English Rewind - 6 Minute English: 6-word stories

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This is a programme from the BBC Learning English archive.

It was first broadcast in April 2008 on the BBC Learning English website.

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Hello, this is 6 Minute English. I'm Jackie Dalton.

The focus of today's programme is life stories,

told in a rather unusual way.

I'm joined by Callum Robertson,

who'll help explain some of the language that comes up today.

— Hello, Callum. — Hi, Jackie.

And, as ever, I'm going to start with a question for you.

The question is: who said,

"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know"?

Was it a) William Shakespeare? b) Oscar Wilde? Or c) Ernest Hemingway?

It doesn't sound like Shakespeare.

I don't think it's witty or funny enough to be Oscar Wilde,

so I would guess at the writer, Ernest Hemingway.

That's right, it's the American writer, Ernest Hemingway.

And we're going to be talking about him today because in the 1920s,

he bet ten dollars that he could write a complete story in just six words.

And he wrote, "For sale, baby shoes, never worn."

Ahh.

But very powerful, isn't it? Powerful six-word story.

And he won his bet, and now an American online magazine called Smith

is asking its readers to sum up their own lives in just six words

and is putting them all together in a book called Not Quite What I Was Planning.

We're going to hear the magazine's editor, Larry Smith.

Listen out for the adjectives he uses to describe the entries.

In a couple of months, we got 15,000 entries

and I was just blown away.

Funny, poignant. I really believe that everyone has a story.

So 15,000 people wrote in with their life stories summed up in six words.

Some nice words there that we often use when we're describing stories —

'poignant' was one of them.

Mm, 'poignant', yes, it's if something is moving,

it's touching on an emotional level.

It makes you feel some sad emotion, usually, it's 'poignant'.

What are some other words that we could use

or we often hear used to describe stories or writing?

Ah, well, there's lots. You can talk about powerful stories, boring stories,

dull stories,

— things can be difficult to get into. — Mm.

Although that's perhaps more associated with books or novels.

I suppose stories, 'I just couldn't put it down' is a good phrase

to talk about a story.

When you've got a book you really, really like.

Yeah.

Well, let's hear Larry talking about some of the entries that did actually come in.

Before we hear that, though, there's one word that it might be helpful to know,

which is a bit of an informal word, and that's 'crackhead'.

Can you explain what that is?

A 'crackhead' is a common slang term

for someone who's addicted to taking crack cocaine.

So a drug user.

OK, let's listen to Larry now.

So we've got one of my favourites, "After Harvard, had baby with crackhead".

Now, most of us didn't go to Harvard, didn't have a baby with a crackhead,

but we can understand, well, life took a twist and turn for Robin Templeton

that, you know, could have been you.

Your life took different twists and turns. Maybe not quite that twist and that turn,

but it's quite a powerful story in six words.

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'A twist and turn', that's a nice phrase. What does that mean?

Well, it's, you know, your life goes off in a different direction.

You can think of life as a journey down a straight path,

but sometimes you have a twist, you have a turn

and you go in an unexpected direction.

And often when we're reading a book or watching a film,

if a story suddenly takes a very unexpected direction or something happens.

— Yeah, you're talking about twists. — It's got a twist to the story.

An interesting twist where something unexpected happens, yeah, twist.

Larry also said that many of the entries were quite sad though.

I didn't expect that.

I thought people would come back with a lot of funny things,

some playful things, plays on words, but that was a really interesting reality.

People really told us it's tough out there.

"Found true love, married someone else."

"Never should have bought that ring."

That's a bit depressing, isn't it? "Found true love, married someone else."

Yeah, well, I'm a bit more worried about, "Never should have bought that ring,"

as I've just bought my wedding ring!

I'm sure that won't apply to you.

Larry said that he'd expected to see more playful things, lighter things,

and also 'plays on words'. What is a 'play on words'?

A 'play on words' is when you use a word which has the same pronunciation,

same spelling, but has different meanings.

So, for example, for example, if I say, "Can you give me a ring?"

it could either mean I want you to phone me

or it means I want you to give me a little gold band to put on my finger.

So that's a very simple example off the top of my head of a 'play on words'.

OK. Well, BBC national radio here, Radio 4, decided to do a similar thing

and ask its listeners to write in and sum up their lives

and a lot of them again very sad, actually, came in,

or slightly bitter.

But a couple of my favourites, one from Alex Hansen who wrote,

"Slow lane, fast lane, hard shoulder,"

which is referring to different sort of positions on a motorway

and how you start off slow, then go very fast,

— and then hard shoulder. — Because you've broken down!

Because you've broken down! Pushed to the side.

Well, one of my favourites was from someone called Sunny Taylor

whose six-word life story was, "Any chance I could start again?"

Well, Callum, if you had to sum up your life in six words, what would it be?

Er, "Too young, too naive, too old."

And how about you, Jax?

I think at the moment, mine would be, "Webcast, how to, people and places."

Very work-related topic there.

At the moment.

Well, that's all we've got time for in this programme,

but do join us again next week for more 6 Minute English. Goodbye.

Goodbye.

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