credit: telegraph.co.uk |
What I want to take a look at is the meaning of his surname 'Attenborough". It actually consists of three separate words: at - ten - borough. Atten is Middle English for 'at the' and the Old English word for borough was burȝ (with various spellings: burg, burh, ...). A burȝ was a fort or a fortified mansion, so 'atten burȝ' denotes someone who lives at the / near the fortified mansion.
His pronunciation style displays interesting features which I will dwell upon in a future blog.
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