1. Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I'm Steve Ember. And I'm Barbara Klein. Later this week, Americans will celebrate the nation's Independence Day. On July fourth, seventeen seventy-six, colonial leaders approved the final Declaration of Independence for the United States.
2. This year, the city of New York will also celebrate the opening of part of an important symbol of America that has been closed to the public for the past eight years.
3. The Statue of Liberty has stood in New York Harbor for more than one hundred years. It was a gift from the people of France in eighteen eighty-four. Its full name is "Liberty Enlightening the World".
4. The Statue of Liberty is forty-six meters tall from its base. It is made mostly of copper. Throughout history, images of liberty have been represented as a woman. The statue is sometimes called "Lady Liberty."
5. The Statue of Liberty's face was created to look like the sculptor's mother. Her right arm holds a torch with a flame high in the air. Her left arm holds a tablet with the date of the Declaration of Independence -- July fourth, seventeen seventy-six.
6. On her head she wears a crown of seven points. Each is meant to represent the light of freedom as it shines on the seven seas and seven continents of the world. Twenty-five windows in the crown represent gemstones found on Earth. A chain that represents oppression lies broken at her feet.
7. In nineteen oh three, a bronze plaque was placed on the inner wall of the statue's support structure or pedestal. On it are words from the poem "The New Colossus" written by Emma Lazarus in eighteen eighty-three. The plaque represents the statue's message of hope for people seeking freedom. These are some of its best known words:
8. Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
9. The United States and France have been friends and allies since the time of the American Revolution. France helped the American colonial armies defeat the British. The war officially ended in seventeen eighty-three. A few years later, the French rebelled against their king.
10. A French historian and political leader, Edouard-Rene Lefebvre de Laboulaye, had the idea for the statue. In eighteen sixty-five, he suggested that the French and the Americans build a monument together to celebrate freedom. Artist Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi immediately agreed to design it.
11. In eighteen seventy-five, the French established an organization to raise money for Bartholdi's creation. Two years later, an American group was formed to raise money to pay for a pedestal to support the statue. American architect Richard Morris Hunt was chosen to design this support structure. It would stand forty-seven meters high.
12. In France, Bartholdi designed a very small statue. Then he built a series of larger copies. Workers created a wooden form covered with plaster for each part. Then they placed three hundred pieces of copper on the forms. This copper skin was less than three centimeters thick.
13. The statue also needed a structure that could hold its weight of more than two hundred tons. French engineer Alexandre Gustave Eiffel created this new technology. Later, he would build the famous Eiffel Tower in Paris.
14. Eiffel and others worked in Paris to produce a strong iron support system for the statue. The design also needed to permit the statue to move a little in strong winds.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
- against = contra
- agreed = concordou
- allies = aliados
- arm = braço
- armies = exércitos
- beside = ao lado de
- breathe = respirar
- broken = quebrado(a)
- built = construiu
- celebrate = comemorar
- chain = corrente
- chosen = escolhido
- copper = cobre
- covered with = coberto(a) com
- crown = coroa
- defeat = derrotar
- Each = cada uma
- Enlightening = iluminando
- flame = chama
- freedom = liberdade
- full = complete
- gemstones = pedras preciosas
- gift = presente
- Harbor = porto
- historian = historiador
- holds = segura
- homeless = sem-teto
- hope = esperança
- huddled = amontoado
- inner wall = parede interna
- is meant to = destina-se a, tem a intenção de
- lies = repousa
- lift = levantar
- look like = parecer-se com
- mostly = em sua maior parte
- opening = abertura
- pay for = pagar por
- pieces = pedaços
- placed = colocado(a)
- plaque = placa
- plaster = gesso
- raise money = levantar dinheiro
- refuse = recusar
- seeking = buscando
- Send = enviar
- shines = brilha
- shore = praia
- skin = pele, camada
- sometimes = às vezes
- stood = ficado, estado
- strong = forte
- support = apoiar
- tablet = bloco de papel
- teeming = fertil, abundante
- tempest-tost = castigado pela tempestade
- thick = de espessura
- Throughout = por toda a
- together = juntos
- tons = toneladas
- torch = tocha
- wears = usa (peça de vestuário)
- weight = peso
- winds = ventos
- wooden = de Madeira
- wretched = miseraveis
- written by = escrito por
- yearning = ansiando
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