Pratica di Shadowing: The Victorian Language of Flowers, Explained - Impara a parlare inglese con i video
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Nowadays, if you receive a rose, you usually know what it means.
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It means love.
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But in Victorian times, every flower carried a meaning, and sometimes it wasn't what you'd expect.
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A daisy could symbolize innocence, but yellow carnations might mean rejection, and a simple bouquet could be hiding an entire story.
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uncover its origins, how people actually used it in everyday life, and why our modern understanding of Victorian floriography is misleading.
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And finally, we'll look at a selection of flowers and their original Victorian meanings.
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Victorians themselves believed the language of flowers started in the East, specifically in Ottoman Turkey.
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In the early 18th century, a woman named Lady Mary Wortley Montague, the wife of the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire,
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described in one of her many letters back home a court played by members of the Imperial Harem, called Salaam.
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Salaam was, according to Montague, a system of secret communication,
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used by members of the King's harem to send messages to lovers they had outside the walls without being exposed.
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Salaam used many objects, not just flowers, to convey hidden meanings.
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According to Montague, "There is no color, no flower, no weed, no fruit, herb, pebble, or feather that has not a verse belonging to it,
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and you may quarrel, reproach, or send letters of passion, friendship, or civility, or even of news, without ever inking your fingers.
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You may have noticed the part of the quote has not a verse belonging to it.
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This tells us how Salaam worked.
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Unlike the later language of flowers that used metaphor and symbolism to ascribe meaning to the flowers, Salaam worked in a different way.
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The interpretation of the message was revealed through rhyme.
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The names of the objects would rhyme with well -known phrases in Turkish.
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Let me give you an example.
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A pearl is called "Ingı" in Turkish, and that rhymes with the last word of the phrase "Senzen Uzeleren Gingı".
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translating to "Fairest of the Young." Excuse my terrible Turkish pronunciation.
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So according to Lady Montague, a woman of the harem would wrap a number of objects in a leather bag
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and somehow or another get the bag to her lover.
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He would then be able to decipher the love letter by reading the object.
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We know now that Lady Montague misunderstood the practice, as it would have been an impractical mode of communication.
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After all, a small note would certainly be easier to transport than a sack of objects, and if the Salaam language was apparently known to all,
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it wouldn't encode the message as well as was hoped.
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Most scholars now recognize Salaam as a sort of game played by women of the harem amongst themselves.
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Still, Lady Montague's letters were published after her death in 1762,
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and the letter containing an explanation of Salaam caught the attention of upper -class ladies in England.
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However, the European language of flowers didn't start in England.
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It started in France, as Lady Montague's letters were translated into a number of languages.
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Now, You may have noticed that the Turkish "Salam" was not in fact a language of flowers, it was a language of objects.
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But when the idea travelled westward, the European preoccupation with flowers, especially in the Romantic era of the 18th and 19th centuries, all other objects were dropped,
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and only a language of flowers remained.
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The first mention of a language of flowers in writing was
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in 1809 with the French book Dictionnaire du Language de Fleur by Joseph Hammer Pergstall.
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But the most popular French publication was Le Langage de Fleur by Charlotte de La Tour, published in 1819.
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Le Langage de Fleur was extremely popular and it became the blueprint for many books that succeeded it.
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It listed its flowers by season, with each chapter named for month.
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Each flower had a listed meaning, as well as an explanation for that meaning.
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Explanations ranged from religion, mythology, medieval heraldry, history, poetry, and symbolism surrounding the characteristics of the plant.
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For instance, the color, height, number of petals, growing pattern, etc. Most later books listed their flowers alphabetically,
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but the contents were usually the same.
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By the 1820s, the language of flowers had become a phenomenon, with language of flower books becoming go -to gifts, for young women.
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The most popular flower book in England was Floral Emblems by Henry Phillips.
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It was essentially a translation of Latour's La Langage de Fleur, but with a few noteworthy changes.
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As you'll probably know, England has always been more conservative than France in terms of love and romance,
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so any and all, sexual or explicit meanings given in Latour's book were toned down for the ever -Puritanical English Victorians.
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In the modern imagination, the Victorian language of flowers goes something like this:
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floriography was a way for young lovers to deliver covert messages
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to each other in a society where such outward showings of affection were frowned upon.
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This understanding is decidedly wrong.
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And it's not anyone's fault, as this is more or less the way books from the period describe it.
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So, does this mean there was no language of flowers at all?
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That it's a total modern invention?
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Well no, not exactly.
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Evidenced by the mere existence of the floral dictionaries we've already discussed, flower symbolism was indeed a real pastime of the Victorian age,
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popular mostly with upper class women.
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Starting in the 18th century, botany and gardening became popular hobbies for both the upper class and the growing middle classes.
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acceptable for women, and an interest in nature, and especially flowers, was one of them.
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Sentimental flower books, books of flower poetry or flower folklore,
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became increasingly popular, and the language of flower books were the last in a long line of these types of works.
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They were often given as gifts, as the publishers did their best to make the books beautiful with detailed illustrations.
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you Most well -to -do households would own a book on floriography.
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This might suggest that the language of flowers was a popular way of communicating, no?
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Well, here's the problem: we have little to no direct evidence of flowers being used this way.
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No letters explaining how a suitor sent a coded message with his flower bouquet.
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No diary entries reminiscing on a romantic exchange of flowers and their meanings.
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Nothing of the sort.
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Of course, flowers were sent as romantic gifts.
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And certain flowers were seen as appropriate for such an occasion, while other flowers were not.
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But actual secret code or specific messages contained in the flowers doesn't seem to have been an actual thing.
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Another problem is with the books themselves.
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There were many floral dictionaries published, and while some were more popular than others, if you compare the meaning of a flower in one book against another,
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you won't always find the same meaning.
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So if you wanted to send a specific message to a friend, suitor, or lover, you'd have to be sure they owned the same book that you did,
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or at least hope that the meanings ascribed were the same.
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And I should say that many flowers did have common meanings.
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It's not as though every language of flower book contained a completely unique set of meanings for their flowers.
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Quite the opposite, honestly, as most of these books copied from the more popular publications.
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But still, for more unique flowers, the meanings often differed based on the book.
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Lastly, we have the problem of grammar.
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Any true language needs grammar, a way of combining meanings in a comprehensible way.
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Early language of flower books gave no indication of grammar at all.
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Obviously, this wouldn't always be a problem, especially if you sent a single flower with a single meaning.
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or a bouquet of flowers all with similar meanings.
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But if you wanted to send a more complex message, you might have had some trouble.
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For example, say you wanted to send a message saying "I'm crazy in love with you." A bouquet with scarlet geranium,
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meaning folly, and myrtle, meaning love, would make sense.
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But how would the recipient know how to read the bouquet?
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They may accidentally read it backwards and get the wrong message.
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Some later authors attempted to create a grammar for the language of flowers.
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It was said, for instance, that the way a flower was presented, and the direction it leaned was supposed to hold meaning.
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If a woman pinned a flower to her left bosom versus her right, that also held meaning.
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Once again, there's no evidence any of this was really used by Victorian people, but at least some authors recognized that if you were to use flowers for communicating,
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you would need a bit more complexity.
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I should say that the possibility of miscommunication alone does not disprove the language of flowers.
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After all, miscommunication happens in spoken and written language all the time.
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But with the other problems I already talked about, I think it's clear that sending secret messages with flowers was at the very least uncommon.
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That doesn't mean phalloriography had no place in Victorian society at all.
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It's true that in the early Victorian period, books on the language of flowers often emphasized not to take it too seriously.
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Flora's Dictionary by E.
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W. Wirt, from 1829 explains: "The lady who has given her leisure hours to this little play of fancy
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has not the vanity to attach any serious consequence to it.
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It has been an innocent recreation to herself.
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However, in a later publication,
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Gaskell's Compendium of Forms, which was a book meant for social climbers to better understand and adapt to higher class society,
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explained that the language of flowers was important to know and understand.
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So what's the verdict?
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If you want my takeaway from the research I've done, I think the language of flowers served two purposes.
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One was a fun, but ultimately unserious, parlor game between women who had little better to do.
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And the other was a kind of etiquette.
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The Victorians seldom used floriography for correspondence, true, but they did seem to have a respect for the symbolism surrounding flowers.
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and therefore it was important to understand which flowers were right for which occasion.
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and to avoid flowers and plants that may send the wrong message.
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Regardless of the true use of floriography by Victorians, the symbolism they ascribe to flowers is still quite fun and interesting.
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The meanings came from a variety of places, often religious or mythological, but they also came from the characteristics of the flower.
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The colors of a flower held meaning, for instance.
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red for love, white for purity, blue for virtue, and so on, with the most interesting being yellow.
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In a modern context, yellow flowers usually signify friendship and happiness, but in Victorian England it was a decidedly bad color,
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usually signifying jealousy or falsehood.
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Roses, lilies, and violets were the most common flowers and all had universal meaning.
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Red roses of course symbolized romantic love and passion, The rose had a long history of meaning in Europe,
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going back to classical Greece and Rome where it was a flower associated with Venus, the goddess of love and beauty.
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In medieval Europe, once flowers lost their pagan identity, roses became associated with Jesus, especially the five wounds of Christ.
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For this, roses represented the sacrificial love of God.
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Lilies represented purity and innocence.
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White lilies, also called Madonna lilies, were connected to the Virgin Mary.
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Because of the religious connotation, they were and are common flowers for both weddings, where they represent true love, and funerals, where they represent the soul.
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Violets held the meaning of humility.
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This meaning is a bit more mysterious, but it seems violets were also associated with the Virgin Mary, and instead of representing her purity, they represented her humility.
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So those were some very common flowers, but let's look at some more unique ones.
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If you wanted to reject someone's advances, you could send an Ibaris, which represented indifference.
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Funnily enough, in floral emblems, a second meaning is given.
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Architecture.
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How architecture could be used in a love letter, I'll never know.
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Some meanings were very on -the -nose.
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Forget -me -nots held the same meaning as their name and catchflies meant ensnare, or trap.
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There were mythological meanings.
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The Narcissus flower meant narcissism, naturally, taken from the Greek myth of Narcissus, a man who loved himself so much that he was punished,
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or blessed, depending on how you look at it, by being turned into a flower.
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Let's do one more.
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Ah, here we go, I think I found the official YouTuber flower, the Hostonia, which meant: Content.
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Okay, it really means content, as in contentedness.
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But hey, we can just pretend.
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The language of flowers declined in popularity in the late 19th century.
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The reasons for this are varied, but it seems the language of flowers had fallen prey to a sort of oversaturation.
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Publishers pushed out more and more books, many of which were a far cry from the beautiful works of the early part of the century.
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Writers and humorists started to make fun of this latest obsession as well, especially in France.
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Perhaps most famous parody was Le Fleur Animé by Taxil Delors.
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It is a rather long collection of stories surrounding a group of flowers turned into humans.
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One of the stories sees a romance go awry when the wrong flowers are sent as an invitation.
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While the book's satire would probably go over our heads nowadays,
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at the time it was understood that Delore was making fun of the overt sentimentality surrounding flowers in the Victorian era.
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In recent years though interest in the language of flowers has really taken off.
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At the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge's bouquet included flowers with very specific meanings.
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Lilies of the valley represented trustworthiness.
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Sweet Williams meant gallantry and obviously shared a name with her groom, and Hyacinth symbolized both sports,
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as William and Kate are avid tennis players, and loveliness.
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So regardless of the truth surrounding the Victorian language of flowers, next time you gift a bloom to someone you love or just want some flowers for a decoration,
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why not take a note from the long lost Victorians and pick up a dictionary on the language of flowers.
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you Thanks for watching.
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I'd like to thank my Patrons for helping make the video possible.
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If you're willing and able, pop over to my Patreon to support me and the channel.
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Link is in the description.
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Don't forget to like, comment, subscribe, hit the bell icon, all that jazz, and we'll see you next time.
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Bye.
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you you
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Informazioni su questa lezione
In questa lezione, si esplorerà il linguaggio dei fiori durante l'epoca vittoriana. Gli studenti praticheranno la comprensione e la pronuncia di vocaboli specifici legati a questo tema affascinante. Attraverso l'analisi dei significati simbolici dei fiori, impareranno a utilizzare espressioni idiomatiche e frasi chiave, arricchendo così il loro vocabolario per la pratica di conversazione in inglese. Questa lezione offre un'opportunità unica per approfondire la storia e la cultura attraverso la lingua.
Vocabolario e frasi chiave
- Flower - fiore
- Meaning - significato
- Innocence - innocenza
- Rejection - rifiuto
- Court - corte
- Message - messaggio
- Symbolism - simbolismo
- Secret communication - comunicazione segreta
Consigli per la pratica
Per massimizzare il tuo shadowing in inglese con questo video, prova a seguire questi suggerimenti. Prima di iniziare, ascolta attentamente il tono e la velocità della narrazione. Potresti notare che la parlata è chiara e melodica, il che rende più facile imitare l'intonazione corretta. Durante l'ascolto, fermati frequentemente per ripetere le frasi che ti colpiscono di più, in particolare quelle che includono vocaboli chiave come "innocenza" e "messaggio".
Utilizza la tecnica della shadow speech ascoltando un breve frammento e poi ripetendolo a voce alta. Prova a catturare non solo le parole, ma anche l’emozione e l’espressione del narratore, questo ti aiuterà a migliorare la pronuncia inglese e la fluidità. Dedica del tempo a praticare regolarmente; ascoltare e ripetere passaggi diversi del video ti permetterà di sentirti più sicuro nel fare conversazione.
Infine, non dimenticare di esplorare il contesto culturale dei fiori; comprendere il loro significato storico ti darà un ulteriore spunto per conversare in modo più approfondito e interessante.
La grammatica di questo video
Le strutture che chi parla usa di più, con le parole esatte del video:
| Struttura | Nel video |
|---|---|
| Forma passiva be + participio passato — conta ciò che accade, non chi lo fa | is sponsored · being exposed · was revealed |
| Present perfect have/has + participio passato — un’azione passata che conta ancora adesso | Have you ever wondered · has always been · we've already discussed |
| Frasi relative who / which + frase — un’informazione in più su una persona o una cosa | Forms, which was · women who had · man who loved |
Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?
Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.