Friday, April 1, 2022

APRIL FOOLS' DAY

APRIL FOOLS’ DAY
A origem do DIA DA MENTIRA em INGLÊS


Adir Ferreira
02 abr. 2022


O professor ADIR FERREIRA explica, no vídeo abaixo, as origens e alguns significados do APRIL FOOLS’ DAY, o famoso 1º de abril, ou DIA DA MENTIRA. Confira!
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TRANSCRIÇÃO

Every year on April 1, April Fool’s Day is celebrated in many countries around the world. In France, it’s called Poisson d’Avril or “Fish of April”. In Scotland, the holiday is often called “Gowkie Day”. In Iraq the holiday is called Kithbet Neesan or “April Lie”.
History experts say people have celebrated April Fool’s Day for a long time. Some believe the tradition comes from the ancient romans more than 2,000 years ago. It was a day of playing games and pretending to be someone else.
Others say the day for fooling began in France in 1564, when King Charles changed the yearly calendar. He moved New Year’s Day from April 1 to January 1. Many people did not know about the change because of communication problems back then. Some people continued to celebrate New Year’s Day on April 1. Other people called them April Fools and played jokes on them.
In the United States, April Fool’s Day is just a day of joking and playing tricks on friends. These kinds of jokes are also called pranks. These jokes typically end in the prankster shouting “April Fools!”
Simple pranks, like telling a friend a funny lie or making prank phone calls, are still common. But, major companies also get in on April Fool’s Day in a much bigger way. A few years ago, on April 1, Starbucks announced it was introducing new coffee cup sizes – Plenta and Micra. The very large cups, bigger than a human head, remained useful for customers even after finishing all that coffee. According to Starbucks, the cups could be used as a rain hat, a pot for plants, or a lampshade.
It did not take long for customers to catch on to the prank!
More and more, people use social media or smartphone apps to play pranks on their friends on April Fool’s Day. One very annoying smartphone app, Cat Facts, sends funny facts about cats to your friends’ phones every day.
And sometimes, simple, more traditional April Fool’s pranks go viral on social media. Last year, a class of college students in the U.S state of Michigan played a prank on their professor. The professor had a classroom rule that, if a student’s phone rings during class, the student must answer it using the speakerphone. This means the whole class gets to listen to the conversation.
One student decided to teach the professor that his rule could be dangerous. She planned for a friend to call her, pretending to be someone from the Pregnancy Resource Center. On speakerphone for the whole class to hear, the friend announced the news that the student’s recent pregnancy test was positive. The professor quickly got embarrassed and told the student she should turn off the speakerphone.
The student responded, “That’s okay. I’ve been expecting this. I already know what I’m going to name the baby. The first name will be April, and the middle name will be Fools!”
The professor, of course, quickly caught on to the joke, and was quickly relieved!
The social media-savvy students posted a video of the classroom prank on YouTube. One year later the video has more than 38 million views.

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