Daily Dose of English 216
Día de Muertos
Daily Dose of English 216
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. What? To improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. I'm forgetting the introduction for some reason. Yeah, I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about Dia de Muertos, because that is sort of today. It's actually a couple of different days, but it is, I think, mostly celebrated November 1st, November 2nd, but I think there's a little bit more to it. This is a Mexican holiday celebrated in pretty much the entire country and among Mexicans that live in other countries. It is a very well known holiday, especially in the U.S. as well. And since I live in Mexico, I just wanted to talk a little bit about it and just give my outsider's perspective on it, which is because it's a really, really cool holiday. It's very beautiful, has delicious food and it's just interesting. It's just really neat. So the translation, for those of you that aren't Spanish speakers, Día de Muertos, or Día de los Muertos, is Day of the Dead, is what we say in English. So Day of the Dead is the name in English. and it involves a getting together with family and and maybe friends to pay respects and to remember family members who have died and that's a big the big part of it is that's why it's of the dead and you are remembering and honoring people that have passed away that have departed that their spirits because the uh the the down low yeah i mean that's the thing you can say the download but i want the the summary of sort of what happens is that this is the the day or the couple days where um their spirits or their memories are able to sort of have a bridge to the real world and connect again with um with you and and visit you essentially And so a lot of people go to graves or to cemeteries, places where their family is buried or things like that, and they set up a little altar. The altar is probably the most well-known piece. And an altar is a generic term for basically any kind of like slightly religious or not necessarily religious, that's the wrong word, spiritual or religious. thing that you set up in your home or somewhere that has a significant, oh geez, this is a terrible definition of altar. How do you define altar? But it's like a thing that has either like some religious significance or it's in this case remembering, like honoring a family member or it has some kind of like traditional significance as like a thing that you set up or build. There are offers all over the world in tons of different traditions, cultures, religions, non-religions. There's so many different ways that altars get used. But in Dia de Muertos, they're often called ofrendas. The difference I think with the Dia de Muertos that a lot of people are really struck by is the colors. Because there are a lot of colors involved, especially vibrant oranges and greens and lots of different colors sort of appear in the holiday. Also just because of Mexico generally having a lot of colorful aspects to it, which is very nice to look at. Then there's also the marigold flowers are very bright and vibrant orange. This is the typical flower or the petals that you'll see. During the holiday, there are these beautiful orange flowers and they smell very nice. Cempasuchitl, I think is what they're called, cempasuchitl in Spanish or in Mexican Spanish. I actually don't, because they, I think they're from this part of the world. I don't know. Where do these plants come from? Native to Mexico and Guatemala. So yeah, so Southern Mexico it sounds like. And so that name doesn't sound Spanish, it sounds a lot more Nahuatl, which is Sempa Xochitl. Yeah, I think I said that right. Whatever, that's not the point. And they're a beautiful orange color and their petals are used all over for Día de Muertos and they look really nice. On the ofrenda or on the altar there, you usually put food and pictures. Those are the two main things. So food, typically the food that the person that you're honoring likes or liked, because they have the option to come back and taste a little bit of it. It like brings their memory back, sort of something like that. And then you have a picture of them. The picture of them goes up on the altar as well and helps them, I guess, build a, a bond, a bridge to be able to visit you. I believe that it's very important to have their picture up there because that's like the guiding way to get home or something like that. I'm not exactly sure what the exact significance is but it's also really nice to be able to see who is being remembered. There's lots of other traditional things. Skulls, like candy skulls of sugar or of other edible things. I actually have one of, I don't know what it's made of, but it's a kind of grain that I got and it looks really nice. Those are really common. There are, oh, pan de muerto is amazing. I love pan de muerto, so, which is, you know, Bread of the dead or dead bread now dead bread sounds terrible bread of that bread of the dead but then what though is a very Typical sweet bread that you can find in pretty much every single bakery during this time of the year. It is a You can find it pretty much in all of October, and I think in like all the way halfway into November, but it is relatively simple, but it has a delicious little orange and anise flavor. It just tastes like a generically like regular sweet bread with a little bit of sugar, but that little orange like flavor is so good. Um, it is really, really, if you find like good quality pan de muerto, it's also easy to find very low quality. Um, but if you find good pan de muerto, it's just really, really good. Um, and it's often eaten, um, just around the time of year, but then also specifically on the day or given as a, um, given as a, like an offering to the, to the, um, ofrenda or whatever. And it also looks cool. It has a very sort of typical look where it's sort of a circular, kind of like a hamburger bun almost, and then with a cross on top with a couple of bumps. I don't really know exactly what that represents because it's not like a cross. It's more like an X with like a dot in the middle. I'm not exactly sure where that shape comes from, but it is very distinct. You can almost always notice it. And then there's a sugar on top, which makes it also look a little bit like dusted or whatever. And yeah, fantastic sweet bread, love it. Oh, excuse me, I have to burp. There is a lot more to the holiday as well that I don't know a ton about, like the past or the history and whatnot. But I also wanna talk about the movie Coco, which is a Disney? No. Yeah, that's a Disney movie. Disney movie that came out in, oh geez, whenever it came out. I don't know when it came out. A while ago-ish, like 2014 or something. And Coco is a movie about a young boy who is in Mexico and lives with his family and they're celebrating Day of the Dead. and then basically gets sort of trapped into the spirit world on accident and he has to sort of navigate that. It's a very good movie and I'm actually going to see it on the day that this episode comes out in concert. This is not super new, but a lot of concert halls or venues will do these movie that is also a concert thing where all the music is done live, but the movie is shown normally. So I've seen that as Harry Potter as well back in Portland many years ago, where a live orchestra would play the music of the movie and then you also just watch the movie. On on the screen and so this is going to be I'm not sure how much of the music hopefully all of it is done but in concert so like all the singing all the Everything would be really really cool. So I'm really excited for that And I will be seeing that around the time that you are watching this episode actually Which is kind of neat And yeah, so there's a lot more I could go into, but I'm not going to try to go further into it, mostly because I don't have a ton of additional knowledge to share. If it sounds interesting or you're interested in the holiday, definitely look up videos or pictures, because it does look really cool. And there's a lot more to learn about the history of the holiday, what it means to people, how important it is. But it's a really cool, very beautiful holiday. And we definitely recommend, if you can at some point, coming to Mexico during this time to see the colors and the flowers and everything. So, yeah. But that's everything that I have for you today. Thank you so much for listening. I hope that you enjoyed and maybe learned a little something. And I guess I will be seeing you tomorrow for a brand new episode, brand new day of Daily Dose of English. I'll see you then. Bye.
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