English Vocabulary Lesson: THANKSGIVING! All the English Vocabulary you need to celebrate!

Thanksgiving. It's just around the corner and  today we're going to go over a brief history of  

thanksgiving in the United States, and we're going  to study some vocabulary related to this holiday,  

and also learn about some of the traditional  thanksgiving foods. And you'll even see some  

clips from a past family thanksgiving. And  don't forget, if you like this video or you  

learn something new please give it a thumbs up  and subscribe with notifications it really helps.

Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday of November  every year, so the date changes from year to year.  

Typically, schools and some businesses close  on Thursday and Friday for a four-day weekend,  

which is just glorious. Thanksgiving is  basically a meal. History tells us that in 1621  

the Plymouth colonists and a group of native  Americans, the Wampanoag, shared an autumn harvest  

feast that is believed to be one of the first  thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies.  

Days of thanksgiving were celebrated throughout  the colonies and later, the states. In 1863,  

president Abraham Lincoln  made it a national holiday.

Okay, let's go over a few  words and pronunciations there.  

Lincoln. Notice the second L in his  name is silent. The first N is not the N  

sound, nn-- but it's the ng sound ngg-- made with  the back of the tongue. Ling-- can-- Lincoln.

Then you release that into the k for  a quick k schwa N ending. Lincoln.  

President Lincoln. President Lincoln officially  made thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863.

We had a few other words there you might not know.  Colonists and colonies. A colony is someone who  

settles in or colonizes a country where they  weren't born. So people came over from England,  

they weren't planning on going back. To colonize  America, to set up a new life and community there.  

Colonists set up and lived in colonies.

I also used the phrase autumn harvest  feast. Autumn is just another word for fall,  

it's one of the four seasons. The T is  a Flap T and the N is silent. Autumn.

Harvest is when you gather a crop that you've  been growing, the food is ready to be picked,  

and you harvest it. So that's a verb, harvest, the  act of gathering or picking your crop. And then  

it's also a noun, the food that was harvested.  The harvest this year is bigger than last year.

Finally, the word feast. This is a big  meal. This can also be a verb or a noun.  

Feast is the act of eating a big meal,  and as a noun, it's the meal itself.  

And thanksgiving is a feast. People  stuffing themselves and eating too much.

One of the images you'll often see associated  with thanksgiving is a pilgrim, or a pilgrim hat.  

A pilgrim refers to one of the group of people  who originally colonized America. But the word  

also has a broader meaning, someone who journeys,  often to a sacred place for religious reasons.  

This kind of a journey is called a pilgrimage.  But in this context, pilgrims refers to the  

early colonizers who came from England, settled  in, can you guess the area? New England. And the  

men wore hats like this with a buckle on it and  it's become a symbol of thanksgiving in America.

And of course, turkey, which is the main  dish at a typical thanksgiving meal.  

Another symbol of thanksgiving is a  horn-shaped basket called a cornucopia.  

Overflowing with autumnal foods. Oh, did you  notice I used the word autumnal, as an adjective.  

Autumn, the noun, means fall. And autumnal  means relating to or suggesting autumn.  

Notice the stress is on the second  syllable and the T is now a true t.  

Autumn, it was a Flap T. Now, autumnal, with  a true t. Also, we now say the n. In autumn,  

the N is silent. But in autumnal, we say both the  M and the n. Isn't it funny? Autumn. Autumnal.

Now let's get down to foods. Turkey is the  main dish. There are all sorts of ways it  

can be prepared. Deep fried, grilled  whole, smoked, or roasted in the oven.  

That's probably the most common. Several years  ago I livestreamed some of my thanksgiving dinner,  

and the quality isn't great, but  I do have some footage of the food  

and the general chaotic feel of gathering  so many family members at one table.

The turkey platter looks so nice with those  greens. The home-grown sage, it looks amazing.

The turkey platter looks so nice with those  greens. A platter is a big dish for serving,  

and we've got another Flap T there.  Platter. Platter. Now at this point,  

the turkey has been carved. That's the  verb we use for cutting up the turkey,  

taking it from a whole turkey into smaller  pieces that you can eat. It's been carved. 

The next dish you're going to have at almost any  thanksgiving meal is going to be mashed potatoes.

We have mashed potatoes. Were these  made from scratch, from real potatoes? 

I think so. That's amazing. 

I love mashed potatoes. I just did a video  on ED endings and this is one of the cases  

where we would usually drop the ED ending in  pronunciation. Here, it's a T and we usually  

don't say T between two other consonants. So it's  not mashed potatoes. Mashed potatoes. But we say:  

mashed potatoes, dropping the T sound altogether.  If you want to know why and you want to know more  

about the ED endings, click here or see the link  in the video description. Mashed potatoes. I asked  

if they were from scratch. This means made from  the beginning, the most basic ingredients, in  

this case, whole potatoes. That's different than  making mashed potatoes from a box of dried mashed  

potato flakes. Sweet potatoes or a casserole made  from sweet potatoes is another very common dish.

This was a sweet potato casserole. 

And it's good. And it's good. Oh, it's good!

Casserole is one of these words that can  be pronounced as two syllables. Cass--  

roll-- or three syllables: cass--  er-- ol-- casserole or casserole.

Casserole can refer to the  dish the food is prepared in.  

Something like this, deeper sides, often with  a cover. Or it can refer to the food inside,  

a food which is mixed together and  baked like a chicken casserole that has  

vegetables and a creamy dressing. We had a lot  of tater tot casserole in my house growing up.

Now there are lots of other  foods that most people will have  

at their tables. Let's take a look at  everything we had this particular year.

David, what are you working on over here? Dried corn. What does dried corn mean? 

Uh, you have to ask mom. Okay. 

It's dehydrated and you  reconstitute it with cream. 

Okay, interesting. Okay. And  then we have the gravy here.

The dehydrated corn dish is something totally  new to me. It's a tradition in my husband's  

family and I had never had it before. Never even  heard of it before. This is something I love about  

thanksgiving. Each family has its own traditions  about what dishes to include and how exactly  

to prepare them. The last thing we saw in that  green pot was gravy. This is a sauce made from  

juices, from cooking the turkey, but also  gravy has an idiomatic meaning. It means money,  

easily gotten, or something extra, an  extra benefit. For example, I could say,  

for my business, I make most of  my money from running my academy,  

and putting in that work. The money I get from  YouTube ads, that's gravy. It feels extra. I don't  

count on it in my budget because it can go up or  down so much. So anything I get from it is gravy.

So here's the thanksgiving table.  

You can tell this was shot a long time ago  because I don't have very much gray hair. I was  

about eight months pregnant with my first son, and  you can tell I’m pretty tired. Anyway, the table,  

the thanksgiving table. My sister-in-law always  hosts thanksgiving. This means it's at her house,  

and she does a lot of the planning and  coordinating for it. And she really makes  

such a beautiful table each year with an  interesting centerpiece. That's what's on  

the middle of the table for decoration. And it's  pretty common to drop the T in that word center,  

and just say center, centerpiece. Here, listen  to how my sister-in-law invites us to the table.

We're live. Let's take our seats.

She said 'let's take our seats'. Take a seat  is a more polite way to say sit down. Please,  

take a seat. Before the meal, it's common for  everyone to say what they're thankful for,  

or to say a prayer, depending on the religious  beliefs of the group, or for someone to say a  

blessing or to sing a song or have a toast. We  we're gathered here to be thankful together,  

and I’ve asked Becca to say a blessing,  but first, I would like to cheers Audrey.

and Leon. Cheers!

Yes. Thank you!

My husband's family loves to  sing, and we sing a hymn. A  

hymn is a song usually praising or  in honor of God or maybe a nation.  

In this word, just like autumn, the N is  silent. We sang a hymn, and here it is.

And then it's time to dig in. I'm going to  

show you what food went around  and what ended up on my plate.

So here we have turkey and sweet  potatoes, also called yams.

Okay, so that's not actually  true. Sweet potatoes and yams are  

different things. Though they're similar.

And the mashed potatoes are coming around.  There's red wine, there's white wine. 

What is it? Uh, this is stuffing. 

Do you know if it has meat in it? No meat. 

No meat. I would love a scoop.  Could you, could you scoop me  

some stuffing? How much would you like? Not too much because there's not that much room  

in the body for food. That's good, thank you.

Stuffing is another classic must-have thanksgiving  dish. Usually it's made up of cubed bread and  

herbs. The name 'stuffing' comes from the idea  that you stuff it into the turkey to cook.  

That way, the bread absorbs a lot  of the tasty juices from the meat.  

But it can also be baked in an oven in a dish,  and another term you'll hear for this is dressing.

Jeff, what's that? Some sort of bean, fried onion, casserole... 

Green bean casserole? Lisa made it, it's really good.

Green bean casserole. It's mixed with cream of  mushroom soup, in this case, my sister-in-law  

made the soup from scratch. She didn't use soup  from a can, and she fried onions to go on top.  

It was so good. Now, just before eating, I  went over everything that was on my plate.

My phone keeps turning off  because it's overheating.  

So I’m just going to finish by showing you my  plate.  

Here's what we have. We have dinner roll, 

mashed potatoes and gravy, olives, two  kinds of sweet potato dishes, a corn dish,  

turkey, stuff, green bean casserole, stuffing is  hiding under there, and two kinds of cranberry.

I haven't mentioned cranberry yet. A  cranberry relish is a jelly of some kind,  

it's also very traditional at thanksgiving  and it's one of my favorite parts of the meal.  

Looking at this makes me feel kind of sad because  I know we're not going to have anything like  

that this year with the coronavirus.  We're not getting together like this.

A traditional dessert at  thanksgiving is a pumpkin pie.  

I love to buy a small sugar pumpkin,  roast it and make a pie from that,  

that's definitely making the pie from scratch,  if you don't use canned pumpkin. I actually made  

a video a while ago while I made a pumpkin pie and  you can see that by clicking here. It's pretty old  

but we went over some great words,  pronunciations, and idioms in that one.

Okay, what food did I miss? What are the  traditions in your family or that you've  

seen that you cannot believe I left out? What  feast do you have in your culture that reminds  

you of thanksgiving? And most importantly,  what are you thankful for this year?  

Let me know all of this in the comments below.

If you're new to Rachel's English, I make  videos on the English language every Tuesday,  

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