Statue of Liberty

As you slowly sail into New York harbor you set your sights on a lovely large lady. Like a guardian at the gates, all are greeted by her beacon of hope and her face flaunting freedom. She’s so much more than a simple statue; she is a symbol of strength. We are going to get to know Lady Liberty like never before, from her torch to her toes on today’s FYI.

Transcript

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as you slowly sail into new york harbor you set your sights on a lovely large lady like a guardian at the gates all are greeted by her beacon of hope and her face flaunting freedom she's so much more than a simple statue she is a symbol of strength we are going to get to know lady liberty like never before from her torch to her toes on today's f y i welcome to for your info english you got it hello hello hello my amigos and welcome to this another exciting edition of fyi for your english the topic based podcast which is designed to teach you english among other things intre otras cosas and as always i'm always open to your suggestions so if you have any suggestions for future episodes future topics contact me drop me a line on social media or wherever you can if you're a patron you can contact me on patreon and i'd be more than happy to grab and listen to your feedback and remember if you can if you've got a minute or two go over to wherever you listen to this podcast and leave a rating remember it helps it become more visible many more people will discover this podcast and if you leave a comment i'd be more than happy to send you a little something special just for making the effort thank you so much again for making this podcast possible especially to my patrons who without them well there would be no podcast that's right a shout out to my super duper students sabella tony roberto jose maria mila alex patricio edgar and lolas and don't forget about my interstellar students carmen diego diana and pilar thank you thank you thank you and if you guys want to find out more about becoming a patron just go over to patreon.com alberto alonso and you can find out about all the different options you can get bonus audio also pdfs with all the useful vocabulary expressions and concepts therein and if you're on our higher levels our super duper students and our interstellar students well then you have access to weekly and monthly classes with yours truly so if you want more information go over to patreon.com alberto alonso if you want a free sample to see if it's right for you contact me i'd be more than happy to oblige so let's kick off with our intro and as always the intro is full of alliteration i make such an effort to make sure that i use words that start with the same letter i hope you guys appreciate that effort sometimes i find myself really racking my brains and to rack your brains means to think really hard about something so it starts as you slowly sail into new york harbor and to sail is navigate if you guys remember we did an episode on sailing if you haven't heard that episode you can go back and listen to it it was with my good friend brendan who's a wonderful teacher and a great sailor to boot so if you haven't listened to that episode give it a listen and new york harbor well a harbor is another way of saying a port um puerto harbor now remember the british spell it with a u the americans spell it without that you like color there's another example they spell it color and us color without that extra you then i said you set your sights on and to set your sights on means to look at it you set your sights on a lovely large lady loveliest divina and large senorme and lady and of course we're talking about lady liberty as i said the statue of liberty aka also known as lady liberty like a guardian at the gates and be careful with the pronunciation here noise guardian muchos alumnus guardians of the galaxy right but it's guardians guardian at the gates in las puertas so she is she's a guardian at the gates of new york and really at the gates of the united states remember when people were coming from europe what was their first stop that's right lady liberty then i said all are greeted by her beacon of hope and to greet is salud and a beacon this is a really good word now don't mix it up with bacon this is beacon a beacon is faro or fanal but it also means a model or an example of something and i'm not the only one who says that she's a beacon of hope she's been known as a beacon of hope esperanza then i said her face flaunting freedom and to flaunt is to show off presumier they of course she's flaunting freedom she's proud of the freedom that she represents and as we'll discover in this episode she's so much more than a simple statue and i want to look at that word because well that's one of those tu words let's say that word together statue notice it sounds like a ch statue sculpture future repeat after me guys future nature structure feature you see there's something they all have in common creature so it's a ch sound remember guys you can use these podcasts as a listening exercise but if you want to use them as a speaking exercise it's as simple as repeating after me then i said she is a symbol of strength and that's a tough word to pronounce too strength strength which is fortitude i think you say so strong is the adjective she's very strong she's a symbol of strength sustantivo and then we heard a fog horn este typo de and i ended it saying we're going to get to know lady liberty as she's called like never before como nunca from her torch to her toes and a torch is an torch and toes are obviously dedos del pie remember in spanish you have 20 fingers but in english you don't we say fingers are for the ones on your hand and toes for the one on your feet my daughter knows that from a very famous song head shoulders knees and toes but the expression is from head to toe but of course in this case i wanted to use that alliteration and there's something even higher than lady liberty's head than lady liberty's crown and that is her torch so let's learn about this lovely lady who represents my country now around 4 million people a year visit this site and aside from being an amazing site in and of itself it also offers spectacular views of new york city some of the the best views that you'll ever get of downtown new york city you'll get from liberty island and liberty island is the name of the island where the statue of liberty is located and we're going to talk about this island right now but first i just want to focus on the pronunciation of the word island let's say this sentence ireland is an island iceland is an island iceland so the fact that she's located ubikata on an island makes it something that you have to plan to go to you don't just go to new york city and say well look let's just do this it's something you have to plan ahead for and to plan ahead is planification to plan ahead because it's only accessible by ferry you can't go there on your private boats and just show up on the island it's a national park and it's regulated by the government and of course after september 11th well we're not playing games in fact that was one of the the very few things in history that were able to stop the statue of liberty in her tracks and after the the attacks los attentados on september 11th on the world trade center while the the statue of liberty was closed for three years which is that's a lifetime well according to figures that's 12 million people who didn't get to visit this amazing symbol of freedom this amazing symbol of new york and the united states so let's talk about liberty island the island that it's located on and liberty island was a military base at first it was called bedlow island i should tell you something about new york city there are hundreds of little islands all around new york city and this just happened to be one of them that was as i said formerly anterior mente used as a military base and in 1871 the decision was made to build it on this island liberty island which at that time was called bedlow island it was changed to liberty island in 1956 and there's a dispute here a border dispute people in jersey on one side of the hudson river will say that the statue of liberty and liberty island is in their state and people on the other side of the river in new york are saying that it's in their state so if you ask a new yorker where the statue of liberty is they'll say new york if you ask someone from new jersey they'll say new jersey and this is an ongoing dispute but the real answer is the statue of liberty belongs to all of us now you can still see some remnants of the old fort this military base there's a star the the island the base has a shape of a star and this was left over or this was remnants from that fort now let's talk about the dimensions a little bit how tall is lady liberty well she is 151 feet tall i know you're thinking that's gibberish to me gibberish i think you say galli matias 151 feet well in meters i did the math it's 46 meters tall and we're talking about the statue here not the pedestal and if we add up those numbers one plus five plus one well that's the number seven and we're going to see in the bonus part of today's show all about the symbolism how the number seven appears many times on lady liberty and so many other hidden symbols hidden means oculto or escondido so we'll take a look at that in the bonus part of the show i think you guys are gonna find it really interesting now if you include the pedestal then the statue is 93 meters tall that is huge i don't know if you can picture that in your head as we said before she is uh carrying a tablet in one hand and on that tablet is inscribed the date of the american declaration of independence which as many of you know is july 4th 1776. oh and there's another piece of symbolism the new world trade center building that was built is 1776 feet tall why because the country's declaration of independence was in 1776. we love our symbolism in the united states so in one hand she's got that tablet with the date in the other hand she's holding a torch and that torch is really high in the air i'm not really afraid of heights but i don't think i could go up there i mean even if i was allowed now i'm not allowed and well nobody's really allowed because well in 1916 there were some german saboteurs terrorists i guess because if you set off an explosion well that's not you know that can be considered terrorism right and this was during world war one and the torch bearing arm suffered damage to paris aguantar or soportar and it received a lot of damage vamos africarnos in the pronunciation and they repaired it as all the times that she's had problems with her skin or other things like that well they fixed it but after that that was a turning point they never reopened that torch again so if you didn't go up to that torch before 1916 then you you missed your your opportunity to do that and i'll tell you in the bonus part about my trip to the statue of liberty it was a class trip and i remember it very clearly i remember going up to the crown la corona and i remember looking up at the torch and just i got queasy my stomach got queasy and i think that's like mariado in spanish another thing that's very well known about the statue of liberty at least to many americans is a poem and this poem is a sonnet by a poet named emma lazarus and this kind of embodies the whole idea behind lady liberty and welcoming everybody into the united states with open arms i'll read it for you and then we'll go back and look at the vocabulary because i want to get that rhythm i think it's really important so here we go give me your tired your poor your huddled masses yearning to breathe free the wretched refuse of your teeming shore send these the homeless tempest tossed to me i lift my lamp beside the golden door i don't know if you hear it in my voice but i am definitely choked up i've got right now i'm telling you my hair is standing on end so the poem reads give me your tired tuscanos you're poor tus podes you're huddled masses and to be huddled is a montonado think about how they came over uh on these boats from europe you're huddled masses yearning to breathe free and to uranus ancient you're they're yearning to breathe free respirar libre the wretched refuse and wretched means descr the word teaming is repleto it's a homophone for the word team but it's written with two e's remember guys if you want access to all the vocabulary consider becoming a patron and you'll have access to all these 300 plus words that we look at every week then the poem reads send these estos the homeless tempest tossed and tossed i lift my lamp beside the golden door levantomi lampara now her torch frankly it's beautiful if you ask me but it wasn't all that easy despite being a modern marvel una maravilla moderna the statue of liberty had her share of financial hardships of technical hardships and she almost didn't get made so let's go over some of the basic facts here about the construction and engineering now we know it was a gift from the french de los franceses and it was to celebrate a hundred years of independence it was also to celebrate our friendship with france there were many key people involved the first one is eduard de la boule now you're going to have to excuse my french pronunciation i'm doing my best eduard and he provided the idea for the statue he goes hey i've got an idea why don't we give our american friends a statue that symbolizes freedom because they just abolished slavery and also to celebrate their independence from england a hundred years of independence from england but he was just the idea guy which is no small feat no es moco de pablo it's no small feat nosotros de timos i think really the key guy though would be federic auguste bartoldi federic auguste partholdi who was the designer he's the one who designed this mega statue and the project was announced in 1875 and she was supposedly modeled after libertas the roman goddess a roman goddess libertas was supposedly where they he got the inspiration and some people say that her face is his mother's face but in the bonus part we're gonna find out how it's actually been proven that it might be a man's face his brother's face we'll see about that in the second part and i'd like to hear your opinion on that plus the statue of liberty wasn't her original name her name was changed to the statue of liberty in 1924 i'll also tell you her original name in the bonus part of today's show but they were having a lot of trouble financing this project funding the par the project right another way to say financial is to fund como fondo and there were other cities that were even considered they considered boston sacramento because well new york wasn't coming up with the money and the agreement that they had was that france would finance and pay for the statue and the u.s would pay for the pedestal and provide the site and really it was brilliant since they designed the statue in parts well what they would do is when they finished a part of the statue they would take it around and tore it so the statue of liberty started traveling the world but not all of her just her arm or for example the first thing that was finished was the right arm and the torch and that was one of the ways they used to raise money it was on display at the world's fair and people could pay 50 cents to climb on it so that was one way that was in 1876 in 1878 they took the head and shoulders over to the paris expo and they raised money there so really they were raising money on both sides of the atlantic and i want to look at that expression head and shoulders we've looked at it before to be head and shoulders above the rest my students are head and shoulders above the rest the right arm and the torch were also on display in madison square park for six years and then they went back to france so this woman well parts of this woman were traveling all over the world before she was assembled to be assembled this montado i'm not sure if you're familiar with this fact but there's also a notre dame and an eiffel tower connection what are you kidding me well i know there's a french connection but notre dame well what does it have to do with this famous gothic cathedral well when bartholdi went to work on the project he hired contrato his mentor his mentor named eugene viulet leduc and this was his mentor a mentor is the person who inspires him and he hired him because of his expertise berithia because of his experience and because he was the guy who was in charge of restoring notre dame so the guy who restored notre dame to its brilliance its opulence is also involved in the building of the statue of liberty he was the one supposedly that chose copper as the building material copper is cobre the skin is copper however he didn't see the project through berlo hasta final he became ill and died in 1879. so after he passed away this pueste well then our friend bartoldi hired gustav eiffel does that name ring a bell and gustav eiffel was instrumental in finishing the project and working on the structure on the iron frame so after all these parts have traveled around the world in new york and paris and all over the world raising money they were finally brought back to paris and they were put there for their final construction their final assembly which really wouldn't be the final assembly this is the thing this thing was assembled and disassembled a couple times so from 1881 to 1884 they put all the pieces together this was in paris they made sure that everything fit and then what did they do they disassembled it they took it apart so to put together and to take apart are the phrasal verbs we could use and they put it into 214 crates there were over 300 pieces and it was shipped back to the united states but there was just one problem the united states didn't have the pedestal ready yet they didn't have enough funds enter a man named pulitzer you guys know him from the pulitzer prize well this guy you could call him one of the first crowd funding guys he raised money to get this pedestal done and finally they got it done and in the end france spent supposedly 250 000 on the statue a quarter of a million dollars and americans spent 275 000 on the pedestal now supposedly that's around 10 million dollars in today's money but imagine they had a hard time difficult raising that money and after joseph pulitzer's campaign became a total success well then they knew it was just a matter of time they built that pedestal quickly they finished it up and they put that statue up in record time and in the year 1886 20 years later 20 years of looking for money 20 years of losing partners and all kinds of hardships and finally she was done and they held a parade a paradise file and to hold is kombokar i think you can also say the word celebrate like we're holding a meeting so they held a parade and about a million people showed up when they passed by wall street a lot of the wall street brokers started taking the ticker tape now the ticker tape is according to word reference it's this tape that they use you know when before everything was digital and to this day that word has stuck now when the yankees win or anytime there's a celebration in new york city we have a ticker tape parade well that day was no different nobody could rain on their parade okay bad joke to rain on someone's paradise amargares la fiesta and well 30 years later she turned green what she turned green you mean with envy embiosa no i mean she literally turned green those of you who know a little bit about metals copper turns green when it gets rusty and of course where is the statue of liberty located an area where there's a lot of humidity a lot of water and the elements so 30 years it took but she turned green and they were a little bit worried about the corrosion and all that stuff so they sent in the military to do a study and they wanted to see if this rusting you know this this the elements and all this if it was weakening a fiend if it was weakening the structure and you know what it turned out that it wasn't this green actually protected it it put a layer una capa over this copper and made it even stronger and anybody who's ever seen an old penny unfenti montigo americano you'll see that it's green yep there's the penny statue of liberty connection and speaking of the structure she is so flexible that's right she can do backflips no i'm kidding but i mean flexible she can withstand to withstand us wins yeah strong winds and temperature changes well might as well if she's going to be in new york harbor we all know the weather there can be quite extreme and she's been known to sway me thirsty that's right she's a great dancer she's been known to sway with the wind three inches tres bulgadas i did the math it's 7.6 centimeters and her arm you know the top part 5 inches that's 12.7 centimeters that she sways in the wind so who knew the statue of liberty a symbol of strength but also a symbol of flexibility and well we all know freedom i hope you guys enjoyed this episode remember we're going to look at so much in the bonus part i'm going to tell you about my personal experiences i'll tell you about how she was a lighthouse and the masonic and hidden messages of course i'm gonna tell you about all that symbolism the number seven and so much more so make sure you tune in to the bonus part of today's fyi my you