Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast, number 91, Thanksgiving.
This is English as a Second Language podcast, episode 91.
I'm Dr Jeff McQuillan, your host from the Center for Educational Development in Los Angeles, in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Today's podcast is about Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, a holiday celebration in the United States.
Let's get started.
Thanksgiving reminds us to be grateful.
But for a lot of people, the holiday also means a weekend of eating a lot and watching football.
And my family is no exception.
My family likes to have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner each year.
We invite people from our extended family.
We also invite close friends, especially those who don't have family in town.
When it comes to Thanksgiving dinner, our motto is, the more the merrier.
Our dinner, of course, starts with a big turkey baked in the oven.
I always carve it before it's served.
Then we have the fixings.
We always have some mashed potatoes, stuffing, yams, cranberries, and corn on the cob.
Some years we go wild and have other vegetables and sides.
And for dessert, we have pumpkin pie.
My wife is not a big fan of pumpkin pie, so for her, we also have ice cream.
After we have a really big meal, we usually watch football on TV.
Things usually get pretty rowdy, since there are always fans on both sides rooting for their own team to win.
Last year, my uncle almost got into a fistfight with my nephew.
Luckily, no one and no furniture was harmed.
That was a relief.
We're talking about Thanksgiving in this podcast.
Thanksgiving Day is a celebration in the United States.
It's an official holiday, which means all the government offices are closed.
The post office and schools are closed.
Most people have the day off.
They don't have to work.
It is a celebration that, according to the traditional story, celebrates the pilgrims.
The pilgrims P-I-L-G-R-I-M-S were some of the first settlers or colonists to come from Europe to the United States back in 1620.
1620s, I should say, and the Thanksgiving Day celebrates one of the first harvest festivals.
A harvest festival is a celebration that you have in the fall, when the end of the of the growing season.
So you gather in all your food and you have a festival.
And many cultures have a harvest festival.
And in the United States, it's Thanksgiving Day.
It's always the fourth Thursday of November.
In other countries, there are also Thanksgiving Day.
In Canada, there's a Thanksgiving Day on the second Monday in October.
But here in the United States, it's in November.
Thanksgiving means, of course, to give thanks, to be grateful.
And to be grateful.
G-R-A-T-F-U-L means that you are thankful, or that you are appreciative of all the good things that you have.
In my family and most families, it's a day to get together with your family in the afternoon or evening and to have a big meal.
And I said that my family is no exception, meaning we are not an exception.
We're not unlike other people.
We are like other people.
We also have a big meal and a celebration.
In my family, We have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner and I'll tell you what that is in a second.
We invite people from our extended family, and your extended family is your aunts, your uncles, your nephews, your nieces.
Your immediate family is just you, your brothers and sisters, the children, and so forth.
Extended family includes Grandma and grandpa and aunts and uncles and cousins and so forth.
We always invite people who don't have family in town.
And to say I have family in town means I have members of my family who live here.
We often use the expression, I have family back in Minnesota.
Some of my family members are in Minnesota.
Well, I say that.
You wouldn't say that, probably.
The Thanksgiving dinner, I said we have a motto.
A motto, M-O-T-T-O, a motto is a slogan.
It's a saying, usually an official expression.
For example in the United States, if you look on our coins, our money, you'll see the motto In God We Trust.
That's one of our official, if not our official motto.
Our motto for Thanksgiving dinner in my family is the more, the merrier.
The expression the more, the merrier means the more people that come, the better it is.
So we want as many people to come as possible.
The more, the merrier.
To be merry, M-E-R-R-Y, means to be happy.
So the more people, the happier we are.
I said, our dinner is a traditional Thanksgiving dinner and that usually means, in the United States, a turkey, a big 10 15, maybe 20-pound turkey, which of course, is a bird.
And you put the big turkey in an oven and you bake it.
That is, you cook it in an oven.
To bake is to cook in an oven.
And after it's ready, you take it out and you carve it.
To carve a turkey means to cut the meat off of the turkey.
We use the verb to carve.
Normally, to carve means that you take a knife to wood, for example, and you put letters into the wood.
That would be carving into the wood or carving the wood.
This is a verb we use for cutting turkeys.
I also said that at traditional dinner we have fixings.
Fixings is all of the other things besides the turkey, besides the main course, all the what we would call the sides, that is, the side dishes, the dishes in addition to the main dish, which is the turkey.
Some sides that are common for Thanksgiving are mashed potatoes.
Mashed potatoes.
Potato, of course, is a round white usually inside.
And you peel the potato.
You take the skin off.
To peel, P-E-E-L, is to take the skin off of the potato.
And you usually bake it or you boil it in water and then you mash it up with a fork, put a little milk and butter.
Mmm, I'm getting hungry just talking about it.
Stuffing.
Stuffing is...
Bread crumbs, usually with some other spices, onions.
Everyone has a different recipe for stuffing.
It's what you put inside the turkey, and it bakes inside the turkey.
It's like a bread side dish.
You can also make stuffing, or what we would probably call dressing.
That's the same thing, but you cook it outside the turkey.
Yams are also common.
Yams, Y-A-M-S.
I don't like yams myself, but many people do.
Another name for a yam is a sweet potato.
Think of it as a type of potato.
Cranberries are traditional for Thanksgiving.
Cranberries are small red berries.
Corn on the cob.
Some families have corn on the cob.
The cob of corn is what the corn grows on.
It's the middle that you don't eat, but you take the corn off of the cob.
Or you can cook it on the cob and then eat it.
Put butter and salt or something and then you can eat the corn right from the cob.
Sometimes I said we go wild and have other vegetables and dishes.
To go wild...
It could mean a lot of things, but normally it means you're going beyond what you normally do.
It could also mean getting very excited.
Don't go wild means don't get too excited.
But here it means it's used somewhat comically, somewhat as a joke, to mean that we do more than what we normally would do.
For dessert or the last part of your meal, the sweet part of your meal.
The traditional pie is a pumpkin pie.
A pumpkin pie.
Pumpkins, of course, become ripe or ready to eat in the fall.
A big round orange pumpkin and people make pumpkin pie.
My wife is not a big fan of pumpkin pie.
To say you're a big fan of means you really like it.
Well, my wife is not a big fan, and so for her we have ice cream.
Normally on Thanksgiving there are football games, and here we mean American football, and it's traditional for some families to sit around and watch football games on Thanksgiving Day.
I said that my family can get a little rowdy.
Rowdy, R-O-W-D-Y, means noisy and loud and making a lot of noise.
Because there are people who are rooting for their own team to win while they're watching it on TV.
To root, R-O-O-T, to root for someone or some team means that you are hoping that they will win.
So I graduated, for example, from the University of Southern California, and I'm rooting for them to win the national football championship.
My uncle, I said, almost got into a fist fight with my nephew.
A fist fight.
Well, first of all, a fight, you know, of course, is when two people have an argument and they start hitting each other.
Your fist is your hand, but your hand... when you put it in a position like a ball to hit someone.
That's your fist.
So a fist fight is when two people are hitting each other with their fists.
F-I-S-T.
Finally, I said no one was hurt.
That was a relief.
When we say that was a relief, we mean that something bad could have happened, but it didn't.
For example, my sister...
Almost missed.
Her flight from San Jose means she almost didn't make it to the plane, but she made it and that's a relief.
Something bad could have happened, but it didn't.
Now let's listen to the story, this time at a native rate of speech.
Thanksgiving reminds us to be grateful, but for a lot of people, the holiday also means a weekend of eating a lot and watching football.
And my family is no exception.
My family likes to have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner every year.
We invite people from our extended family.
We also invite close friends, especially those that don't have family in town.
When it comes to Thanksgiving dinner, our motto is, the more the merrier.
Our dinner, of course, starts with a big turkey, baked in the oven.
I always carve it before it's served.
Then we have the fixings.
We always have mashed potatoes, stuffing, yams, cranberry, and corn on the cob.
Some years we go wild and have other vegetables and sides.
And for dessert, we have pumpkin pie.
My wife is not a big fan of pumpkin pie, so for her, we also have ice cream.
After we've had a really big meal, we usually watch football on TV.
Things usually get pretty rowdy, since there are always fans on both sides rooting for their own team to win.
Last year, my uncle almost got into a fist fight with my nephew.
Luckily, no one and no furniture was harmed.
That was a relief.
From Los Angeles, I'm Jeff McQuillan, and we'll see you next time on ESL Podcasts.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
This podcast is copyright 2006.
