What's in a fairy tale?

Sophie and Neil talk about the seven dwarves and teach you some related vocabulary.

remake a film that has been made again

toned down made less forceful

inception = beginning

gobble up eat something very quickly

Oh, you mean the modern retelling of the story Snow White?

A new account or an adaptation of a story: a retelling of a Roman myth.

The movie you watched is a remake, a film that has been made again, but the fairy tale is very old.

But this new version is for young adults – it's a different genre – or style – of film

It's right up your street, isn't it Neil? Too right.

said when you ​agree ​completely

I can't forget her in the 2008 movie Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Interestingly there has been a bit of a move towards seeing fairy tales as an adult, or at any rate a young adult – a dark sort of genre.

And dark here means scary or frightening. a dark sort of genre.

It's only in the Victorian era that they become moral children's tales and it looks like we're going back to the inception of fairy stories now with a more adult take on them.

it looks like we're going back to the inception of fairy stories now with a more adult take on them.

So these Hollywood remakes aimed at the teen market are actually returning fairy tales to an adult audience.

So these Hollywood remakes aimed at the teen market are actually returning fairy tales to an adult audience.

The Victorians toned down this dark content – or made it less forceful. opposite: mild

And inception means the beginning. So fairy tales began as a dark genre.

In the real version he gobbles her up and then eats Red Riding Hood for dessert.

to consume something rapidly. The wolf said that he was going to gobble the little girl up.

So these fairy tales that we've looked at – we've been able to trace back, really, thousands of years – probably sort of 4-6,000 years is the origin of many famous European folk tales, stories such as Beauty and the Beast.

There's not even a trace of him

to ​describe the way in which something has ​developed. She has traced her ​family ​history back to the seventeenth ​century.

We've been able to trace the transmission across generations of these stories much further back than is generally recognized.

Well, dating languages isn't something I'm familiar with – I think it's a bit like looking at a few dinosaur bones and trying to reconstruct what dinosaurs looked like.

Well, that's the end of today's spellbinding 6 Minute English. Don't forget to join us again soon!

holding ​your ​attention ​completely: He gave a spellbinding ​performance.