Name: English Vocabulary Lesson: THANKSGIVING! All the English Vocabulary you need to celebrate!
Uploaded: 2020-11-24T19:10:28.000Z
Duration: 14 min 22 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Thanksgiving. It's just around the corner and  today we're going to go over a brief history of  

thanksgiving in the United States, and we're going  to study some vocabulary related to this holiday,  

and also learn about some of the traditional  thanksgiving foods. And you'll even see some  

clips from a past family thanksgiving. And  don't forget, if you like this video or you  

learn something new please give it a thumbs up  and subscribe with notifications it really helps.

Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday of November  every year, so the date changes from year to year.  

Typically, schools and some businesses close  on Thursday and Friday for a four-day weekend,  

which is just glorious. Thanksgiving is  basically a meal. History tells us that in 1621  

the Plymouth colonists and a group of native  Americans, the Wampanoag, shared an autumn harvest  

feast that is believed to be one of the first  thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies.  

Days of thanksgiving were celebrated throughout  the colonies and later, the states. In 1863,  

president Abraham Lincoln  made it a national holiday.

Okay, let's go over a few  words and pronunciations there.  

Lincoln. Notice the second L in his  name is silent. The first N is not the N  

sound, nn-- but it's the ng sound ngg-- made with  the back of the tongue. Ling-- can-- Lincoln.

Then you release that into the k for  a quick k schwa N ending. Lincoln.  

President Lincoln. President Lincoln officially  made thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863.

We had a few other words there you might not know.  Colonists and colonies. A colony is someone who  

settles in or colonizes a country where they  weren't born. So people came over from England,  

they weren't planning on going back. To colonize  America, to set up a new life and community there.  

I also used the phrase autumn harvest  feast. Autumn is just another word for fall,  

it's one of the four seasons. The T is  a Flap T and the N is silent. Autumn.

Harvest is when you gather a crop that you've  been growing, the food is ready to be picked,  

and you harvest it. So that's a verb, harvest, the  act of gathering or picking your crop. And then  

it's also a noun, the food that was harvested.  The harvest this year is bigger than last year.

Finally, the word feast. This is a big  meal. This can also be a verb or a noun.  

Feast is the act of eating a big meal,  and as a noun, it's the meal itself.  

And thanksgiving is a feast. People  stuffing themselves and eating too much.

One of the images you'll often see associated  with thanksgiving is a pilgrim, or a pilgrim hat.  

A pilgrim refers to one of the group of people  who originally colonized America. But the word  

also has a broader meaning, someone who journeys,  often to a sacred place for religious reasons.  

This kind of a journey is called a pilgrimage.  But in this context, pilgrims refers to the  

early colonizers who came from England, settled  in, can you guess the area? New England. And the  

men wore hats like this with a buckle on it and  it's become a symbol of thanksgiving in America.

And of course, turkey, which is the main  dish at a typical thanksgiving meal.  

Another symbol of thanksgiving is a  horn-shaped basket called a cornucopia.  

Overflowing with autumnal foods. Oh, did you  notice I used the word autumnal, as an adjective.  

Autumn, the noun, means fall. And autumnal  means relating to or suggesting autumn.  

Notice the stress is on the second  syllable and the T is now a true t.  

Autumn, it was a Flap T. Now, autumnal, with  a true t. Also, we now say the n. In autumn,  

the N is silent. But in autumnal, we say both the  M and the n. Isn't it funny? Autumn. Autumnal.

Now let's get down to foods. Turkey is the  main dish. There are all sorts of ways it  

can be prepared. Deep fried, grilled  whole, smoked, or roasted in the oven.  

That's probably the most common. Several years  ago I livestreamed some of my thanksgiving dinner,  

and the quality isn't great, but  I do have some footage of the food  

and the general chaotic feel of gathering  so many family members at one table.

The turkey platter looks so nice with those  greens. The home-grown sage, it looks amazing.

The turkey platter looks so nice with those  greens. A platter is a big dish for serving,  

and we've got another Flap T there.  Platter. Platter. Now at this point,  

the turkey has been carved. That's the  verb we use for cutting up the turkey,  

taking it from a whole turkey into smaller  pieces that you can eat. It's been carved. 

The next dish you're going to have at almost any  thanksgiving meal is going to be mashed potatoes.

We have mashed potatoes. Were these  made from scratch, from real potatoes? 

I love mashed potatoes. I just did a video  on ED endings and this is one of the cases  

where we would usually drop the ED ending in  pronunciation. Here, it's a T and we usually  

don't say T between two other consonants. So it's  not mashed potatoes. Mashed potatoes. But we say:  

mashed potatoes, dropping the T sound altogether.  If you want to know why and you want to know more  

about the ED endings, click here or see the link  in the video description. Mashed potatoes. I asked  

if they were from scratch. This means made from  the beginning, the most basic ingredients, in  

this case, whole potatoes. That's different than  making mashed potatoes from a box of dried mashed  

potato flakes. Sweet potatoes or a casserole made  from sweet potatoes is another very common dish.

And it's good. And it's good. Oh, it's good!

Casserole is one of these words that can  be pronounced as two syllables. Cass--  

roll-- or three syllables: cass--  er-- ol-- casserole or casserole.

Casserole can refer to the  dish the food is prepared in.  

Something like this, deeper sides, often with  a cover. Or it can refer to the food inside,  

a food which is mixed together and  baked like a chicken casserole that has  

vegetables and a creamy dressing. We had a lot  of tater tot casserole in my house growing up.

Now there are lots of other  foods that most people will have  

at their tables. Let's take a look at  everything we had this particular year.

David, what are you working on over here? Dried corn. What does dried corn mean? 

It's dehydrated and you  reconstitute it with cream. 

Okay, interesting. Okay. And  then we have the gravy here.

The dehydrated corn dish is something totally  new to me. It's a tradition in my husband's  

family and I had never had it before. Never even  heard of it before. This is something I love about  

thanksgiving. Each family has its own traditions  about what dishes to include and how exactly  

to prepare them. The last thing we saw in that  green pot was gravy. This is a sauce made from  

juices, from cooking the turkey, but also  gravy has an idiomatic meaning. It means money,  

easily gotten, or something extra, an  extra benefit. For example, I could say,  

for my business, I make most of  my money from running my academy,  

and putting in that work. The money I get from  YouTube ads, that's gravy. It feels extra. I don't  

count on it in my budget because it can go up or  down so much. So anything I get from it is gravy.

You can tell this was shot a long time ago  because I don't have very much gray hair. I was  

about eight months pregnant with my first son, and  you can tell I'm pretty tired. Anyway, the table,  

the thanksgiving table. My sister-in-law always  hosts thanksgiving. This means it's at her house,  

and she does a lot of the planning and  coordinating for it. And she really makes  

such a beautiful table each year with an  interesting centerpiece. That's what's on  

the middle of the table for decoration. And it's  pretty common to drop the T in that word center,  

and just say center, centerpiece. Here, listen  to how my sister-in-law invites us to the table.

She said 'let's take our seats'. Take a seat  is a more polite way to say sit down. Please,  

take a seat. Before the meal, it's common for  everyone to say what they're thankful for,  

or to say a prayer, depending on the religious  beliefs of the group, or for someone to say a  

blessing or to sing a song or have a toast. We  we're gathered here to be thankful together,  

and I've asked Becca to say a blessing,  but first, I would like to cheers Audrey.