Could these musicians be cheesy?

Feifei:   大家好！欢迎收听有BBC英语教学带来的《你问我答》节目。在这个节目中我们会解答听众们提出的在英语语言学习中遇到的种种难题。我是冯菲菲，坐在我身边的是
William Kremer. Hello William.
 
William:   Hello.
 
Feifei:   来自中国的Shirley想知道  cheesy 和 quality 的意思。
 
 
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Hello, this is Shirley. I’m living in Guangzhou at the moment. And I’m an English teacher teaching in a language institute. When I was in England, I heard of some phrases people talk about, like ‘the cheesy music’ or the sentence, ‘They are quality’. My friends and lassmates, when they are watching football, they always say, ‘Wow, that’s quality’ . So I want to know the meaning of cheesy and quality. Thanks a lot. 
 
Feifei:   Shirley 听到很多英国人会用 cheesy 和 quality 这两个词，她也把她在英国的时候听到的例子列举了一些，比方说  cheesy music, 还有她朋友在看足球的时候会说 ‘Wow, that’s quality’. What do these words mean, William? 
 
William:   Well I’m not surprised to hear that Shirley spent some time in England, because both of those words - cheesy and quality - are very colloquial.
 
Feifei:   口语的。
 
William:   And especially the word quality when it’s used like this. So we could use quality to say for example, ‘This is quality meat’ – and here quality means high quality. And that’s quite formal, but recently this word quality has started to be used by young people as slang.
 
Feifei:   这个词近来被很多年轻人当作一个俚语slang来使用。How do they use it William?
 
William:   Well I don’t know Feifei because I’m too old! But no, I think it’s used exactly like Shirley said. So people say ‘That’s quality, that is’ or maybe ‘He’s quality, he’s a quality footballer’. And it just means really good, or
maybe really cool.

Feifei:   That’s quality是一个俚语口语的说法，意思就是说什么东西特别好或特别酷。那你觉得我们是不是应该多多的来使用这个词呢 William？
 
William:   Well it depends on the situation. As I said, it’s a very informal, colloquial word. And also it’s not used that much in this way, so I wouldn’t use it like this in a job interview for example. I think Shirley’s example of being with friends and maybe watching a football match is quite a good one, so you might see somebody score a really really good goal and you’d say to your friends, ‘Wow, that was quality!’ I think that kind of use is really good. 
 
Feifei:  那么Shirley 还问了cheesy 这个词…
 
William:  Well cheesy is another informal word, although it isn’t slang. And this word is used quite a lot at the moment. 
 
Feifei:   这个词现在被使用的频率很高，它是一个非正式用语。
 
William:  Now before we came in today, Feifei, you said that you thought that this word cheesy would be very difficult to explain. Why is that?
 
Feifei:   因为我觉得这个词在汉语里没有一个相对应的词汇。
 
William:  Well to help us, we asked some Londoners to think of examples of something cheesy.
 
Feifei:   我们随机采访了一些伦敦人，听听他们觉得什么东西是cheesy. 有趣儿的是很多人觉得cheesy 的东西都一样。我们听听下面三个人都觉得比较  cheesy 的事情是什么。 
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Eurovision, yeah. The music competition that’s held within all the European countries where they all compete and Britain especially is well-known for its really cheesy music. 
 
The Eurovision? It’s a song contest with bad songs performed by bad singers in horrible outfits. 
 
Cheesy… Eurovision song contest. That’s cheesy. It's the song contest where all European countries send an artist and they sing songs and then the audience votes. It’s
very kitsch. It’s lovely. 
 
Feifei:   对了，上面三位都提到了一个歌唱比赛 – the Eurovision Song Contest 也就是欧洲歌唱大赛。
 
William:    Let’s listen to those clips again and this time, see if you can tell if the people speaking enjoy the Eurovision song contest.
 
Feifei:   我们再来听听着三段话，你能不能从他们说话的语气中判断出他们是否喜欢欧洲歌唱大赛呢？ 
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Eurovision, yeah. The music competition that’s held within all the European countries where they all compete and Britain especially is well-known for its really cheesy music.The Eurovision? It’s a song contest with bad songs performed by bad singers in horrible outfits. 
 
Cheesy… Eurovision song contest. That’s cheesy. It's the song contest where all
European countries send an artist and they sing songs and then the audience votes. It’s very kitsch. It’s lovely. 
 
William:    So Feifei, do you think those people enjoy Eurovision?
 
Feifei:  Well, the second speaker said it was ‘bad songs performed by bad singers’ and the last person said it was ‘lovely’.
 
William:   Yes. And this is one way to understand the meaning of ‘cheesy’. It’s something which we think is maybe poor quality, or maybe unfashionable,
but we can enjoy it anyway. 
 
Feifei:   原来  cheesy 可以用来表示一个质量不好的或是过时的但是大家又都特别喜欢的东西。
 
William:    And that last speaker used the word ‘kitsch’. He said ‘It’s very kitsch. It’s lovely’. And this word kitsch has a very similar meaning to cheesy although it is a bit more formal. Now there was another thing that the people we spoke to associated with this word cheesy. 
 
Feifei:   这里还有另外一种东西人们经常会用  cheesy 这个词来形容。试着听下面几段话，看看它们又没有共同的地方？
 
 
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For me, cheesy is kind of something that you would hear in a bad love story, maybe. That’s cheesy for me – something that is cliché as well, maybe. 
 
Something that makes you cringe… like something really really romantic or like, Valentine’s Day is cheesy. Yeah, definitely is cheesy. 
 
Rom coms – romantic comedy films. Those are pretty cheesy. Red roses on Valentine’s Day. 
 
Feifei:   他们都谈及到爱情故事。
 
William:    Yes, the first speaker talked about a bad love story, the second speaker mentioned Valentine’s Day and the last speaker talked about romantic comedy films or “rom coms”. And the point here is that cheesy stuff can be very sentimental.
 
Feifei:   Cheesy 有时候可以表达非常感伤的意思sentimental. 

 
William:   So maybe there are for example some old songs that you remember from your childhood, and although you don’t normally listen to that kind of music now, you love to sometimes hear one of those old-fashioned cheesy songs.
 
Feifei:   我们偶尔会突然想听一首儿时或曾经喜欢听得歌曲，因为这种歌儿总是有几分怀旧几分伤感，所以我们不经常听，那么这些歌曲就比较 cheesy.
 
William:   So I know that this is hard to understand but I do hope this explanation of the word cheesy has been helpful. But before we go there are a couple more ways that this word can be used. 
 
Feifei:   Cheesy 这个词还有一些其它的用法…
 
William:   So Feifei, what word do we say in Britain and America when someone is
taking our picture?
 
Feifei:   William是想问我在英国照相的时候我们说什么，这个我可知道，是 cheese ,对不对？
 
William:   Right, so a cheesy smile is a smile for the camera. It’s not a real smile because you’re happy – it’s a bit fake.
 
Feifei:   A cheesy smile 是对着镜头的一个笑容，不是一个打心眼儿里高兴的笑容，是一个摆出来的笑脸。
 
William:   And for a final meaning of this word cheesy, listen to this woman: 
 
 
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Cheese on toast? That’s very cheesy! 
 
Feifei:   Cheese on toast 奶酪土司非常地cheesy. What a surprise! 别忘了如果你又任何英语学习方面的难题，都可以写信给我们，我们会及时为你做出解答。我们的email 是questions.chinaelt@bbc.co.uk.  
 
William:   So many thanks to Shirley for this week’s very interesting question about those words cheesy and quality! And I do hope that we were able to help!
 
Feifei:   Yes, bye.
 
William:   Bye.
 
 
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OK, thank you so much. Thank you so much for calling and answering my question.  
 

This week Shirley asks about the words quality and cheesy. Both of these words are very colloquial and in the programme William says that he is not surprised to hear that Shirley spent some time in the UK.

In the sentence, 'This is quality meat' the word quality means high quality. This sounds quite formal, unlike the example that Shirley gives in the programme, of young people watching football and saying "Wow, that’s quality".

This usage is slang and it means cool or really good. It's very informal, so you shouldn't use quality in this way in some situations.

The word cheesy is harder to explain, because it is a concept not found so easily in Chinese culture. In the programme we hear from some Londoners about what they regard as cheesy.

We can use the word to describe something that is poor quality or unfashionable but which is still very enjoyable. For example, party music can be cheesy – it's not high class or sophisticated, just good fun. Cheesy things are often quite sentimental too.

There are also a couple of other meanings to cheesy, but you will have to listen to the programme to find out what they are.

Thanks to Shirley for her question. If you have a question about the English language, send us an email at questions.chinaelt@bbc.co.uk. Your name and answer to the question could appear on our website.

Glossary 词汇

colloquial
口语的

slang
俚语

concept
概念

regard
被看做

sophisticated
高雅的

sentimental
感伤的