BBC: The face of the real Santa Claus

In thie programme, revealing the face of the real Santa Claus.

And in this programme, we normally look at a big, important, serious news study, but it's Christmas. So we're going to have a little bit of fun, but also teach you some vocabulary. 

Yeah, and you can find all the vocabulary and headlines from this episode as well as a worksheet on our website bbclearningenglish.com. 

OK, let's hear more about our story. 

Reseachers have used forensic methods, that's scientific methods, to produce imgages of the man who Santa Claus is based on.

Yes, so Saint Nicholas of Myra lived over 1700 years ago. Now, according to accounts of his life, he was a very kind and generous person and this inspired the idea of Santa Claus, the man who delivers gifts to children all around the world at Christmas time. 

And scientists have created 3D images of St Nicholas's face using data from his skull. And you can see one of the images on our website bbclearningenglish.com. 

So let's have our first headline. This is from MSN and it is. Face of ral Santa Claus reconstruted with 3D tech after 1,700 years. 

And that headline again from MSN.

Face of real Santa Claus reconstructed with 3D tech after 1,700 years. Feifei So this headline tells us that the face of what they call the real Santa was reconsturcted using 3D technology. The word we're looking at is reconstruct. 

Neil, yes, so Let's break that word reconstruct down. The main part of it is construct. 

What's consturct, Pippa?

Well, it's another word for build. We construct buildings. But this word starts with re. It's reconstruct. 

Yes. And the prefix re means again.  So reconstruct means build buildings. Again, and it's often used to talk about buildings. For example, recently Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was reconstructed after a fire a few years ago. 

But we also use the word reconstruct to talk about faces. 

Yes, in the story we're talking about an image, but we also use reconstruct when talking about surgery to repair  a damaged face or another body part. 

Yes, and in this case it's often used as an adjective, so we'll hear reconstructive surgery. Somebody might have reconstructive surgery after an accident. 

And we can also use reconstruct as a noun, so a reconstruction, to talk about something that is a new version of something that used to exist, or to talk about an event. For example, police sometimes make a reconstruction of a crime to help people remember what happened. 

We had reconstruct build something again. 

For example, they reconstructed the destroyed building after the news. 

This is Learning English from the News, our podcast about the news headlines. And today we're having a  bit of fun, we're talking about the face of the so called real Santa Claus, which scientists have recreated, based on the skull of Santa Nicholas. 

As we've heard, the legend of Santa Claus is based on a man called Saint Nicholas of Myra, who wa an early Christian. 

Saint Nicholas lived in what is modern day Turkey. 

His reputation as a kind and generous man led to the Dutch folk figure  called Sinterklaas, and this name later became Santa Claus. 

There was another similar folk figure in England clled Father Christmas, but Santa Claus and Father Christmas eventually merged and they are now considered the same person. You can say Santa Claus or you can say Father Christmas and you're talking about the same guy. 

Let's have another headline. This one's from The Mirror, a newspaper in the UK. 

Real Santa Claus unmasked as Father Christmas face is shown for first time in 1700 years. 

That headline again, Real Santa Claus unmasked as Father Christmas's face is shown for first time in 1,700 years. And that headline is from The Mirror. 

So this headline again talks about the real Santa Claus. 

And it also refers to Father Christmas, another name for Santa, though they used to be different characters in the past before they merged. 

Merged means became the same thing. 

And the word we're looking at is unmasked. We can hear the word mask in there. So what's a mask, Neil?

Well, a mask is a face covering and you might wear one if, for example, you want to hide your identity, maybe you're at a party, um, or you can wear one as a disguise. But alos people wore them a lot during the Covid pandemic. 

And if you take a mask off, it means you reveal your true identity, you show your face. 

Yes, so the un in unmask means remove a mask, and it means to display something that was previously hidden. 

So are we saying that Santa was wearing a mask, Neil?

No, not literally. But we didn't know what he looked like, so it's as if he was wearing a mask. And so here unmasked is used in a metaphorical sense. 

We've had unmask reveal something previously hidden. 

For example, the superhero was unmasked when someone saw him putting his cape on.