Daily Dose of English 95
The 4th of July
Daily Dose of English 95
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. In this episode, we're gonna be talking about the 4th of July, because that is the day that this episode is coming out. The 4th, the 4th of July, which is the United States Independence Day, or the day that independence was declared. What does that mean though? Independence from another country is when a country decides to sort of take control of its own laws and govern its own people and be in control, essentially. And so prior to the 4th of July in, I don't know what year, 18 something, American Independence Day. Let's see, what year was this? Oh, 1776. Oh, I knew that. Yeah, July 4th, 1776. I did know that. Anyway, so on July 4th, 1776, The US declared its independence from Britain. It was before it was a colony of the UK, of Britain, and it's our independence day. I don't really know what else to say. There's a lot more information on it. It was a pretty big historical event. Yeah, normally for us in everyday life, it's the day that we celebrate the country, essentially. And it's a pretty big celebration. It's one of the larger holidays in the US and it's actually really cool. There's a lot of really fun stuff that happens and I have good memories associated with the 4th of July, especially because it's during the summer. And so the weather's really nice, and so there's stuff that happens outside, and there's always good food, and that sort of thing. And so I want to tell you a little bit about what the Fourth of July is like. So first, there's always the day off. It's a federal holiday, which means that you don't work on that day. Federal holidays are the holidays in the entire country where you, I think you have to like be offered time off. You don't have to take time off, right? A lot of restaurants are open or places are open, but I think you have to be allowed to take time off without it affecting your work. Like somebody can't, you can't be like, I'm gonna take off the 4th of July. Your boss goes, no, you're not, you're gonna work here. I don't think they can do that. I could be wrong. That would suck though. So I hope that if you want to take the 4th of July off, you're allowed to. And so pretty much everybody takes the day off unless they're people that really want to work or need to work or want the extra hours. However, pretty much everybody who's from the US, there's plenty of people that don't celebrate at all, but people that are from the US and celebrate will do something. And the biggest thing that people do is get together, have food, and then light fireworks. Fireworks are the big thing of the Fourth of July and there's almost always a show, a big fireworks show in pretty much every city, every big city. And I'm sure in lots of smaller ones too, there's a lot of fireworks that day. And people usually do it at night because it's dark and you can see everything well. And so up till that, that's when you're partying. You're having food, there's usually a cookout, some sort of barbecue, that sort of thing. Actually also earlier in the day, it's really common for there to be parades. A parade is when a bunch of people, so probably a couple hundred, maybe more, plan to walk or drive down together in a big line. And so a parade is going to have tons of people. They're in costumes, they're in fun cars, they're in all sorts, like dressed up, they're playing music, and then they all go in sort of a big line together down through a city or something like that. There's a lot of parades in a lot of the country. It's a very popular thing to do for the Fourth of July. And I remember specifically going to the Oregon coast a couple of times with my family for the Fourth of July. And there's a small town that we would go to where there's always a really fun Fourth of July parade. Because it's not a very big town. There's only a couple thousand people there, but there's a pretty big parade. And so you go outside, you sit on the side of the street with like some chairs, maybe some food, a drink, a beer or something. And then the parade comes through and there's tons of people playing music, they're dancing, they're in costumes. They usually throw candy. So there's lots of people that have candy and they throw it out into the crowd and so the kids will go and grab candy and all that stuff. And so the parades are usually really fun. There's, I mean, there's not like that much interesting stuff that happens. It's not like they're big and crazy in most parts of the country. But you do get to see people having fun and being outside and stuff. So they're good. The big ones are in like New York City where they close a ton of streets and it's a really big parade. I think they do a 4th of July parade because they do a lot of parades in New York. But those are really big parades. Those are really cool because people make what are called floats. A float or a parade float is a sort of a giant thing that you're going to bring through the parade. So they might do enormous balloons. So some people will get like humongous balloons of something and they'll drag it along like with a car or something and there'll just be this massive balloon. And it's like some creature or some character from something. Those are always kind of crazy to see. But the most common ones and like especially in smaller parades are people will essentially decorate their car with a bunch of stuff or like they'll put a stage on it. They'll go crazy. Like if you look up parade floats on Google, you can see some pretty interesting images. And they don't float, they don't go in water. I don't really know where the name comes from, but we call them floats. And they go so slow that it's safe, right? The cars are going a couple miles per hour maybe. And so you can see what's going on and that sort of thing. They're really fun. The other stuff that you do on 4th of July is, like I said, a barbecue or a cookout. And that has to be the best part because usually everybody will bring some sort of dish and this is what we call a potluck. A potluck is when everybody who's at the party brings something. Somebody brings some salad, somebody brings chips, somebody brings whatever. Oh, hi, you wanna come up? My cat is saying hello. Come here, come on. I'm recording an episode about the 4th of July, you wanna hear? Yeah, okay. Well, we were talking about the food, huh? Okay. Okay, he's here now. Oh yeah, the food. But the best part is definitely the hot dogs and the hamburgers, because those are the key cornerstone part of really any big American cookout, because you get home-cooked hot dogs and hamburgers. There's usually a grill master. And it's typically like the father of the house that's hosting. That's the classic image of a dad outside flipping burgers. But anybody can flip burgers. That's just what you might see in like a cartoon or something like that. And it's really fun. I used to go to Lake Tahoe growing up for the 4th of July because I have some family who lives there. Lake Tahoe is sort of, if you've ever seen California, there's like the part where it kind of connects to Nevada. It's like, cause California is this weird shape on the left. It's like the coast, but then on the right, there's like two straight lines where those lines connect. That's where Lake Tahoe is. And it's beautiful there. And part of my family has been there for a long time. And so they have my uncle, I think, my great uncle, something like that. He built this house on land there all himself like 100 years ago. Okay, not 100 years ago, but like 50, 60, 70 years ago, something like that. And so it's this big, beautiful house. And so a lot of my family would meet there for the 4th of July fairly often. I would see my cousins, my aunts and uncles. I'd go with my family. and we'd have a big cookout, a big party on the day, on the 4th of July, and then do fireworks in the afternoon and the evening. And it was always really fun. We haven't gone in a long time, probably over a decade, maybe like 15 years. No, probably not 15 years, but a long time. And so I mostly remember that, I don't really actually I haven't been there in so long that it's sort of flashes of memory, rather, is what I mean to say. But yeah. So anyways, that's all that I have for this episode. That's the time limit. But if you are in the US and you're learning English because you live in the US, I definitely recommend that you try to find somebody to party with. Although this is coming out in the evening of the 4th of July. So go outside if you're there and go try to find some people to hang out with and have a good time. It's a good party. But that's all that I have for this episode. Thank you so very much for listening. I really hope that you appreciate the episodes and the stuff that I do here and I appreciate you for listening. I'll see you again tomorrow for another episode. Have a good one. Bye.
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