Ronnie is a ginger. If you thought we meant she is a root vegetable, think again. Being a “ginger” means to have naturally red hair. “Gingers” or “redheads” have a very interesting history, indeed. In this lesson, you will learn both the history of redheads and words that relate to red-haired people such as “freckles”, “pale”, “strawberry blonde”, and even some slang like “carrot top”. After watching, you will understand and appreciate my mysterious people even more! Take a quiz on this lesson here: http://www.engvid.com/redheads-gingers-vocabulary/ TRANSCRIPT I need to talk to you guys about something that’s really important. All of civilization depends on this one lesson. This lesson is about gingers. Not ginger, not the ginger tea that you drink, or the Ginger Restaurant down the street that serves delicious Thai or Vietnamese food, not the ginger that you guys eat with your sushi, but the ginger that is me. I am a proud ginger. Do you know what a ginger is? We have been bullied, plagued, tortured, killed, made fun of, mistreated, and downright bullied for centuries because of three things: red hair, pale skin, and freckles. That’s a ginger. I am a ginger. I’m going to tell you a story about my name, Ronnie. Guess what? Guess where that name came from? You guys know the clown in McDonalds? Mm-hmm. What’s the clown’s name? Ronald McDonald. Guess how, in grade 7, I got to be called Ronnie? Mm-hmm, yep, when I was in grade 7, somebody said: “You have red hair and red shoes. You are Ronald McDonald. Hahaha.” And I said: “Yeah, that’s cool.” So, from then on, my name has been Ronnie. So I’m going to teach you, tell you all the interesting facts about gingers. Are you a ginger? Are there gingers around you? Watch out. We are vicious people. We’re going to come and… Do nothing, really. Maybe give you a cuddle or something. So let’s learn about these things. Let’s learn some famous people. Nicole Kidman, beautiful. Ewan McGregor, kind of sexy guy. Lucille Ball. She was a really, really old actress in I Love Lucy. Ariel in The Little Mermaid. Vincent Van Gogh who is a really famous artist. The beautiful, the wonderful old-school beauty Katherine Hepburn. Julia Roberts. And Merida, the 11th Disney princess who has since slimmed down for her Disney debut. All of these people have one thing in common: they’re all gingers. They all have no souls and they’re all very evil people. No, they’re not actually. They’re just regular kind of people, but they’re gingers. So, gingers are people that have really pale skin. “Pale” means white. Look at how white I am. Woo, I’m really white. Freckles. “Freckles” are these dots or skin pigmentations that I have. I got them all over my face. See, when I go in the sun, I burn, and then when I come out of the sun, I get more spots or more freckles. Everyone else goes a beautiful tanned brown colour. Gingers, we get red, then we get more freckles. Then we go back to being paley and pasty. And of course, gingers have to have red hair. Now, we can have different spectrums of red hair. My hair is very, very light. It’s actually called strawberry blonde. I was called Strawberry Shortcake as a child. Cool, that’s like I love strawberry shortcake. But people have been teased incessantly about their hair. It can be a very, very dark, dark, dark red; it can be a bright fire engine red; or it can be a very light blonde red, like I have. Do you have red hair? What about down there? Mm-hmm. Maybe a lot of guys when their beard grows in or their moustache, it becomes red. Uh-oh, you’ve got it somewhere. You’ve got the ginger in ya. Interesting facts about this ginger population. A lot of people associate gingers with Ireland. Misguided, are we? The biggest population of ginger people reside in Scotland. Thanks, Gran. My grandmother was a ginger. My brother’s a ginger. My dad was a ginger. And my other grandmothers were gingers. I come from a long line of gingers. In America, 2.5% of the population are ginger. There are interestingly no statistics for Canada. I have no idea. And other countries, they don’t even talk about gingers from other countries. But I know you’re out there. Germany, Austria, even Afghanistan, Middle East, Asia. I know there’s gingers around. I’ve seen you. As of now, 1 to 2% of the world’s population are gingers. That’s not a lot. We’re really cool. The rarest kind of ginger is me. Oh yeah, right here. And you guys thought I was weird. Now you know for sure why I’m weird. The rarest combination of ginger: blue eyes, red hair. I’m the only one in the world. No, I’m not. There’s probably more.