Reader question:

Please explain this sentence: Overseas markets are all in a funk at the moment.

My comments:

This means the global economy is still in a depression. As a consequence, the prospects for exports are grim as overseas markets will not be able to buy much from you.

Truth be told, the world economy has not fully recovered from the recession triggered by the housing crisis in America a few years ago.

Anyways, “in a funk” is the phrase in question here and let’s see how “funk” has anything to do with “depression”.

Funk is a style of music popularized by Afro-American musicians in the United States in the 1960s. Featuring rhythmic and strong beats, funk was developed from, or at least influenced by, among other genres, R&B music, which stands for rhythm and blues. The blues of course grew out of other earlier genres of jazz music.

Jazz music in general was a black American specialty. Louis Armstrong, in singing, used to ask “what did I do to be so black and blue?”

He was singing, in fact, “Black and Blue”, a jazz standard composed by Fats Waller in 1929, but the question is an apt one. Being black in America, you see, has its particular history of pain and hardship. I don’t think we need to go back into the slave trade but suffice it to say that African Americans have had more than their fair share of misery in life. Being black, therefore, may have made them feel particularly keenly to hear the phrase “black and blue”, as a person is physically beaten black and blue.

I don’t know if the blues as a genre originally gained its name from this but being blue as a phrase has long been synonymous with being sad and melancholy.

The long and short of it is, when funk first branched out of soul music it was also known as blue funk.

Hence the link – very farfetched to you perhaps ^_^ – and therefore, if someone is described as in a funk, he’s not doing very well. He’s not feeling good. He feels down. He’s low. He’s under the weather. He’s nervous, worried, troubled, frightened, so on and so forth.

In other words, he’s feeling the blue.

Still in other words, he’s under depression.

There it is, the link between funk and depression (in the world economy).

Here are media examples:

1. in a blue funk:

Tony Blair’s decision not to take part in televised election debates with the other main party leaders has been staunchly defended by senior Labour figures.

The prime minister was accused of political cowardice following Wednesday’s announcement that he would not take part in the proposed TV debates.

But Leader of the Commons, Margaret Beckett said Mr Blair had nothing to fear from Conservative leader William Hague.

She told the BBC: “We want the next election to be about the issues that are really important to the British people - issues like jobs, education and the health service and so on.”

Mrs Beckett said the problem with the proposed TV debates was that they were “geared to an American-style election” and would focus attention on the individuals rather than the political parties.

Tory chairman Michael Ancram dismissed Mr Blair’s decision not participate in the joint BBC and ITV plan for two debates involving the three main party leaders because he was in a “blue funk”.

He said: “Two weeks ago Tony Blair was telling us he was in favour of these debates in principle.

“I think he was at that time, because we had put forward alternative proposals we might turn down the BBC and ITV's offer.”

He said the prime minister had been “caught in a corner”.

“We have said yes, (Liberal Democrat leader Charles) Kennedy has said yes, BBC and ITV said yes and he eventually had to admit he was frightened and say no.”

Earlier, Mr Hague said Mr Blair’s stance showed the prime minister was “a real chicken” who did not dare face the debate “because he knows that without his spin doctors he’d lose”.

- Blair’s ‘blue funk’ over TV debate, BBC.co.uk, January 18, 2001.

2. The unemployment report for August released Friday shows that the job market remains in a deep funk – but also contains some better economic news than expected, suggesting that a double-dip recession may not be inevitable.

The unemployment rate climbed slightly to 9.6 percent and 54,000 total jobs were lost last month for the second consecutive month, much due to the loss of government jobs. But there was some good news amid that dreary data. Private payrolls increased by 67,000 jobs – that’s about 20,000 to 30,000 better than expected, depending on whose forecasts you read - and revisions to the June and July reports were also better than expected.

“I think it’s encouraging,” economist Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics told CNBC reporters shortly after the Labor Department issued the report.

Jobs in the private sector grew by 107,000 in July, rather than the initial estimate of 71,000, according to the revised figures.

But still, there was more bad news than good for the millions of unemployed Americans.

- August Job Numbers Show Economy Still in a Funk, PBS.org, September 3, 2010.

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About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

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（作者张欣 中国日报网英语点津 编辑陈丹妮）