According to wiktionary, these are the examples of -th "Used to form nouns of quality from adjectives. (no longer productive except jocular coinages)":
As a native English speaker there are words there that I've never seen and others were I would not know the original adjective. In wiktionary, you can click them see etymology, here https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-th#English
For example, apparently "filth" comes from the equivalent of "foul".
> As a foreigner I’m curious what the original adjective was for filth, length, ruth, wealthy, wrath
Looked the ones I didn't know the adjectives of up on wiktionary: foul, long, rue, possibly the archaic "wele" (but there are multiple etymological paths), and basically "wrath" but pronounced slightly differently going back thousands of years.
That's probably the reason for eliminating the written word. Saying "width and heighth" still sounds pretty reasonable (I have to stop myself from saying it), and I hear it all the time.
"slowth" is how David Attenborough pronounces it, and if anyone could be considered an authoritative English language expert on the common (non-latin) names of mammals, he would be it...
I was joking around with a student from England who is attending the college I'm consulting with right now. He is trying to figure out a future career. He wants to do something with media. I was throwing out really stupid ideas to get him to laugh. Then I Said, "why not replace Attenborough?"
The joking immediately stopped and he stared at me deadpan and said "not funny. No one could do that."
Yeah, we Brits are very proud of him, a real one of a kind national treasure. But we're also now painfully aware that Sir David is quite, quite old. Born in 1926 apparently. And there really isn't an obvious candidate to fill the gap once he does go.
After having had that voice on well-produced nature content for my entire life, I find most other nature-documentary voice-overs quite jarring. Even the British ones (Tom Hiddlestone had a go recently IIRC).
I will say though that I enjoyed Paul Rudd doing ‘Secrets of the Octopus’. Didn't overplay it, just did a really good job IMHO.
Tangentially, for the Attenborough fans here, I highly recommend you check out "Zoo Quest in Colour" if you haven't already: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03qxfsg
"Zoo Quest" is his first nature documentary series, from 1954(!), very different in style from today's nature shows. I remember as a child seeing clips of it when it was already ancient history -- grainy black-and-white footage of a very young and athletic Attenborough practically wrestling a lizard.
It was originally broadcast before colour TV existed in the UK (funnily enough, Attenborough was the controller at BBC 2 when they pioneered colour broadcasting) so everyone assumed it had been shot in black and white. But in 2016 someone discovered that much of the original footage was colour film. The restored version is absolutely gorgeous.
After having had that voice on well-produced nature content for my entire life, I find most other nature-documentary voice-overs quite jarring.
Yes! I think it's not just familiarity, what makes him definitive is a combination of factors: fantastic voice and deep domain knowledge and his very clear love and enthusiasm for nature.
You can get an actor with a great voice, Morgan Freeman or Tom Hiddleston or whoever, but you always know they're just reading from a script and probably don't know any more about the animals than you do.
And there are other experts with a knack for presenting, people like Mary Beard, but you can't just transfer that knowledge to a completely different subject area.
uh oh I can see where this is going given the current technology trends… I wonder if his family can patent the voice or get royalties from a reproduction
I have lots of time for well-meaning parody though, such as this one about the majestic Australian White Ibis (otherwise known as the bin chicken) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4dYWhkSbTU
