# What is Julia Child's accent? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 13, 2009, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-julia-childs-accent/506288 "2009-08-13T14:22:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BKReporter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e7dd6/32.png) [@BKReporter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BKReporter)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2009, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-julia-childs-accent/506288/1 "2009-08-13T14:22:04Z")
She was born and raised in Pasadena, Calif., but I’ve never met anyone from California who talks like her. To me it sounds like Jon Stewart’s impression of Queen Elizabeth (helllllooooo). So what is her accent? Have you ever met anyone who talked like her? ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2009, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-julia-childs-accent/506288/2 "2009-08-13T14:36:18Z")
Pasadena was a very posh area when Julia Child was born, and she was born in a well-to-do family. I have the impression that at the time the wealthy and educated placed special emphasis on elocution. So I would call her accent ‘Upper-class American’, and that it was enhanced by her high voice. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2009, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-julia-childs-accent/506288/3 "2009-08-13T14:45:45Z")
Make that ‘Upper-class, Early-20th Century American’. ---
**Author:** ![Hazle\_Weatherfield](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Hazle\_Weatherfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hazle_Weatherfield)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2009, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-julia-childs-accent/506288/4 "2009-08-13T15:21:09Z")
Seriously, for the longest time, I thought she was British! I couldn’t believe that she wasn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2009, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-julia-childs-accent/506288/5 "2009-08-13T15:38:47Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > Make that ‘Upper-class, Early-20th Century American’. Right. For comparison (and another woman who had a similar accent, see [Eleanor Roosevelt](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rDoS7XErcw&feature=related). ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2009, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-julia-childs-accent/506288/6 "2009-08-13T17:29:16Z")
> [@Hazle\_Weatherfield](#): > > Seriously, for the longest time, I thought she was British! I couldn’t believe that she wasn’t. I didn’t know she wasn’t until 10 seconds ago. She may just have had a made up aristocratic accent like the Kennedys. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2009, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-julia-childs-accent/506288/7 "2009-08-13T17:33:12Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > I didn’t know she wasn’t until 10 seconds ago. She may just have had a made up aristocratic accent like the Kennedys. Same here. I had no idea she was American until this thread. Go figure. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2009, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-julia-childs-accent/506288/8 "2009-08-13T17:39:31Z")
The Kennedy’s had an aristocratic accent? There used to be an east-coast upper-class accent that has almost completely vanished. William F. Buckley, Katherine Hepburn, FDR, and others are examples. It was influenced by english accents, but it was it’s own thing, and marked the person as born and bred to the elite. People without it might have money and power and connections, but they weren’t a member of the club. That’s all gone now, and members of the elite tend to speak newscaster english. Compare Christopher Buckley’s “normal american” accent to his dad’s idiolect. Julia Child was one of the last people to grow up speaking that way, but her idiolect went off in a whole different direction. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2009, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-julia-childs-accent/506288/9 "2009-08-13T17:41:33Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > Make that ‘Upper-class, Early-20th Century American’. For examples on film … well, old film, of course … you could try Margaret Dumont in a Marx Brothers movie. I don’t think she sounds like Julia Child but to our ears, it sounds refined and sort of foreign. Jon Stewart’s Queen Elizabeth voice sounds like one of the voices Robin Williams tries while playing in drag in _Mrs. Doubtfire_. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Knig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/cdc98d/32.png) [@Typo\_Knig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Knig)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2009, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-julia-childs-accent/506288/10 "2009-08-13T17:44:04Z")
The first time we saw [Dame Edna Everage](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dame_Edna_Everage) on TV, **Mama Zappa** said “Oh my God! Julia Child is a _man_!!” 😃 I knew one woman whose accent was a very mild version of Julia Child’s, but I don’t know where that woman grew up. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2009, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-julia-childs-accent/506288/11 "2009-08-13T17:49:08Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > William F. Buckley, Katherine Hepburn, FDR, and others are examples. I think you can add George Plimpton to that list, too. ---
**Author:** ![BKReporter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e7dd6/32.png) [@BKReporter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BKReporter)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2009, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-julia-childs-accent/506288/12 "2009-08-13T17:50:29Z")
I guess Barbara Walters would be another person whose accent sounds quasi-British, even though she’s American. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2009, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-julia-childs-accent/506288/13 "2009-08-13T17:52:29Z")
> [@BKReporter](#): > > I guess Barbara Walters would be another person whose accent sounds quasi-British, even though she’s American. She speaks that way to overcome a speech impediment, though, so it’s not really the same. I don’t know much about her background. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2009, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-julia-childs-accent/506288/14 "2009-08-13T18:18:19Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > She may just have had a made up aristocratic accent like the Kennedys. It depends on your definition of ‘made up’. As I said, and as others have cited, there was a particular accent prevalent among the elite. ---
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2009, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-julia-childs-accent/506288/15 "2009-08-13T18:19:23Z")
deleted ---
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2009, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-julia-childs-accent/506288/16 "2009-08-13T18:27:23Z")
The Kennedy accent is Boston; but possibly an upper-class variation thereof. ---
**Author:** ![gwendee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/35a633/32.png) [@gwendee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gwendee)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2009, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-julia-childs-accent/506288/17 "2009-08-13T18:43:48Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > For examples on film … well, old film, of course … you could try Margaret Dumont in a Marx Brothers movie. I don’t think she sounds like Julia Child but to our ears, it sounds refined and sort of foreign. I thought of Pheobe Dinsmore, the Diction and Elocution coach in Singin’ In the Rain. My grandmother and her sisters, whose family wasn’t even close to being as affluent as Child’s all had such lessons, along with instrumental and vocal music lessons, and dancing lessons. We used to have play tea parties and we (my grandmother, great-aunt, sister, and I) all had “great lady” alter egos and we spoke in a similar way. She often shared tips from those lessons, or a recital piece memorized 45 years earlier. One set of my grandparents grew up with 2 different regional accents. They were very conscious of not wanting to sound like “rubes” or “hicks”. They carefully eliminated the accents. They didn’t go as far as adopting the Katherine Hepburn speech pattern, but definitely equated their original accents with sounding less refined. I don’t think they arrived at that conclusion without some help from the surrounding culture. ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2009, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-julia-childs-accent/506288/18 "2009-08-13T18:58:43Z")
> [@Hazle\_Weatherfield](#): > > Seriously, for the longest time, I thought she was British! I couldn’t believe that she wasn’t. Too true! About 15 years ago, I was watching TV with my mother-in-law. The show featured [Dame Edna](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dame_Edna_Everage). And I shouted “That’s it!!! Julia Child is a MAN!!!”. 😉 Having posted this, I see that my spouse just posted the identical anecdote 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Lantern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d26b3c/32.png) [@Lantern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lantern)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2009, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-julia-childs-accent/506288/19 "2009-08-13T19:03:21Z")
[Mid-Atlantic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_English) is the usual term for the accent being discussed here. Perhaps Kelsey Grammer is one of the few prominent contemporary examples. ``` Why it's died down is an interesting question. I would imagine it was primarily nurtured in elite private schools which are still around. Probably the growing influence of mass media over the course of the 20th century as well as a steady increase in social mobility played a big role in its decline. ``` ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2009, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-julia-childs-accent/506288/20 "2009-08-13T19:28:48Z")
I always heard it as aristocratic Bostonian - not Irish Bostonian like the Kennedys. You know, the Cabots speak only to the Lodges, and the Lodges speak only to God. That might have come from the fact her show came from WGBH, but I lived in Boston for four years and didn’t change my mind. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-julia-childs-accent/506288.md?page=2)