6 Minute English from BBCLearningEnglish.com

Hello, this is 6 Minute English from BBCLearningEnglish, 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 Helen 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 programme, we'll 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 first, 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 colours. For example, you might go red with anger,

or turn green with envy. But which colour is associated with sadness?

Is it A, yellow, B, blue, or C, brown?

I think the answer is blue.

OK, Neil. We'll find out later in the programme.

Around the world, cultures express emotions very differently.

In Spain, flamenco performers express their emotions with colourful displays of song and dance,

whereas in Japan, crying is considered weak and shameful.

To discover more about how British people express their feelings,

...