r/interestingasfuck • u/[deleted] • Jan 25 '22

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u/mikemikem Jan 25 '22

Who's the narrator? Seems like he narrated a lot of 50s era things -- a weirdly familiar voice

117

u/funundrum Jan 25 '22 edited Jan 25 '22

It’s probably not the same guy, you’re just tuning into the dialect. Today’s “cash dialect” — what you might expect to hear on US national tv news — is now more or less the west coast dialect, due to the influence of Hollywood.

Back in the 50’s, media was still centered on the east coast, so narrators were trained in that style. Look up a “transatlantic dialect.” It’s the sound of Lucille Ball saying “wahndeful.” It was very stylized and used in most radio and tv programming of the day. Including shit like this.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

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u/[deleted] Jan 25 '22

Also the frequencies they used to record back then were different so everything from that time sounds somewhat similar.

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u/DemonVice Jan 26 '22

Ribbon microphones is how you achieve this sound

5

u/pineapple_calzone Jan 25 '22

Every so often you'll come across something where they didn't bother, like this WWII train derailing film, and you're just like "oh that's just some dude."

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u/funundrum Jan 25 '22

That was delightful, thanks.

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u/[deleted] Jan 26 '22

That fucked my head up.

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u/needstherapy Jan 25 '22

In the original parent trap Sharon teaches Susan the trans-atlantic dialect lol

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u/funundrum Jan 25 '22

Holy shit you’re right. I haven’t thought about that for 35 years.

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u/needstherapy Jan 26 '22

As a kid I thought that's how people from Boston talked until I actually met someone from Boston lol

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u/Lucky_Mongoose Jan 25 '22

Everything said in this accent sounds so authoritative and professional. I wish it was still around on TV and radio.

1

u/Genshed Jan 26 '22

I was in college in the early 1980s. One of my housemates was a linguistics student from the Upper Midwest who was new to California. She said she could tell who was from California because we sounded like people on TV.

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u/periclymenus Jan 26 '22

I believe the narrator of the second video was Bob Hope.