Daily Dose of English 35
Cinco de Mayo
Daily Dose of English 35
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. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. Because in this episode, we're talking about Cinco de Mayo, or in Spanish, Cinco de Mayo. because that's another holiday that we're celebrating today, or some people are, but it's sort of an interesting holiday because it's not celebrated anywhere besides the US. However, it's a holiday that everybody knows in Spanish. In fact, Some English speakers have asked the question, like online for example, what day is Cinco de Mayo? Even though that name literally means in Spanish the 5th of May. And so it's in our perception as a Spanish-speaking holiday, even though not everybody knows when it is. And it's kind of an interesting thing, especially to Mexicans, because it's seen as a very Mexican holiday, despite nobody in Mexico even really knowing that it exists, because it's a Mexican-American holiday. And it started, it's on the date of the Battle of Puebla. But it's celebrated in the U.S. by typically by just all Spanish speakers and not like a ton of celebration. You don't have the day off. However, it's meant as sort of a day to kind of, I guess, celebrate in a lot of ways being Hispanic American or a Spanish speaker in the U.S. of whatever background you might come from. be a little more specific about why it started, there was the Battle of Puebla in the year 1862, and I believe it was part of the Mexican-American no, sorry, a French intervention in Mexico and the Mexican people won, basically. I'm not going to go too much into it, but they won and they pushed out the French and that sort of thing. There is some celebration of it in Mexico, especially in certain parts closer to where it happened, but not really much and it's not really that big. It was significant back in the day, what, 200 years ago, but nowadays it's not a national holiday. It doesn't really even be – it's not really talked about much at all. But like I said, in the U.S. it's a lot more popular. And that started in California in response to some more French people being in Mexico. And it sort of grew from there. And there's a lot of different things that happen really all over the United States, not just in the parts that have large populations of Mexicans or of Spanish speakers in general. It did grow from there pretty early on, like it was bigger in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Houston, a lot of the bigger cities in the US where there's a lot more Spanish speaker influence, but now it's known at least in pretty much the entire country. There's a There's a lot of different things that happen, like I said, food, dancing, parades are pretty big. The Cinco de Mayo parade is a fairly well-known thing that happens. It happens in New York every year around the time of Cinco de Mayo. The funny thing is that since it's not that official of a holiday, right, it's not a humongous thing, it gets pushed to the nearest weekend usually. Since for the parade, they shut down streets, it's a pretty big parade. But it has to sort of take place on a weekend because it's not really celebrated by everybody, which is a bit of a bummer, right? I mean, why not have a Spanish speakers in the United States holiday, right? There's enough of them. There's actually more Spanish speakers in the U.S. than there are in all of Spain, which is a funny fact. But that's also true about English and English speakers in the US versus England. So it's not really that interesting. Same thing with Brazil and Portuguese versus Portugal and French in like all of West Africa versus France. There's also a decent number of French speakers in Canada, but there's still more in France. Anyways, that is a total aside from what I was talking about. That's a good word though. Well, I'll stop to talk about that. An aside is when you talk about something kind of related to what you were talking about And it's called an aside because it comes from the theater. And an aside is when the character would stop talking to the other characters on stage and talk to themselves or to the audience, right? Because if you're watching a play, the only way to hear what an actor says is if the actor says something. So if they actually are going to talk to the audience, They sort of physically turn and they look at the audience and they change the way that they speak in order to show, I am now talking to the audience, not to this character. And then they might go back. And so in a script, which is what, uh, the written version of a play, you'll see the word aside and it will sort of, um, when they are talking to the audience or to a different, to a different character or something like that. And so that's why we call these asides. And I do them frequently. And so I hope that you don't mind. Anyways, I was talking about Cinco de Mayo, but honestly, I don't have a ton more to say about it. So I'm going to use this as a bit of a segue. That's another good word. Segue is when you start talking about something different through something else. So like I'm going from Cinco de Mayo just to talk generally about Mexico in the US. Because Mexico has a humongous influence on the US, especially culturally. because there's lots and lots of Mexicans and other Spanish speakers that live in the U.S. just because of proximity, right? Mexico shares a humongous border with the U.S., and so there are plenty of people that move from Mexico up north to the U.S., especially in the southern states like California, Texas that were already mentioned. because of because they're so close. And so a lot of people have a family in California and Mexico, Texas and Mexico, because I just Roots right like families don't move that far typically and so They can have a lot this they can have some family in Mexico and then also in the US and like that's just a very common thing but then also people will move to for work or to Pursue their American dream if you will and so there ends up being a lot of Spanish speakers and Mexicans all over the US Um, which has a huge impact like culturally in the fact that there is like, it's just known if that makes any sense. And this happens all over the world with, um, related countries that are really close together, either economically or literal, like physically. Economically, culturally is what I meant. Um, I guess economically as well, countries that have a lot of ties economically do end up sharing, uh, people and then eventually culture. And so in the case of the U.S., pretty much everybody grows up eating Mexican food pretty much regardless of their background. Sure, there are definitely some cases where that's not true, but even in the smallest of the smallest town in the U.S., you can almost always find one or two Mexican restaurants. And the food is mostly based off of northern Mexican cuisine, since that's what's even closer to the US. So things like tortillas and guacamole and salsa end up being staples, really common foods in the US. We do use American English pronunciation of those words, even though they don't necessarily exist like that in Spanish. But it's an interesting thing where a lot of Mexicans from the south of the country, for example, don't really recognize American Mexican food. Because one, it's from northern Mexican cuisine. And two, it's changed. There's things that just aren't that common anywhere in Mexico because they sort of were created over in the US. Sort of like Cinco de Mayo, how it's not really a thing here, but it's much bigger up north. Um, so things like burritos are, are the, are really, really common in the U S and they're sort of the default food. Um, and those do exist here in Mexico, but only really in the North. Yes, you can find them pretty much anywhere, but there's not like a, a, a default food. And usually it, they came in later because, um, either tourists were asking about them or they hear about them from like American media or whatever. But burritos here have one ingredient, and that's it. And it's a tortilla and one ingredient. But in the US, they have pretty much everything. Rice, beans, cheese, meat, guacamole, sour cream, salsa, everything in one, which are fantastic, by the way. I'm not going to sit around and say that it's bad to be inauthentic. They're freaking delicious. However, they aren't really Mexican in that way. But anyways, I think it's just an interesting topic and I hope that today you feel a little bit more connected to the Mexican-American or hispanohablante americano culture in the U.S. because there's a lot of people there and it's a huge part of of the United States in general and it's always going to be which I hope becomes more mainstream and accepted right because there's still a a vibe that it's like They're separate in some way, if that makes any sense, but it's pretty integral to the U.S. The U.S. would not be the same if we didn't have as many Mexican restaurants, and it would lose a lot of delicious food. Anyways, that's the episode for today on Cinco de Mayo. I hope that you enjoyed this episode and maybe learned something new, and let me know how it went. I'll see you again tomorrow. Bye!
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