As a native French speaker, here is my answer to the meta regarding Raleigh’s accent being a result of his French upbringing.
While open to the idea that his multicultural heritage may play a part in the way he speaks, a lot of the claims regarding how French (European French) would struggle with pronouncing certain words or names, especially those beginning with an “R”, are sadly completely false.
And while I admit to being French Canadian v.s. French European, we Quebecers (note Robert Maillet is French Canadian, but Acadian), grow up being highly exposed to European French movies, singers, artists and so forth. In the ’80s (and’90s a bit) a lot of the American movies were also dubbed by French actors (“Suce-le mon paf maousse salope demi-selle à la con” from “Stand by Me” still traumatizes me to this day).
I also dated a young Parisian for 2 years, spent quite a bit of time traveling in France. And I have many French European (French, Belgian, etc.) friends both living in Montreal and abroad.
I am therefore highly familiar with a few French European accents and dialects.
Names starting with “R” are NOT an issue, trust me on this one.
Also, a lot of the kids growing up in bilingual French / English-speaking families do just fine. They do not require one of the parents to stop talking one of the languages because their abilities to properly speak French or English becomes threatened.
I’m not saying it can never happen, or that it wouldn’t be an issue for someone growing up in Alaska where multiculturalism maybe could be singled out and mocked (don’t know why it would be an issue but hey! I’m not from Alaska!).
But here are two testimonies from people having grown up in English-French families.
1. Grégory Charles, a very prolific and successful Quebec actor, singer, and songwriter whose mother is French Canadian and father is from Trinidad. If you are curious to hear him sing, this is probably one of my favorite songs from him.
2. Anne-Marie Withenshaw, best known here as a “Musique Plus” (our version of “MTV” and “Much Music”) VJ and TV/radio host.
While Grégory was raised initially a bit more in French (since he lived in a French-speaking province); Anne-Marie really makes the point that her mother spoke to her only in French, and her father only in English, to allow her to learn both languages.
A bit like these two parents have chosen to do (with the father having learned his own French in France).
Also if you guys are interested more about the subject of multilingualism (there are a lot of different cultures living together here as well, it’s not rare that people will speak Greek, Italian, Spanish, Lebanese, Creole, as well as French and/or English).
This may be relevant since the Beckets (Raleigh for sure as least), are very much multilingual given his unique upbringing.
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