between a serf and a slave? Well. Serfs were like slaves, as they were forced to stay on the land where they lived. But serfs were part of the land. If they were sold, it's normally with land. And they had some rights. Yeah, they have some very basic rights. But they had to pay for every one of those rights, if I remembered correctly.

可以搜索公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】或者添加【luluxjg2】咨询课程or加入社群，查看文稿和其他精彩内容哦~ Hi, everyone and welcome back to Britain Under the Microscope. 欢迎回来【闲话英伦】Hi 安澜. Hi, Lulu. Hi, everyone. And then the unemployment what you call it the Dole. Yeah in spoken English we will call it the Dole. But if you actually see it in governments, notice it is called jobseekers’ allowance. Jobseekers’ allowance, I like the positivity instead of unemployment allowance. Yeah, the idea is that you only getting that money because you're looking for a job as opposed to live in unemployment benefit. I see, I see. So, you pay one contribution into national insurance, and that covers medical, that covers maternity, that covers pension, and that also covers unemployment. So, it pretty much covers everything. And this was first introduced in 1911. So it's been around for a very long time and it's paid by everybody who is earning over£242 a week. A week. Okay, so that's roughly about £1,000 a month then over that. But I suppose it's roughly the same - is the equivalent as the personal allowance threshold, the tax threshold like£12,000. Yeah, and this is something you start paying at the age of 16. So even when I was doing part-time jobs, I probably wouldn't have paid income tax, but I would still have to pay national insurance contributions. Do you have to pay the same amount of national insurance, no matter how much money you make? No, it still has its own brackets. So it's 12% of your weekly earnings between£242 and £967. And it's then 2% of your weekly earnings above£967. I see. So you have again the brackets for people with different levels of income. Yeah. And everybody in the UK, every British citizen and people who are working in the UK are given a national insurance number. This is how you pay into and also access national insurance. Yeah, yeah. So every time I fill out tax return or I fill out any paperworks, I have to add my national insurance number. I see. When you go to the doctors, is that also the one that you show? No, you don't have to show it. There's another number, an NHS number to access medical, national insurance is basically a way of calculating how much you've paid. So, for example, I've lived in China for many years now. What I do is I pay voluntary contributions. Voluntary means they don't force you to do it, but you choose to do it. I choose to do it, because this is important to get a state pension. So, let me get this straight. So, if you are a British person, a British national living overseas, working overseas, you don't have to pay national insurance in the UK. No. But if you don't, then you won't get the state pension. Exactly. So both men and women at the moment, they get their pension at 66. 66. Wow. 66, yeah. It's probably gonna go up very, very soon. And what you have to do is you have to pay for 35 years in order to get the full amount. 35 years. I think this is much longer than in China. Yeah. Now the good thing is that paying voluntary contributions is not really that expensive. It's only about £700 or £800 a year.