Let's talk about the 20s.
Welcome back to the Learn English Podcast. The podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
In today's episode, I want to talk about one of the most famous decades in history, the 1920s.
The 1920s was a very unique time in American history.
There were some very specific things that were going on here in the United States.
And, for that reason, there are some very specific vocabulary words that we use to describe this time period.
If you are not familiar with American history, you might not know what these words are, but they are words that are very well known by the average American.
So, on today's episode, I want to talk about these cultural events and these very specific vocabulary words.
If you're interested in learning more about the Roaring 20s as we say then follow along because we're about to begin.
Before we get started I want to remind you to look at the description of this podcast episode.
You will find helpful links like how to take a lesson with me and of course the vocabulary list. The vocabulary list is the words and phrases I used in the episode, so you can take them and build your English vocabulary.
Now let's talk about the 1920s.
When we talk about a decade from the previous century in English, we usually don't say the 19 part, we just say the years.
So, for example, the 1990s becomes the 90s, the 1980s becomes the 80s, and the 1920s becomes the 20s.
Now it is 2025, so we are actually in the middle of the 20s right now, but no one in English calls this current decade the 20s.
I actually don't know what it is going to be called.
I haven't really heard a name for this decade that we are in, and we'll see what it ends up being, but if you say the 20s, you are not referring to this current decade, you are going to be referring to the 1920s.
During the 1920s there was some major events going on and the 1920s, when you talk to an American about that decade, they are going to have a very specific image of that particular time period.
If you are someone who likes watching movies, I'm going to recommend the movie The Great Gatsby.
There are two versions of this film.
There's one from the 1970s starring Robert Redford but if you want an image of what people think of when they think of the 1920s I would recommend a version that is starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire.
It's about 10 years old now or probably a little bit more but it's a pretty good film and at least gives you an idea of what we're talking about when we refer to the 20s, or what the person thinks about when you mention the 20s.
It is a little bit of a stereotype, but this is kind of what the Decade was famous for.
So if you talk about the 1920s with an American, this is the image that they get in their head.
If you're not someone who likes watching movies but you'd rather read a book, you can also read the book The Great Gatsby.
The movie is based on the novel by F.
Scott Fitzgerald and the novel itself is one of the most famous American novels.
Every student in the United States has to read The Great Gatsby when they are in high school, so it is a very famous novel here and most people are at least familiar with the name and some of the characters, even if they don't remember everything about the story.
It is a really good book, I actually reread it recently and if you are someone who likes to read books, that's another great resource that you could use to help improve your English level.
The first thing to know about the 20s is that besides just being called the 20s, it's also called the roaring 20s.
So that roaring part usually means that something's very loud.
And when we say the roaring 20s, what we talk about is this period of time where it seems like everything was just a party.
That's what I mean when I say that that Great Gatsby movie is a really good visual image for what an American is going to think about when they mention the 20s.
Because that movie has that feel to it, at least at the beginning, where it has this great party scene and this party that's occurring at Gatsby's house.
That is the image that comes to mind.
The 1920s were known for this period of time when it seemed like life in America was really good and people were partying.
And the reason is, is that the first world war had just ended.
World War I ended right before the beginning of the decade.
And the U .S. and the rest of the world was really recovering after that first war.
In general, the economy was doing pretty well, people had money, and it was just known as a time where people were kind of enjoying life after spending a few years in World War I.
If you are someone who likes listening to music, there's actually a song called The Roaring Twenties by the band Panic!
At the Disco. You can check that song out and it's just a way to reinforce this term Roaring Twenties and also to show you really how popular and how well -known that term is.
Another reason why it's called the Roaring Twenties is because of prohibition.
Now, prohibition, you might not have heard that term, but every American knows that term.
Prohibition refers to a period of time when alcohol was actually banned in the United States.
That's right, if you were in the US, you could not legally buy alcohol.
This was actually an amendment to our Constitution and it took effect in 1920 right at the beginning of the decade and it ended in 1933.
Now I said you couldn't legally buy alcohol because it was against the law to buy any type of alcohol, however there were some ways to get around it.
If you know anything about human behavior, you know that when people get told they cannot do something they definitely want to do it and that's especially true when it comes to alcohol, it is very hard to take alcohol away from a society.
And during that time of Prohibition there were people who were very much against alcohol and drinking alcohol, but there were a lot of people who still wanted to drink.
Prohibition did eventually end, like I said, in 1933, and that was because it really was a failed experiment.
Even though it was banned, people were buying alcohol, people were drinking alcohol people were partying and people who were selling that alcohol illegally just made a lot of money.
It made life a lot more difficult for the police, it made criminals very rich because they were able to sell a lot of alcohol to everyday people, and it really just didn't work.
There wasn't less alcohol that was consumed in general during Prohibition because people found ways around the law.
How people did that was through speakeasies.
So, a speakeasy is a type of club, type of bar that you could go to, but you usually had to have a certain password in order to get in.
You had to know somebody, you had to know where it was located, you had to know the right thing to say to the person who was standing at the door in order to get in.
Again, that goes to the part prohibition because alcohol was illegal.
They didn't advertise that the place was a nightclub or bar.
They didn't just let anyone in because they didn't want to get in trouble from law enforcement.
And so you really had to have some type of connection.
You had to know somebody in order to be able to get in to this particular place.
Once you got inside, there was alcohol that was served and you could drink and enjoy your night and that's what a speakeasy is.
The The speakeasy term comes from that password being able to know what to say when you get to the door, and the phrase itself, even though Americans think of a speakeasy as being an American thing, it actually started in Great Britain.
However, the term was very much popularized in the 1920s as people started establishing these speakeasy nightclubs and people started attending them.
The concept of speakeasies is really romanticized by Americans.
Americans think of it as kind of a glamorous, fun time.
And there still are some speakeasies, people know about them obviously, and they're advertised as a speakeasy.
People just like that whole idea of going to some secret place and spending their night drinking alcohol and some little hideaway kind of a thing.
You can see them on Google or on Yelp, for example.
But Americans definitely like this whole concept of a speakeasy.
Now, when you would have entered a easy during the roaring 20s you would have seen a number of different things one thing is is that you probably would have seen a jazz band the reason is is that jazz music was incredibly popular during the 1920s it's actually referred to as the Jazz Age because jazz music was so popular African Americans were usually in these jazz bands African Americans were the pioneers when it came to jazz music and the increase in popularity of jazz is tied to a particular part of New York City which is called Harlem.
Harlem traditionally was an African American neighborhood and during the 1920s it went through a really important part of growth and cultural impact.
African American art, music, and literature became more and more important and that period is also called the Harlem Renaissance.
Harlem of course from the neighborhood that it was in and renaissance meaning that is undergoing this time of change and importance and greater cultural significance.
From the Harlem Renaissance and from the increase in jazz you really get that combination that created the jazz age.
Part of the jazz culture and the speakeasy culture also included flappers.
Now, I had a English -speaking student who had no clue what a flapper was and maybe you have never heard the term, but you probably know what they look like.
Women dressed in a certain type of way in the 1920s when they would go to these speakeasies and when they would go to these parties and that was called a flapper style of dress.
Kind of like how there was a hippie style of dress and a hipster style of dress nowadays.
The flapper had a very kind of unique look to her.
usually she had short bobbed hair so a bobbed haircut is a shorter type of haircut usually above the chin length she would also wear some type of decoration in her hair maybe a headband that went around her head or some type of clip or something in her hair she would also have this dress that moved a lot when she danced it tended to be a shorter type of dress above the knee, but it would have a lot of movement to it, so when she would dance, the dress would move around.
When you say the term flapper, that really should be the image that comes to mind – a young woman with a headband on, this really beautiful fun dress and maybe even holding a cocktail drink and smoking a cigarette.
The reason that the dress would move around so much was of course in part due to jazz music and women dancing to that jazz music.
If you have seen that Great Gatsby movie, you have seen the scene where these flappers are dancing at the party and that's really the the type of image that comes to mind here.
One of the most popular dances at the time was called the charleston.
It was a particular type of dance and again, it is just one of those things that when you think of the roaring 20s when you think of a flapper it is that particular type of dance that they would do, and a reason why their dress was made to move around so much so it really just looked more spectacular.
Spectacular means that you really just want to look at it, that you're really amazed by it, that's something you want to look at because it is so, so cool to look at, and that's really what you think of when you think of a flapper.
Now a flapper is a woman that is definitely not a man.
When you want to describe the way men dressed in the 1920s, you might want to use the word dapper.
Dapper means that the person looks very nice, it usually means that they're in a suit or some type of dress clothes, that they look better than someone who's just wearing everyday street clothes, right?
Someone who maybe has a little bit more attention to how they're dressed.
When you think of a dapper man from the 1920s, think of a man who has his hair slicked back, who's wearing a suit, who looks very well put together and very nice.
He might also have a hat, he for sure has a tie, maybe even a cigarette and a cocktail just like the flapper does.
While they are here at the Speakeasy dancing and listening to music and drinking alcohol, the alcohol that they are drinking is bootlegged.
Now bootlegged is a term that refers to the sale and the manufacture of alcohol during that prohibition time period.
When alcohol could not be manufactured legally.
There were people who made it illegally, who made it even though it was against the law, people would make alcohol and then would drive it across the country and sell it.
And that process of making and selling alcohol was called bootlegging.
If you were someone who was a person who sold the alcohol, you would have been called a bootlegger.
In the book, The Great Gatsby, and in the movie, the character, Gatsby, is thought to be tied to the bootlegging business.
He is thought to be someone who is dealing with the sale of alcohol and dealing with this whole criminal organization of making money from alcohol.
It's never really said exactly but that's what's hinted at in the book is that he is definitely involved with some criminals and Probably making his money from selling alcohol now how people got to and from these speakeasies was probably in one of the early Automobiles of the time and probably one of the most famous was the Model T the Ford Motor Company is a car company here in the United States and And the founder was Henry Ford. So the Ford Motor Company is named after him, Henry Ford, and he is known for using the assembly line.
How we think cars are made today really kind of goes back to what he put in place with this particular car called the Model T.
The Model T was made on an assembly line.
He actually wasn't the person who created this technology, but he is the one who used it and used it to make a Model T car, and by doing that he made the Model T very affordable.
People before were only able to buy a car if they were very rich, because it took so much time to make a car, they weren't mass produced at the time.
However, during the 1920s, the Model T was mass -produced, which meant that the cost of the car went way down, and everyday Americans could afford to buy a car for the first time.
This really revolutionized transportation.
It was the first time that people were able to buy cars and it really started that whole car culture in the United States.
If you watch The Great Gatsby you will hear a reference to Henry Ford. To be honest, he wasn't that great of a person so if you hear that reference, it's not really for anything very good.
But it is true and it is definitely mentioned in the book and in the movie and you'll also see how cars play in a very important role in the film and in the book the car culture of the time is really what was starting to happen because cars were finally becoming available for purchase and Especially for people who were very wealthy They were able to afford to buy very nice cars and you can see that if you read the book or if you watch the movie You can see how the car culture was starting to form and how people were really starting to buy cars and use cars to get around during the 1920s.
And the last part that's associated with the 1920s is silent film.
So before the end of the decade, before the end of the twenties, it was really common that movies did not have any sound.
These were called silent films because there was no sound.
you couldn't record the actors speaking, and you just kind of watched the story unfold but you didn't have the same sound as we do now.
When movies were able to be recorded with sound, when they were able to film the actors and record the sound of their voice, that really changed the movie industry, and that occurred in the 1920s.
It wasn't, however, until the end of the decade so most of the decades still had silent film, but towards the end of the 20s there were movies that had sounds and those were called talkies.
That was because you could finally hear the actors talking to one another.
You could actually get the sound of their voices and those type of films became known as talkies.
If you are interested in kind of getting a modern day depiction of this transition from silent films to talkies.
You can watch the movie The Artist. This came out in 2011 so it is a new film but it is a silent film and it is filmed in black and white because it is about this period of the 1920s.
It is a good movie and I think it won the Academy Award that year but it isn't a movie I would recommend for English learning because it is a silent film.
You're not getting that English content But if you're interested in just kind of seeing more about this time period and this transition in the film industry You can check that out the Roaring Twenties were fun But sadly, of course, they didn't last in October of 1929 The stock market crashed and it began the Great Depression The party was over the Roaring Twenties ended and the United States entered it into a depression that took a number of years to come out of but from From 1920 to the end of 1929, you really have this decade of partying and fun and this unique image that comes to mind when you
think of those roaring 20's.
I hope you found this episode interesting.
I hope you learned these vocabulary terms, but if you struggled with any of them, if maybe you don't remember everything that I said, a reminder just to look at the description of this podcast episode, you will find the vocabulary list of these words and phrases that I used so you can refer to them and use them to build your English vocabulary.
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