Cultural English 464 - The Roaring Twenties; Empire State Building; Q&A

Complete Transcript

You’re listening to ESL Podcast’s English Café number 464.

This is English as a Second Language Podcast’s English Café episode 464.

I’m your host, Dr. Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.

On this Café, we’re going to talk about a decade – that is, 10-year period – from 1920 to 1930. This is sometimes called the “Roaring Twenties.” We’re also going to talk about a building that you are probably familiar with: the Empire State Building in New York City. And, as always, we’ll answer a few of your questions. Let’s get started.

We’re talking in this Café about the Roaring Twenties – the 1920s. This is the 10-year period between 1920 and 1930. We usually call a 10-year period a “decade” (decade). The economy during the decade of the 1920s was what we might describe as “booming” and was an economy in which people were making and spending a lot of money. When we say an economy is “booming” (booming), we mean that it is very successful – people are making a lot of money. Anything that is booming is usually increasing.

The opposite of a boom, an economic boom, would be a “bust” (bust). The word “bust” has other meanings as well. A “bust” can also be the head of a famous person, or any person, that is made of marble or wood, or sculpted – shaped out of some of the material. “Bust” can also refer to a woman’s breasts – the things that a woman has on the top of her body in the front. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just go look at a woman. Now, back to our topic here.

We’re talking about the booming 1920s. It was a time of economic success. There were also a lot of interesting cultural trends during this decade – new music and dances became popular, and young people, at least in the United States, were becoming more independent. “To be independent” means to make your own decisions about life and not rely on, or depend on, other people’s rules or ideas.

Life, at least as we think of it, in the 1920s was considered fast and fun, we might say. For this reason, the years during this decade are called the “Roaring Twenties.” The word “roaring” (roaring) in this case means exciting, with a lot of energy. We use that verb “to roar” when talking about the sound a lion might make, or a lion making sound: (roaring sound). Is that a lion? Eh, not sure. You get the idea.

One of the biggest changes that happened in the 1920s was that more and more people began to move to the cities, to what we might also describe as “urban” (urban) areas. People left the farms and the countryside where they were living and began to move to cities such as New York and Chicago and yes, even Los Angeles. Living in a city allowed people to get jobs, usually better jobs than they could get where they were living previously. They also were near stores, which meant they could spend more money if they wanted to.

Cities, of course, also have places for men and women to enjoy themselves, and so you saw all of these things taking place during this time period. The biggest shift, the biggest change, was people moving into the cities during this period of time. In the U.S. during the 1920s, women in particular enjoyed a new independence. In 1920, the United States passed the 19th Amendment to its Constitution.

An “amendment” (amendment) is a change to the Constitution. The Constitution is the United States’ main legal document that was written back in the late 18th century. The 19th Amendment, or the 19th change to our Constitution, gave women the right to vote in elections. This meant that women’s opinions would be considered more important in politics, and certainly to politicians.

It wasn’t just in politics that women were becoming more independent. In the 1920s, women began working outside the home more often. It was still a minority of women, to be sure, but the number of women working increased. They earned their own money and, of course, spent that money on things that they wanted. What did they want? Well, lots of different things. For one thing, they wanted some of the new inventions of this time – an “invention” (invention) is something that is created that has never existed before – things like washing machines and vacuum cleaners that would help you clean clothes and floors, respectively.

Something else that women spent money on was clothing. I’m surprised by this, but that’s what the historians tell us. For the first time, clothing was easily available in stores around the country. Women didn’t have to make their own clothing or, for that matter, their family’s clothing, if they were married. You could just go into a large store and buy your clothing. These large stores sold all sorts of different things. They were called “department stores,” and we still have department stores today.

For younger women in the 1920s, the most popular clothing to wear – at least, if you were going to a party – was that of a flapper. A “flapper” (flapper) was a word given to describe a young woman who wore her hair cut short – that is, the hair did not go much beyond her chin, her face. A flapper also tended to wear short skirts, drink and smoke, and quite honestly, talk about sexuality and act on that talk more openly than women of previous generations. Most young women, however, didn’t act like flappers, but many enjoyed dressing like one.

Flapper dresses were not as tight, not as “formfitting,” we might say, as traditional dresses. They also didn’t need to have uncomfortable underwear for women to wear them. In traditional dresses, women often wore something called a “corset.” A “corset” (corset) was a piece of clothing that women wore under their dresses, that basically made them look thinner than perhaps they really were. These corsets were tied very tight and would make the woman appear as though she had a very small waist around the middle of her body.

Flapper dresses didn’t require corsets because they were looser – they moved about more easily, especially when women were doing one of their favorite activities during this decade, which was dancing. Dancing was always a popular activity among young people. It still is. There were many dances that became famous during the 1920s, including dances with names like the Charleston, the Cakewalk, the Black Bottom, and the Flea Hop. All of these dances were fast and had lots of difficult, complicated movements or steps that went along with the music.

The music was most typically jazz music. In fact, the 1920s is sometimes called the “Jazz (jazz) Age.” Jazz is a kind of music that has very strong rhythms and is usually played on instruments like the trumpet, the saxophone, and the piano. Jazz musicians have songs that they play, but they also improvise. “Improvisation” is a very important part of jazz music. “To improvise” (improvise) means to make something up, to invent something as you are playing.

You could also improvise a speech – standing up and talking without preparing your speech beforehand. Jazz musicians improvise music, and that music became very popular in the 1920s. One way it became popular was with a new invention – a new, or relatively new, technology called “radio.” They didn’t have podcasts back in the 1920s, unfortunately.

Movies also began to be popular during this decade. The movie or film business began to produce more and more films. Most of the film industry became established here in the city of Los Angeles. When I say they became “established,” I mean they became well-known. They took on their importance in the industry, in the business. Film studios were the companies that made movies, that made films, and all across the city of Los Angeles, you found film studios making movies.

One area of Los Angeles that was a popular place for film studios was called “Hollywood,” and nowadays we use the word “Hollywood” to describe the entertainment industry – movies and television in particular, although really it’s just a neighborhood here in Los Angeles, but the name now means much more than that. There are in fact movie studios, film studios, all across the city. Culver City, for example, which is located not too far from where I live, became famous also for its movie studios.

The 1920s were not just famous for movies. It was also a time, an exciting time, in American literature. One of the great writers of the 1920s was F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald, who happens to be one of my cousins, was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 24, just like me. Fitzgerald wrote one of the great novels of this period, called The Great Gatsby.

The Great Gatsby has been made into a movie – a couple of not very good movies, to be honest – but the book is wonderful, and if you want to get an idea about what it was like to live in the 1920s in the United States, The Great Gatsby is a good place to begin. The characters in The Great Gatsby are flappers, and there are also young men that have a lot of money and buy expensive and unnecessary things, just like rich people do here today in Los Angeles. Another great book from the 1920s is by Ernest Hemingway, called The Sun Also Rises. This book is about a group of young people living not in the United States but in Europe after World War I.

The Roaring Twenties came to a very quick end, we might say, in 1929. What happened in 1929? Well, the United States economy had a major, or large, crisis. The stock market in the United States crashed in 1929. When we say it “crashed” (crashed) we mean that it went down by a significant amount. The stock market, I should probably explain, is where you buy and sell partial ownership in companies – what are called “stocks.”

The early 1930s, then, as it was in many parts of the world, was not a time of economic success in the U.S., but rather what we now call the “Great Depression.” Nevertheless, one of the things that was produced during the 1930s was a famous building in New York City which will be our next topic: the Empire State Building.

The “Empire (empire) State Building” is located in New York City on East 34th Street and 5th Avenue. The word “empire” usually describes a country that owns a number of other pieces of land around the world. You can think of the Roman Empire during the time of the Caesars, or the British Empire when Britain controlled many different areas, including what is now India and Australia and Canada and other places.

Well, the Empire State Building wasn’t really about the empire of Britain or Rome or even of the United States. It’s just the name they gave the building. The building was built in 1931, and when it was built, it was the tallest building in the world. Today, of course, it is nowhere near being the tallest building in the world. However, because of its fame during the 1930s, it became one of the most famous buildings in the U.S. – certainly one of the ones that people would visit the most when going to New York City.

Construction on the Empire State Building began in March of 1930. In fact, it began on a day very famous in big cities such as New York and Boston: March 17th – which, you may know, is the national day of celebration in Ireland. It’s the feast of Saint Patrick. Over the next 14 months, up to 3,000 men worked on the building – on constructing, or building, the Empire State Building. Over 10 million bricks were used, four and a half stories, that is, levels of the building were built each week. Imagine. It went up very quickly. A “story,” of course, is a floor, or a level, in the building.

When the building opened on May first, 1931, it was over 1,400 feet from the bottom of the building to the very top of the radio antenna on top of the building. That would be 427 meters for the rest of you. The building was built as an office building, and it’s still an office building today. It also became a center of television and radio broadcasting for the city of New York during this period. Many of the television and radio stations use the Empire State Building as their headquarters.

It’s better known, however, for the very top levels of the building: the 86th and 102nd floors. On these floors, there are observatories. An “observatory” (observatory) is a place in a building or in a high place that allows you to see a long way, to see a great distance. The Empire State Building, being so tall, was a great place to go up and see the rest of the city and the area around New York City. The word “observatory” comes from the verb “to observe,” which means to look at, to study, to watch.

If you go to the top of the Empire State Building – and I have been to the top of the building – you can actually see, if it’s clear, up to five different states. You can see New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. Unfortunately, because of the pollution in New York City, it’s usually not possible to see all those states.

Even if you’ve never been to New York City, I’m guessing you probably have seen the Empire State Building, because the building itself has been part of more than 250 movies in the last 70, 80 years. The most famous of the movies that uses the Empire State Building is King Kong, but there are other movies as well: An Affair to Remember, and more recently, Sleepless in Seattle. It’s often used in film and television shows that take place in New York, basically to let the audience, the people watching, know that you’re in New York. The Empire State Building is a symbol, in many ways, of the city of New York.

For different occasions, the Empire State Building is lit up in different colors. They use colored lights to make the building change colors. For example, on the Fourth of July, Independence Day in the United States, it’s red, white, and blue. On St. Patrick’s Day, they make the color green – and so forth. The Empire State Building is over 80 years old, and it continues to be a symbol of the city of New York and also a wonderful place to visit. If you ever go to New York City, you should definitely go up to the observatory towers of the building.

I mentioned I have been to the Empire State Building, but whenever I think of the building, I don’t really think about the views from the observation or observatory floors. I think of a woman who was selling these little medals – we would call them “medallions.” They were souvenir medallions, things that you could buy that looked like a coin, a large coin that had a picture of the Empire State Building on it.

And this woman was selling these coins, these medallions, but it was clear that she was kind of bored with her job, and she kept repeating the same thing over and over again as people walked by her. She’d say, “Souvenir medallions, souvenir medallions.”

You know how sometimes you hear something and then you just can’t get it out of your head even if you want to. Well, it’s been 15 years since I’ve been to the Empire State Building, and I can still hear the voice of the bored woman saying, “Souvenir medallions,” and now the sound is inside of your head, and you’ll never be able to get rid of it, I’m sure.

Now let’s answer some of the questions you have sent to us.

Our first question comes from Adrian (Adrian), originally from China, now in Australia. Adrian wants to know how, at least in American English, we use the word “Indian” (Indian). He’s confused because there seems to be two uses of the word “Indian,” and he’s not sure which to use. Well, this is actually a good question. (They’re all good questions, of course.)

“Indian” can refer to people from the country of India, in what we sometimes say in English is the “subcontinent” of Asia. The other use of “Indian” in American English is to refer to what are more commonly called nowadays “American Indians” or “Native Americans,” people who are related to or members of groups, or “tribes” (tribes), who lived in the Americas before the Europeans arrived – what in other countries might be called “aboriginal people” or “native people.”

However, this second use of the word is no longer as common, and in fact is not the suggested or recommended term. “American Indian” or “Native American” is what you will hear now in common American English, although some people still have the habit of using the older term, which is simply “Indian.”

The reason the word “Indian” was applied to the native peoples of the Americas when the Europeans arrived was, of course, that Christopher Columbus, the explorer, thought that he was on his way to India, and so when he landed on the islands of what is now called the Caribbean, he assumed that the people there were Indian, even though he of course was not in India. So, that’s why we have the same term, or seemingly the same term.

As I mentioned before, in modern, if you will, American English, and certainly in a newspaper or book, if you see the word “Indian,” it’s probably going to be referring to someone from India. If someone wants to refer to one of the members of the indigenous peoples of the United States, they’ll say either “Native American” or “American Indian.” The exception to this is if you’re reading an old book, one written probably before 1970 or so. It was during the 1970s that the term “Native American” and “American Indian” were popularized and became the accepted terms for the native peoples of the U.S.

Our next question comes from Alexander (Alexander) in Russia. Alexander wants to know the meaning of the phrasal verb “to blow up,” as well as the verb “to explode.” We’ll start with the phrasal verb “to blow up.”

“To blow up” means to use some sort of violence, usually a bomb, to break something up into a lot of smaller pieces. So, if you blow up a building, for example, you will be taking the building and making it into a lot of smaller pieces. You will be destroying the building. If you blow something up, usually you’re destroying it. We use this term certainly in talking about the military during a war, blowing up buildings belonging to their enemy.

This definition of “to blow up,” then, is really the same or very close to the other verb here, which is “to explode” (explode). “To explode” means to break something into pieces in a very violent way. In most cases, it can be used interchangeably with the phrasal verb “to blow up.” However, “to blow up” has some additional meanings – at least one additional meaning which is to put air into, for example, a balloon or some object that can get bigger by putting air into it. We talk about “blowing up balloons” for a child’s birthday party.

A third meaning of “to blow up” is to enlarge, to make bigger, usually some sort of photograph. If you take a picture with your phone and you just want the head of one person, you could blow it up. You could make the picture bigger so that you can see that one person more clearly.

Both “to blow up” and “to explode” can also sometimes be used to describe what a person does who gets very angry and start yelling and shouting. “My boss really blew up when he found out that our project was not yet completed.” “He exploded in anger,” we might say also.

Finally, we have a question from China, from Liang (Liang). The question has to do with an expression that Liang saw on one of the news websites: “staging ground.” What is a staging (staging) ground? A staging ground is a place where something is being planned or started, usually some sort of military activity. However, the expression is used in other ways as well.

For example, the quote that Liang sent us from this news website was “They use Starbucks as a staging ground for their own motivations.” In that sentence, “staging ground” refers to a place or a context in which some people want to use in order to make a larger point or to, if you will, argue a larger idea. The sentence actually referred to some laws in some states here in U.S. that allow you to carry a gun on your person – with you – and the problem that some businesses have, like Starbucks, that don’t want people with guns coming into Starbucks.

I personally don’t want anyone bringing a gun into a coffee shop. I especially don’t want them bringing their cell phones into the coffee shop. You know the people who get on their cell phone, and they start talking really loudly, and you have to listen to their horrible conversation. Well, I think that’s almost as bad as bringing a gun into Starbucks. Not quite, but almost.

“Staging ground,” then, is a preparation area or a training area, perhaps for some larger offensive, some larger activity or action that you’re taking. The original use, or at least the more common use, is when talking about military action.

From Los Angeles, California, I’m Jeff McQuillan. Thank you for listening. Come back and listen to us again right here on the English Café.

Glossary

decade – a period of 10 consecutive (one following another) years

* Simone couldn’t believe a decade had passed since she graduated high school.

booming – very successful; with rapid growth and success

* Thanks to the new sports stadium and all the people who went to see the games, business in the downtown area is booming.

to be independent – to be able to make one’s own decisions and not have to depend on other people or follow someone else’s rules

* Hiro was excited to finally be independent and live in his own apartment.

roaring – exciting, fast, and with a lot of energy; lively and noisy

* Between visiting the casinos and restaurants and seeing shows, the Nebhnani family had a roaring good time in Las Vegas.

invention – something that is made that has never been made before; the creation of something new

* The light bulb is perhaps one of the most important inventions of the 1800s.

flapper – a young woman who wore her hair cut short to a length around her chin and who wore short skirts, drank alcohol, smoked, and was much more open sexually than women of previous generations

* Mothers in the 1920s hoped that their daughters would be good girls and would not become flappers.

corset – a piece of clothing women wore under dresses made of hard and stiff material and tied very tight to give them the appearance of having a smaller waist

* When women wore their corsets too tight, they were at risk of breaking ribs.

jazz – a kind of music that has very strong rhythms and is usually played on instruments such as the trumpet, saxophone, and piano

* Duke Ellington played the trumpet and is one of the most famous jazz musicians of all time.

to improvise – to create and do or perform something as it happens, not having planned it in advance

* Masha hadn’t planned on having guests for dinner, so when her friends arrived unexpectedly, she had to improvise and make them a meal.

to become established – to become known as being good and of high quality; to become know to people in a community or field

* Once Dr. Nuhu became established as the top doctor for teenagers in the area, everyone wanted to take their teens to see her.

story – a floor or level in a building

* Alper lives in apartment 402, which is on the fourth floor of a six-story building.

observatory – a place in a building that allows a person to see a great distance; a building where a telescope is placed, allowing one to see into space

* People have been watching the stars and planets for hundreds of years from this observatory.

Indian (Asian) – relating to or a person from India or the subcontinent comprising India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh

* If you like vegetarian food, try this Indian restaurant serving food from southern India.

Indian – American Indian; Native American; relating to or a member of any of the native groups of people who lived in the Americas before Europeans arrived

* Julia painted an American Indian design on this wall to represent her tribe.

to blow up – to explode; to break into pieces in a violent way as a result of pressure from within; to cause something to explode

* If you get that cigarette too close to the gas tank, your car may blow up.

to explode – to break into pieces in a violent way as a result of pressure from within

* The factory exploded as a result of a gas leak.

staging ground – a place where something is planned or started, often used for military actions

* Citizens can express their views if they want to, but a playground shouldn’t be a staging ground for political protests.

What Insiders Know

The Boxer Jack Dempsey

William Harrison “Jack” Dempsey was a famous American professional “boxer” (person who participates in the sport of fighting between two people using their “fists” (closed hands)). He is considered a “cultural icon” person that represents the values and ideas of a certain culture or group of people) of the 1920’s. With many of his fights “setting” (establishing; making) “financial” (related to money) and “attendance” (related to how many people attend) “records” (highest number ever), Dempsey remains as one of the most popular boxers in history.

Like many famous athletes, Jack Dempsey’s “rise to fame” (how one becames successful) was not easy. He was born in a poor family in Colorado. When Jack turned 16 years old, he left home to try to make a better life for himself. He soon discovered he had a talent for fighting, and with the help of his older brother, Bernie, “trained” (for an athlete to practice) as a professional boxer.

On July 4, 1919, Jack Dempsey won the World Heavyweight Championship, the most respected international boxing competition, against “then” (at that time) champion Jess Willard. The fight was “controversial” (with many different opinions) because of the amount of damage that Dempsey caused to Willard. Willard had injuries to his “jaw” (bones near the mouth, on the lower part of the face), deep “fractures” (broken bones) to his “facial” (on the face) bones, broken “ribs” (bones around the chest) and several broken teeth. Jack Dempsey was a “fierce” (showing a lot of strength) fighter, and he remained champion through many fights until his retirement in 1926.

Jack Dempsey died in 1983 of “heart failure” (when the heart stops working properly). Dempsey is considered one of the best boxers of all time and is a member of the International Boxing “Hall of Fame” (list of the best in history in a certain area or field).