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Hello! Hello! Welcome to today’s live English lesson here on the Speak English with Vanessa YouTube channel. I’m so glad that you’re joining me. You’re taking time out of your busy day to improve your English. Today we’re gonna be talking about where you are from. We’re gonna be talking about your country but also your heritage, and that means where your parents and grandparents and great grandparents, where they came from.

Maybe they immigrated to your country 200 years ago. So let’s talk about that together and I know that I mentioned earlier that my husband would be joining me for this live English conversation, but our babysitter is not here. So Dan is watching our baby. If the babysitter comes, Dan will join me. But for now, it’s me!

So thank you so much for joining me. I wanna let you know that if you enjoy today’s lesson about heritage and background and family and your ancestry, then I recommend joining me in August 2018 in the fearless fluency club because our topic is heritage. You’re gonna be seeing a conversation between me and my friend Heather about her heritage. She has heritage from China, from England, from Scotland, from the Philippines.

She has heritage from all over, so you’re gonna really get an in depth look at an international person. You’re gonna hear a real conversation, so if you would like to join the fearless fluency club and learn more about heritage and improve your English, you can check out the link in the description below this video.

Alright, let’s get started talking about heritage and where you’re from. First of all, let’s talk about the basic question. When someone asks you, “Where are you from?” “Where are you from?” The pronunciation for this question is not so straight forward. You might say, “Where are you from?” But native speakers will not say this is often. Instead, we’re gonna say “Where. Where you from?” It kind of sounds like where plus ‘er’.

So I recommend trying to repeat this pronunciation with me. “Where you from? Where you from?” Where are you from? Where are you from? And you might say “I’m from Nepal. I’m from Egypt. I’m from Brazil. I’m from Morocco. I’m from Russia.” Thank you for all of you who are joining me live.

You’re from that country. That is the place where you live currently, maybe you grew up there, you feel like your heart belongs in that location. But, maybe your parents, your grandparents, your great grandparents were not originally from that country. And at some point, almost everyone’s family’s have moved around and immigrated to another place.

My family as well. So today I’d like to share a quick little story about my family heritage and also show you some DNA. DNA is your scientific, it’s the little pieces inside of you, your chromosomes that really show different things about you. My DNA makes my hair brown. My DNA makes my eyes brown.

My DNA also shows which countries my ancestors have come from. The word ancestors means people from a long time ago. So it’s not my parents, it’s not my grandparents, it’s before that. If you want to talk about your parents, your grandparents, you could use the word relatives. Relatives.

These are usually people who you personally know, maybe they’re currently alive, or you just have known them in your life. They’re your relatives. But, if you wanna talk about 200 years ago, these are your ancestors. These are the people who are the foundation of your family tree. And the word family tree is something that we often use to talk about the growth of your family.

You might talk about your grandma, your grandpa, your parents, your mom, your dad, you, and then maybe if you have kids. It’s adding onto that. It’s creating a family tree. So today I’d like to share with you a little story about my heritage. I want you to guess, first of all, where do you think my ancestors came from?

I’m from the US. Right now I live in North Carolina and if you asked me, “Vanessa, where are you from?” I would say I’m from the US. I’m from the US, the United States. Or if you are an American and you ask me, “Where are you from?” If I said I’m from the US you would say, “I know, I know, of course.”

But you might be asking more specifically which state are you from. So if someone said to me, “where are you from?”, and they are also from the US, I need to be a little more specific, so I would say “I’m from South Carolina. This is where I grew up. But I live in North Carolina.” So if you have moved around a lot in your life, that might be a complicated question. Where are you from?

But when we talk about heritage, this is my great grandparents and beyond. They are not originally from the US. My great grandparents, great, great grandparents, were not Native Americans. They did not live in this North American area 500 years ago. In fact, they didn’t really live here 200 years ago or 300 years ago, they moved here, they immigrated here recently.

So, some of you have guessed Russia, some of you guessed Brazil, some of you guessed Italy, some of you guessed Mars. Pretty close. Some of you guessed in Japan? Okay. Well, actually part of my family, we would say my father’s side of the family, so you can use this as well. My mother’s side of the family or my father’s side of the family.

Now for my mother’s side of the family, it’s a little bit less recent, so the stories about their immigration is a little bit less close to me, but on my father’s side, on my father’s side, that’s the expression here, on my father’s side or on my dad’s side, my great grandparents came from, what do you think? Italy.

So, my great grandma and my great grandpa, they were from close to the city of Naples. In the US, or in English, we say Naples, not Napoli, but it’s the same place. So they came from a farming village near Naples. And my great grandfather, he moved to the US, he immigrated away from Italy and he went to the US and he had a wife and then they had three kids, but this was the turn of the century.

This expression “the turn of the century” means 1900, maybe 1910, around this time. He moved to the US around then and had a family, but his wife died. So he had three children, he also had to work, so he needed someone to help take care of his family. Maybe he was lonely too.

So, something that doesn’t really happen nowadays. In fact, I’d be pretty surprised if this happened in a western country nowadays, but he wrote a letter to his mother who lived back in Italy and he said, “Mom, I need a wife. I need a mother for my children. Can you help me find a good woman to help raise my children and move to the US with me?”

So she needs to be adventurous, she needs to be responsible, and she needs to be willing to move far away from her family. So, his mom said, “Don’t worry son. I’ll do it.” And she found a woman, she told him this is her height, this is her width, this is her weight, you can get a wedding dress for her.

So, he got a wedding dress for her, he took a boat back to Italy and he met her. But, one day while he was there, he looked out the window of his house and he saw a woman walking by and guess what happened? He fell in love with her, this random woman who was walking by, and that’s my great grandmother.

I don’t know what happened to the other woman, but the woman who was walking by the window in Italy, she was much taller than the previous woman, so the wedding dress was too short and in a lot of their pictures, her wedding dress is not touching the floor.

It’s quite short. But this was their story of true love and she was willing to leave her family to go to the US and to leave her homeland, to immigrate to the US. And really, this seems like an amazing story, but almost every family in the US has a similar origin story, a story of their heritage. And when she moved to the US, she had three children and then he died, so she had six children. It’s quite amazing.

She did it. She survived. Her children survived and their children survived and their children survived, and that’s me. So, this is a pretty typical American immigration story, especially around the turn of the century. Turn of the century is that 1900, 1910, around that time. So, I used to think, I always thought that my DNA, my chromosomes, were 25 percent Italian, it’s my great grandparents on my father’s side, so I imagined that I was probably 25 percent Italian. But, I recently found out the truth.

The truth was a little shocking. So, you might have heard of a website or a service called 23 and Me. 23 is the number of chromosomes that you have in your body and Dan, my husband, he bought this service for me as a present and you spit, you use some of your saliva, and you send it to them and they analyze your DNA to try to figure out where you are really from.

Because maybe my parents were from a certain location, but what actually got passed down to me. And this phrasal verb, passed down, means something that you give to someone else. Maybe it’s physically passing down. For example, this cup is not from my grandparents, but let’s imagine that my grandparents loved this cup. Maybe they loved elephants.

So they gave it to my parents, they passed it down to my parents and then my parents passed it down to me. This is physically giving something to the next generation. But we can use that for your DNA or your chromosomes as well and that’s exactly how I used this. There are certain things that were passed down in my DNA. So I did this DNA test and I’d like to show you. I’m gonna share my screen with you.

I’d like to show you exactly where my DNA says that I’m from. Of course there’s a little bit of uncertainty here, but it’s pretty clear and it’s not 25 percent Italian. I want you to guess, what is the highest percent? Which country is the highest percent of my DNA? What do you think? Because I already said it’s not Italian, you can probably guess that, but there are some other countries. In fact, Italian was maybe third or fourth.

So I’d like to know, what’s your guess? What do you think is the top in my DNA? I’m gonna share my screen here with you and I’d like to show you the reality. I was also going to show you my husband’s DNA, but unfortunately, I can’t. Okay, I’m gonna show you this. I can’t because he’s not here right now, so I want to make sure that he’s here to talk about his own DNA.

All right, you can see on the screen it says Vanessa Prothe, that’s me, and then you can also see European 98.1 percent. This is no surprise. I am pretty certain that most of my ancestors came from Europe. But let’s take a look at the highest percent. It says British and Irish, specifically the United Kingdom.

So here it says that 19.8, so this almost 20 percent, of my DNA is from the UK. Maybe that’s not so surprising. There were a lot of people from the UK who moved to the US, but let’s take a look at the next one. This is the one that was the most surprising to me. 19.4 percent is French and German, specifically Germany.

Now this was really shocking to me because I know that Dan, my husband, has most of his heritage from Germany. And when he took this test, it was true. Most of his DNA came from Germany and it’s a little bit vague because there are a lot of changing borders within the last 500 years, but in general, they predict that my ancestors lived in Germany within the last 200 years. But let’s take a look at Italy.

Only 11.7 percent. How interesting. Even though my great grandparents directly came from Italy and I know that they came from Italy, I still only have 11.7 percent Italian DNA. And the next one is Polish. This was also kind of surprising because I always felt like my Italian heritage was stronger than my Polish heritage, but it’s pretty close actually. Nine point three percent. So, nine point three percent of my heritage is from Poland.

And then the next one is the Balkan peninsula. Now this is just generally this area. It’s quite vague because there’s a lot of movement within the people. So in the past 100 years, 200, 300 years, a lot of groups have moved around. But, in general, they predicted that three point four percent of my DNA came from this area.

And then we have the Iberian peninsula. This is Spain and Portugal, modern Spain and Portugal. And I wanna help you pronounce this word, peninsula. Peninsula. Because it can be kinda tricky. When you say ‘penins’- ‘pe’- it kind of sounds like a ‘u’, ‘pe’, ‘peninsula’. So you’re gonna say that second ‘u’ in the same way. Peninsula. Peninsula. Peninsula. So the Iberian peninsula, and then we also have some broad Scandinavian, maybe two percent.

And then down here it says possibly some Western Asian Turkish, then maybe Iraq or Iran, maybe within this area. It’s quite low, but it’s possible. And then finally, we have zero point one percent North African. Oh, this is quite interesting to me because I never imagined this, but it seems like genetically it’s pretty true. So this is a pretty cool website where you can see all these things.

We can see how recently my ancestors came from these places. We can see my parents. We can see the actual chromosomes. I think it’s really interesting to see all of this, so I hope that was a little bit interesting to you. And I’m curious to you. What would you say when I ask you where are you from? Where are you from? First, you’re gonna say the country that you live in, but I wanna know what’s your real heritage. Let me know in the comments. What’s your real heritage?

And when you ask someone this question, make sure that your pronunciation is accurate and is natural, so I’m gonna help you to pronounce this question and I want you to be able to pronounce it with me. Are you ready? Please try to repeat with me. What’s your heritage? So make sure for that first question it’s pretty straightforward. What’s, what’s, but then the second word. Your.

Your. Even though it is ‘your’, y-o-u-r, it’s gonna sound like y-e-r. Your. Your heritage. What’s your heritage? And that final word. Heritage. Heritage. Heritage. That final sound, ‘g’, ‘g’, ‘g’, heritage. What’s your heritage? Well, I hope that you can use that question accurately and ask anyone who you are curious about, what’s your heritage? Maybe even ask your parents.

Maybe they’ve never told you about their great grandparents or someone else they know in your family who has immigrated from another place. And I think for me, it’s possible that even though my DNA is only 11 percent Italian, maybe those people who were from Italy, my great grandparents, maybe their great, great grandparents came from the Balkan peninsula or came from Western Asia.

Maybe those other parts of my DNA are actually from them, but their ancestors came from other places. You never know because the world is really a small place and within the last 300, even 400 years, a lot of movement and immigration has happened in other places. So, I wanna know, what’s your heritage and where are you from right now?