Sir David Attenborough's unusual intonation.

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]What does a 100-year-old English Homo sapiens sound like? Well, this is what I'll be exploring today in a special episode of the pod.

[00:00:13]Of course, I am talking about Sir David Attenborough, who turns 100 years old today.

[00:00:21]It's fair to say that Attenborough's voice is possibly the most recognizable living one from England in the world today.

[00:00:30]But, it's also one of the strangest.

[00:00:33]As I copy him, I'm doing many things, especially with intonation, that I and most English speakers would not do normally. More on that in a minute.

[00:00:47]But first, I want to go back 50 years.

[00:00:50]Back in the '60s and '70s, Attenborough didn't have this extremely unique way of narrating. He was more involved in behind-the-scenes programming and commissioning at the BBC, especially on the then-new BBC Two channel.

[00:01:04]If you listen to him in the '60s or '70s, he sounds very similar to many of the BBC presenters around at the time, like David Frost, for example.

[00:01:14]It was when he left his job as commissioner that he went on to film and narrate the nature programs he is most well known for, starting with Life on Earth in 1979.

[00:01:26]And this is when he started developing his unique narration style.

[00:01:31]So, back to present-day Attenborough. If you listen to his most recent BBC show, Secret Garden, his vocal delivery is truly unique. He has a way of making everything and anything sound interesting.

[00:01:51]So, how does he do it?

[00:01:54]Well, I think there are two elements that he uses extremely effectively, tone and chunking or tonality.

[00:02:03]He tends to separate his sentences into many different parts, often using a wide range of contrasting tones and pitches.

[00:02:16]He is especially adept at switching between high heads and low heads where he has a global drop in his pitch.

[00:02:25]This creates a constant sort of tension between the expectation created by his higher passages and the resolution and sometimes intrigue reached in his lower ones.

[00:02:39]He uses all three conventional tones, the rise, the fall rise and the fall consistently to great effect. But he also uses the rise fall.

[00:02:53]This pattern is unique in English intonation as it nearly always sounds over the top or strange.

[00:03:02]But when Attenborough uses it, it just sounds fascinating.

[00:03:08]Compare "The squirrel consumed an acorn." which is a trademark fall.

[00:03:14]Now, "The squirrel consumed an acorn."

[00:03:18]with separate units and a rise fall in the second, it sounds much more exciting.

[00:03:25]I can't think of any narrators who use more variety in their tone than David Attenborough, but for all of his diversity in intonation, his accent is actually very conventional. It's received pronunciation, typical of presenters, especially in the first three quarters of the previous century in England. Of course, there is one other very famous Englishman who speaks with an RP accent and he has also been in the news very much recently. I'm talking of course about King Charles.

[00:03:54]But whilst both men have similar accents in a phonological sense, their use of tone is very different.

[00:04:01]King Charles relies very heavily on mid-falling patterns.

[00:04:05]He recently quoted Oscar Wilde to the US Congress using the following tone.

[00:04:11]We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except of course language.

[00:04:18]Now, I imagine David Attenborough delivering that line somewhat differently.

[00:04:23]We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except of course language.

[00:04:33]Same accent, different tone.

[00:04:35]Of course, David and Charles are really the last of that breed of English men who grew up around RP. Soon, it will be a relic of the past. Well, I say soon, but I thoroughly expect to be analyzing David Attenborough's evolving accent on his 150th birthday. That's if I'm still here, of course, in 2076. I'm sure Sir David will be.

[00:04:58]That's all for this episode. Thank you for listening.

[00:05:01]If you have any questions for David, send them in to the BBC.

[00:05:07]And if you have any questions for me, you can get in touch on the socials or via the pronunciation studio website.