Fourth of July

It’s one of the biggest bashes thrown throughout the whole year. We gather gleefully to celebrate our independence from England. Nowadays, it’s all about grilling & chilling, pool parties with our pals, and fantastic fireworks with our family. We’ll find out all about the 4th of July on this week’s episode of FYI! 

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[Music] it's one of the biggest bashes thrown throughout the whole year we gather gleefully to celebrate our independence from england nowadays it's all about grilling and chilling pool parties with our pals and fantastic fireworks with our family we'll find out all about the 4th of july on this week's episode of f y i welcome to for your info english you got it[Music] hello hello hello my amigos and this is an awesome episode well all the episodes are awesome i hope you feel that way but this one's extra special because we are celebrating the 4th of july independence day probably one of the biggest holidays in my country and today we're gonna celebrate it together on fyi as i tell you guys this show is about learning english about learning about different topics but we also look at the cultural element so i'm gonna take you with me today to brooklyn to the rooftops of brooklyn so we can see some of the most amazing fireworks you have ever seen in your life and any of you who have ever been to the united states on july 4th will know exactly what i'm talking about to us it's a big deal it's a huge deal i'd say this and christmas are our two most popular holidays so let's kick off our bash our party with the intro which is chock full of great vocabulary words for you guys to learn i'm sure many of you recognized that tune at the beginning even if you've never been to the united states you've heard it before it is our national anthem the star-spangled banner as we call it and this song is a song that will get any american anywhere up on their feet and taking off their hat and saluting the flag i'm telling you guys i know sometimes people talk about nationalism patriotism all of this stuff but in the united states we are patriotic people in general and this day we show our true colors and those colors are red white and blue baby and our national anthem is as american as apple pie i think everybody recognizes it and it's probably one of the hardest songs to sing let me try a little bit let me see if i can do it oh say can you see by the dawn's early light what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming well i'm not gonna go through the whole song but you guys can look it up and i'll tell you something something that makes our anthem i think head and shoulders above the rest head and shoulders and that's because jimi hendrix and the likes of slash from guns n roses have played our national anthem and have done it justice and when we go to our first break i'm gonna play the slash version so you guys can celebrate with us and we can rock out together and we also use the word anthem like imno you know you're like oh man that song is an anthem tambien no solo elim no and they raise their fists it reminds me of that song here in spain i've landed that song is an anthem now a little known fact at least most people i asked didn't know it the national anthem was written by a guy named francis scott key and we all know that we i remember learning that very very clearly but it was based on or at least the melody of the song was based on an old english drinking song so you could say that the american national anthem this respected anthem all over the world is a drinking song hey he adapted it and he put some really cool words in there and the rest is history all right so then i said it's one of the biggest bashes which is thrown we throw a party or have a party we don't make a party or do a party so it's one of the biggest bashes thrown throughout the whole year and throughout is allo largo i want you guys to pronounce that one with me throughout the whole year i said we gather gleefully and this is a good word over here i'm sure you recognize it from the series glee there's a very popular series where kids sing and in fact in high school they used to call the singing club the glee club but to be full of glee is alegria so gleefully is con alegria alegre mente we gather nos juntamos gleefully to celebrate our independence from england now i remember learning that in school too but i i'll tell you something when people get together these days nobody's sitting around saying down with england we're we're free now we've gotten so far away from that date from 1776 that now well england they're not our foes foe is otra forma ethire and amigo they're our friends in the early days we'll find out there were some uh some pretty symbolic rituals that i don't think the british would have liked very much but now i think it's more about independence in general freedom you know not being tied down or shackled down or oppressed and if you remember the word shackles we looked at that word in the statue of liberty the statue of liberty had shackles at her feet then i said nowadays which is india nowadays it's all about grilling and chilling and to grill is a third barbacoa and to chill es estar de tranquis estar de relax two of my favorite things and they rhyme it's all about grillin and chillin pool parties with our pals sos remember it's july 4th so in most parts of the united states it is scorching hot i know in new york it's so humid in july so a pool party is a must i think it's just as important as the barbecue and the fireworks and the word pals is another way to say buddies amigos colegas my pals and fantastic fireworks with our family and fireworks oh man i've got to say i'm not a big fan of you know big parties and celebrations in general as i get older but there's nothing like seeing an amazing fireworks display and in the bonus part of the show i'm gonna tell you about the one i saw from a rooftop in brooklyn with the statue of liberty the brooklyn bridge and the world trade center right there in the foreground it was mind-blowing and it's a memory i will have forever and just recently i sent the tape because i have it on vhs or i don't know you want one of these digital cassettes that you used to record you know when we had these camcorders and now everything's digital so i'm getting it digitized and as soon as i get it digitized i'm going to share that video with you guys because it's still one of the most spectacular nights of my life and it was a fourth of july celebration that i will never forget and we're gonna talk more about the fireworks later on in the show fireworks are how you say fuegos artificiales and firecrackers uh firecrackers i think you say petardos in spanish then i said we'll find out in terrarnos all about the fourth of july on this week's episode of fyi so are you guys excited have you got your bathing suits ready how do you like your burger cooked i'm ready to party guys oh and if you don't mind i'll ask you to light the fireworks because i get nervous around fireworks to be honest so i'll man the grill to manis control and you guys will handle the fireworks does that sound like a deal as i was preparing the episode i realized that there were a lot of misconceptions around july 4th and the first one is that it's not really july 4th well it should have been july 2nd and why is that well it is widely believed it's widely believed the secret that america declared its independence from britain on july 4th 1776. that's the date we celebrate but the official vote actually took place two days before the vote for signing the declaration of independence so the declaration was published on july 4th but it was voted into law really on july 2nd so what's the solution celebrate the whole weekend in fact that's what we do we don't usually celebrate just july 4th i mean july 4th is when the fireworks happen but you celebrate the whole weekend many people go down to the shore una forma a la playa with their families and they rent a house and they they chill they grill they splash around in the pool and have a gay old time and a gay old time is gay no not in the old sense of the word see words change their meaning gay used to mean happy and you'll hear that if you guys are fans of the flintstones yabba doo time we'll have a gale time this is from the flintstones but in that case gay means happy back in the 50s 60s and earlier it meant happy now as you know it has a different meaning and in the bonus part of today's show i'm going to tell you guys how the declaration of independence was written on a laptop what um how could it that's impossible it wasn't invented yet well i'm gonna tell you about that in the bonus part along with many other interesting things about the 4th of july if you guys want access to the bonus part consider becoming a patron you can join our curious community over at patreon.com slash alberto alonso and we're learning and having fun every week aside from getting bonus audio and pdfs with all the vocabulary and expressions you can also get weekly and monthly classes with me plus you can be a part of our amazing community so i want to send a shout out right now to all my patrons thank you so much for being the best students in the world and a special shout out to my super duper students javier francisco tony roberto jose maria mila alex patricio edgar and loles and don't forget about my super duper students carmen diego pilar and diana thank you so much to all of you it is a pleasure teaching you and if you guys want to find out more just go over to patreon.com alberto alonso and you can get all the information you need if you have any questions just let me know now another interesting fact or should i say misconception is that the declaration of independence was only signed by two men on july 4th now wait a second weren't there more people i thought there were a lot of forefathers we call forefathers the people who founded the united states well the reason is the other 54 delegates who signed well they signed throughout the course of the next month so they weren't all together signing it they signed it as soon as they could and it took about a month to get all 56 signatures and the most important one was one of the first ones to sign it and his name is john hancock and john hancock his name has become synonymous with signature in the united states to firma so if i could say to you uh you're asking for a loan pediendo prestamo and i say okay i'll need your john hancock islamism i'll need your signature and it wasn't so much because he was one of the first ones to sign it but it was because his signature was the biggest it was the flashiest you know it really stood out this taco so his name now john hancock has become synonymous with the word signature also i'd like to clear something up over here we've got the declaration of independence which was 1776 and then we've got the constitution which are two totally different documents now the constitution was signed in september of 1787. that was a little over 11 years after the declaration of independence now they're both very important documents in u.s history but they each outline different things and the population in the united states when the declaration of independence was signed was merely 2.5 million people that's it i mean now you think of the united states there are small cities that have more people than that so at that time 2.5 million people were living in the united states and i looked at the figures for 2021 wow 332 million 854 943 people now what i want you to do is i want you to write that number down hey it's a good opportunity to practice big numbers so this is the population roughly of the united states now in 2021 write this down 332 million 854 hundred and forty three all right now if you wrote in spanish tristientos traintaidos miyones ochocientos cuatro mil novecientos cuarentai tres escorrecto it's right just make sure though in english so just remember that when you're writing numbers down so 2.5 million in 1776 to 300 roughly 350 million let's round up estimate wow that is incredible growth the fourth of july wasn't deemed a federal holiday until 1870. that's about a hundred years after the nation was founded which doesn't make sense to me if you want to have a party start from the beginning start from the get-go don't wait a hundred years to make it official i imagine it's because they didn't want to give people a day off work because obviously if it's a federal or national holiday many people don't have to work they have the day off so that's probably why they waited 100 years they're like wait we can't give everybody the day off obviously i'm just kidding i don't know if that's why but i thought it was a definitely striking that it took a hundred years to say okay guys well this is an official holiday our day of independence from england from the old world from tyranny from monarchy and as i said initially that's what it was about some of the early fourth of july traditions that are not really carried out anymore yevado acaba now that i think about it i don't think i've ever seen anybody do these but uh some of the colonists back in the day they celebrated by holding mock funerals now to hold this combo celebrate and it was a funeral for england's king george the third they would burn effigies you know things like this use these symbols to show like we are against you the british and we don't want taxation without representation and that is one of the concepts one of the reasons that these forefathers decided to leave england and say we're gonna do it our way because we don't want taxation without representation now obviously that sums things up in a nice lovely beautiful saying but there's so much more to it some of the traditions that have lasted are the fireworks and as i said before that i i can't imagine the fourth of july without fireworks okay you don't have a pool i've been there i've celebrated it in new york city you don't have too many pools there no problem you don't have a barbecue but you need the fireworks it's it's non-negotiable well supposedly the fireworks date back to philadelphia and they started in 1777 that was the first time they decided to have a huge fireworks display and now as i said before every little town in the united states has a fireworks display at the local school or some place where there's an open field and even the little towns they go all out so the fireworks as i said 1777 that means they go back to the first year the first anniversary they started with these fireworks and now as many of you guys know and if you're patrons you'll you'll see i shared a video of the fireworks in new york city what they call the the macy's fourth of july fireworks show and macy's is a very big department store unal mathen i think you call these gran almaten a department store and they're the same ones that do the thanksgiving day parade that we talked about in the thanksgiving episode but this is now the biggest celebration in the united states especially as far as fireworks is concerned and as i said in the bonus part i'm going to tell you about my first hand experience witnessing this amazing display some fun facts about these fireworks it takes over 8 000 hours to prepare everything for the the knights festivities 8 000 hours that's a lot of people working a lot of shifts to make sure that all those fireworks go off at the right time and well how much do you think it costs well according to the figure i have here around six million dollars so think about that six million dollars worth of fireworks exploding all over new york city and that the equivalent is in fireworks again these these figures go up and down but that's around 75 000 fireworks that are set off every fourth of july just around new york city in the macy's one never mind the people who do it in their backyards which depending on what state you live in uh there are different laws i know in some states i have friends who used to go down to i don't remember if it was north carolina or south carolina because there you can buy fireworks so that's another thing too be careful because you might buy them in one state and then go to another state and they're illegal so as i said before fireworks lots of fun but you light it okay and i'll light the grill and how could i forget the flags of course we're talking about patriotism there are american flags everywhere not just hanging on buildings and flagpoles but on people's shirts and their shoes and earrings i mean you know it tommy hilfiger uses it as a symbol but let me tell you something technically it's illegal to wear the american flag on your clothes and we're gonna find out a little bit about that in the bonus part of today's show it was quite shocking to me let's just put it this way this is a rule that i've broken many times so i guess i'm gonna go to prison for a long time or as we say i'm gonna do hard time yeah wearing the united states flag on clothing is a no-no but i'll explain that more in detail in the bonus part of today's show and i think here's where we can wrap up this part yeah well guys i want to put on my bathing suit i want to put on some suntan lotion you know i want to work on my tan as well it's july 4th we're in the dog days of summer in todo el mayo del verano in the second part the bonus part of today's show for patrons we're going to continue with our pool party we're gonna make a splash i love this causat una sensation we're gonna make a splash because in the end what is this about as i said it's not about hating the english this is about getting together grilling chilling hanging out with your people kind of like what we're doing right now and so this is a perfect time to tell you guys thank you thank you for hanging out with me over here but if you want the party to go on until the wee hours of the morning well then we'll be right back with the bonus part of today's[Applause][Music] fyi[Music][Applause][Music] you