Learn about the Canadian Holiday VICTORIA DAY and the English Phrase LONG WEEKEND

4,816 views ・ 2021-05-24

Bob's Short English Lessons


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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In this English lesson, I wanted to talk about today.
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Today is Victoria Day.
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This is a holiday in Canada.
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I have a holiday today.
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It's kind of nice,
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which is why I'm making this lesson this morning
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instead of yesterday
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because yesterday we had a little bit of a party here
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to celebrate Victoria Day.
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By a little bit of a party,
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I mean, my mom and sister came over.
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We invited two people over.
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We are still under pretty strong restrictions
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here in Ontario,
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but you're allowed to have just a couple people over,
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and the good thing is all of us are vaccinated as well.
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So it was a safe party, but it is Victoria Day.
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We sometimes call this the May Two-Four weekend,
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not the May 24th weekend.
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We actually say Two-Four.
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We say this because Victoria Day normally happens
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right around the 24th of May.
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Today it happens to be exactly on the 24th,
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but other years, sometimes it's a bit earlier,
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so it is a holiday today.
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It is the May Two-Four weekend.
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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today
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is the phrase long weekend.
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We would call this a long weekend in English.
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A long weekend is when you either have the Friday
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or the Monday off work,
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so instead of just Saturday and Sunday off,
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you also have an extra day.
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So it is a long weekend here in Canada.
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I have to be honest though,
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it doesn't really feel like a long weekend
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because I'm home all the time,
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so when you're home all the time,
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it doesn't seem that different,
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but it's definitely a long weekend here in Canada
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because we have the extra day off today on Monday.
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So to review.
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Just something interesting about Canada for you.
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Today is Victoria Day,
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also called the May Two-Four weekend.
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Usually this, the other reason we call it
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the May Two-Four weekend is because in Canada
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if you buy a case of beer,
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it has 24 bottles or cans in it,
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and we refer to it as a two-four.
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So people will often say, I'm going to go to the beer store.
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We have special stores to buy beer in Ontario
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to get a two-four of beer.
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So it's kind of like a funny name for the weekend
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but it also refers to the size of a case of beer in Canada.
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And then, also, it's a weekend where a lot of people
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go to open up their cottage if they have a cottage up north.
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And as I mentioned, this is a long weekend.
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It is a little bit longer by one day than a normal weekend,
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but, hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video.
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This comment is from Brent,
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and Brent says, "Ah, poor tree."
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- And my response was, "Don't worry.
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"We usually plant a few more every fall."
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So Brent was talking about,
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in the last video, I talked about a tree
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that we are planning to chop down,
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but don't worry.
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I know it sounds kind of,
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yeah, extreme to chop a tree down.
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Many of you in the comments were saying
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"just leave the tree, don't chop it down.
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"It's not harming anyone."
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But Jen and I do live on a big property
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and we do plant trees regularly.
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In fact, this is one of the first trees
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that Jen and I planted.
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We planted this here when we moved here.
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Why don't I turn this way, and as I walk,
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you'll see how big this tree is now.
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It's quite a large tree.
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We're pretty happy that we planted it many, many years ago.
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I think you can see it in the background there.
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It's one of the trees that I sometimes sit under
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when I do my live streams.
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So don't worry.
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When we chop down a tree,
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we usually do plant one or two or three more in the fall,
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and then, I was just going to walk over here
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to show you there's the fire pit that we used last night.
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You can actually still see that we left a few chairs
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and a bench out here.
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We had a bunch of lawn chairs as well
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and it was a really nice evening.
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We cooked some food over the fire.
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We had some s'mores.
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If you don't know what those are,
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I'll put a picture right here.
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Anyways, just a little bit about today.
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I'll see you in a couple of days
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with another short English lesson, bye.
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