Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/02/28/video-how-old-folks-talked-in.html
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Mostly face to face?
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there were a lot less cocksuckahs in the exchange than I’d imagined.
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I wonder how much of this has to do with sound recording characteristics of the time. I feel like there are no mids or lows…
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Richard Feynman still talked like that in his New Zealand lectures in the 1970s.
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I thought it was interesting how, as recently as 1949, some Orleanians* still had French (or at least, French-sounding) accents.
*(in this case, Sidney Bechet’s brother Leonard)
http://research.culturalequity.org/get-audio-detailed-recording.do?recordingId=13129
EDIT: I haven’t spent a lot of time in New Orleans, but I do not recall hearing this accent there, either.
I love that we’ve had sunglasses, even brightly colored ones, for centuries.
My cousins near Baton Rouge (born well after 1949!) all have a French lilt to their English. They are not as thick-accented as Dr. Bechet in that audio clip, but it is along those same lines. They especially let it hang out around family. Many, many people who live in the Mississippi river delta still talk with that thick Creole drawl. But they also know how to talk like a straight-up American when they want to.
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I’m not an expert but I read some comments from those claiming to be that is the reason the voices sound higher than you would expect and higher than they actually were.
"I’d like to send this letter to the Prussian Consulate in Siam by aeromail. Am I too late for the 4:30 auto-gyro?”
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This is so cool.
Gotta love the man who gives his age as 110 and gets some smart-alek asking “in the shade?”. I’m keeping that one in my pocket for next time I meat an older guy.
Edit: Or at least I assume he was giving his age. They could have been talking about the weather.
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I was expecting
Pitch is one thing, but I wonder if the over-arching intonation of each sentence does seem characteristic of the time. It’s like you need to wind up the emphasis of every sentence to make your point more dramatically. This may have been a little bit akin to posing for a photograph though, and maybe if there was no microphone, they would have spoken with less drama.
There seems to be a subtle connection between longevity, knitting and facial hair.
Maybe the hipsters are on to something after all?
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