To be clear, I was addressing the ‘made up’ suggestion and not asserting that the accent was similar to Kennedy’s.
My folks were from Yugoslavia. My mother came directly to America and my father came via the UK. So my father spoke “British” while mum spoke “American.” They moved a bit so my sisters and brothers leaned “New Zealand.”
The result was that while I was born in America and raised here, unlike the rest of my family, I would pick up very weird speech patterns.
It was most evident in my use of single words, but I would get sent to “speech” class because of it.
Not being around my family for almost 30 years I’ve lost almost all my speech patterns as a kid, but I still get people asking me from time to time, if I’m from America, just because I still use words you don’t hear in America (such as “strueth”)
Point being, that often times people will pick up ways of speaking, perhaps Julia went to boarding schools or such. If you remember the “Beverly Hillbillies,” Miss Jane was a Vassar Grad and for the first few years of the series Nancy Kulp acted the part with a distinct accent one would assume as “upper crust” so to speak. In otherwords Miss Jane was educated and her speech showed it. Though this element to the Miss Jane character was lost as the show progressed.
In comedy it’s implied Julia spoke that way 'cause she was a drunk. Or at least used way too much wine in her cooking. Of course this is for comedy only not based in reality
Oh my god, she’s American??
To me she sounds like somebody with a baritone voice who is artificially altering it to sound more feminine.
Maybe, Julia has one of those “fusion” accents? She spent a lot of time overseas in British company; Her later experiences in France might have influenced her accent as well. As a child, she also had a Family Cook that hailed from New England. It would be worth noting where Julia Child’s childhood cook came from in New England… that might help clarify some of the accent.
We had a thread abouit Top Chef Miami Micah Edelstein’s accent that reminds me of this thread. It is also interesting to note that Micah has an English degree like Julia.
I recall an SNL skit – “Swivel Chair Mystery Theater” – where everybody talks with an exaggerated Northeastern upper-class accent.
i just figured she had the east coast boarding school accent. a lock jaw new england that could be pushed to old england easily. i was surprized to learn she was from california as she sounded very new england.
she did have an odd pitch to her voice for her size. her size gave her voice a lot of volume and depth, but a really odd high note. from her size you would expect more of a kathleen turner low note.
she does sound remarkably like eleanor roosevelt.
the best part of cooking with someone ( or alone narrating for the fur faces) is doing wacky julia child impressions!
Does anyone remember the time on Letterman (back when David Letterman was still worth watching) when Julia Child was a guest, along with Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir (Grateful Dead)?
It was an exceptionally odd pairing, and Letterman was cracking wise the whole night, asking Julia about eating Czechoslovakian angel dust and following the Grateful Dead around in a rasta VW microbus…
Julia took all this king-high weirdness in stride, and was a good sport; I have ever since been a fan.
(and now in rememberance of Jerry and Julia, I am off to grak some rhino tranquilizer, washed down with a good bottle of bordeaux)
Ignorance fought here as well. Weird accent. . .no worse than some New England accents though, I suppose.
If you think of Lovey Howell on Gilligan’s Island, that makes a lot of sense.
In spite of the smog, inland heat, and little if any access to ocean depending on traffic, there are still areas of extravagantly large, traditional houses there as well as in adjacent San Marino. I suspect if you wanted to look for old money in Southern California, you’d find a lot of it in Pasadena.
I started a thread about the “upper crust” accent (citing Margaret Dumont and Eleanor Roosevelt as examples) a while back, and Dopers cited the Locust Valley Lockjaw.
I don’t think that describes Julia Child (or Magaret Dumont or Eleanor Roosevelt), but it certainly does other mentioned in this thread.
Julia Child graduated from Smith College in Northampton Massachusetts in 1934. It may have affected her accent, as has been pondered about the whole New England thing? Is there a womens Ivy League College accent?
Yes, REALLY! The Kennedys? Give them a couple more generations and they can be “parvenus.” You KNOW how Joe Kennedy got his money, right? :eek:
ETA: OOOOH! My magical 15,000!
With the advent of sound, Hollywood felt that the lead actors should not have a regional American accent. (unless you were a comedy relief) They felt this would make the movies easier to sell nation wide.
There were voice and diction coaches readily available.
Moses supposes his toeses are roses, but Moses supposes erroneously,
I’m not saying that people starting losing their accents because of Hollywood. People ‘in society’ always spoke with that type of accent. If you wanted to enter society, then you had voice and diction classes.
Not quite. William F. Buckley had nine siblings and none of them spoke with the same accent he had, which was an odd admixture borne of his unusual childhood education. His family lived in Mexico when he was a very young child and Spanish was his first language. (His son has said that Spanish was the chief language used in his father’s Manhattan duplex, due in part to the fact that so many of their hired help were Spanish themselves.) Then Buckley spent a short time in Connecticut before moving to France, whereupon French became his second language. He didn’t begin formal training in English until he was seven years old and beginning several years of Catholic education in England.
So technically, Spanish was Buckley’s first language, French was his second and British English was his third, although his English accent did come to be influenced somewhat by his eventual upper-class life at his parents’ home in Sharon, Connecticut. His was a unique and hypnotic accent that was the result of wide and varied educational and environmental experiences rather than one attributable to upper-class, east-coast American life.
All of which stands to make what was his extraordinarily rich vocabulary all the more impressive, IMHO.