Fry's Planet Word (2011–…): Season 1, Episode 1 - Babel - full transcript

Hello.

You know, just saying that one word
is one of the most complex

and extraordinary
operations we know.

70 muscles and half a billion
brain cells go into it.

What's more, pretty much anyone who
can speak English over the age of two

can do it without even
having to think.

The story of language is surely
one of the greatest stories we have.

In this series, I'm going
to explore language

in all its amazing complexity,
variety and ingenuity.

Our species perhaps could live
together without language

but it wouldn't be
what we call the human species.



I'm going to try to understand
how we learn it,

how we write it...

Oh, my goodness. This is magical!

..how we sometimes lose it...

Oh, my Lord!

... how it defines us
to the very core of our being...

Ba, ba-ba-da-ba!
Ra-ba-dum-bum-ba-dum.

... why it can make us laugh and cry
and tear our hair out

or inspire us.

To sleep...no more.

It's what I treasure
above all else.

It is what makes me ME.

In this programme, I'm going to take
you on a journey

to find out why we are
the only species to have developed



this miraculous gift of language.

We'll see the individual miracle of how
we acquire language at an early age...

... and celebrate language as one
of the most marvellous tools

humanity has.

A continual process of
innovation and creation.

That really hurts, actually.

Fry's Planet Word. Episode 1
"Babel".

To begin my exploration of language,

I've come here to north-east Africa,

close to where our species
first evolved.

There are around 7,000 languages
in use on our planet today,

some spoken by a mere handful of people,
others by more than a billion.

It's a surprisingly short time,
only about 50,000 years

since mankind graduated
from uggs and grunts and growls

into a linguistic flowering.

♪

These are the Turkana,
a pastoral nomad tribe

who are about as far away from me
and my tribe as you could find.

♪

But one thing that I do share
with them is language.

Turkana is as sophisticated
and complicated a tongue

as ancient Greek, and although I
can't understand a word,

it actually works much the same
as English does.

There are nouns to name things,

adjectives to describe them

and verbs to explain

what you can do with them.

Every language provides an amazingly
rich and adaptable set of tools

that mankind shares the world over -

and which every Turkana child
imbibes with their mother's milk.

And how old is a baby
when they start to speak?

Two years?

Yeah, two years.

That means winter, summer.
Winter, summer.

- I see, winter, summer. Two winters,
two summers. - Yeah.

Those are the first words. "Father,
mother." It's the same everywhere.

What's really amazing
is that these children,

even the smallest of them,
within a very short space of time

are able to grasp the full
complexities and all the phonetics

and all the metaphors

and all the remarkable depths that
the Turkana language is capable of.

It's no more effort for them
to acquire a full language

than it is for them to grow hair.

It just happens,

and yet it's the most complex piece
of brain processing

that we know of on the planet.

It's a kind of miracle.

Miracle. You are a miracle.

All over the world,

from the cradle of man in
East Africa to a hutong in China,

this same miraculous process

takes place over the course
of just a few years.

This is Ruby, who lives in London.

Ruby.

Ruby is 15 months old
and over the next year,

we'll be tracking her development
from umms and ahs

to recognisable speech.

Say "ta".

But how do we learn language?

And what exactly is the difference
between language and communication?

After all, the natural world is an
absolute cacophony of communication.

Birds singing to greet the dawn,

meerkats whistling to each other
to warn off predators.

Elephants trumpeting
to attract a mate,

dolphins clicking to point out food.

The closer you get to us humans
on the evolutionary tree,

the more sophisticated
their communication seems to become.

Monkeys have a whole grammar
of whoops, howls and calls

that signal everything
from fear to joy to love.

But it's still a long way from this
to language as our species knows it.

It's not that we haven't
looked for an amazing talking ape,

it's just that so far
we haven't found one.

It's so closely related and yet
so completely different.

I think it is language that's the thing
that's most different about us.

If I trained hard, I probably could
bounce from tree to tree,

but you could train all your life
and you could never say,

"Betty had a bit of bitter butter,
put it in her batter

and made her batter bitter,
then Betty took a bit of better butter

and put it in her bitter batter
and made her bitter batter better."

If you could,
you'd be the wonder of the age.

So how did we manage
to develop language,

when other primates have not?

I've come to the Max Planck Institute
for Evolutionary Biology in Leipzig,

where they study
a number of large primates.

I'm here to meet one of the world's
foremost evolutionary linguists,

Michael Tomasello.

There's a general assumption
that we all have

that language is one of the things

that separates human beings
from all other animals,

but that maybe animals
like the great apes,

our closest relatives,
with whom we share so much DNA,

are sort of on a continuum
on the way to language.

That maybe they can
be taught language.

Does your research show
that any of this is likely?

Well, in evolution,
everything is on a continuum

but they're a pretty far step away
on that continuum, I would say.

So their vocalisations
are pretty hard wired

and before you can get to something
like language, you obviously

have to be able to produce sounds
when you want to and not when you don't.

So, if food is coming,
they make this noise

or if a predator is coming,
they make that noise.

They're very much tied
to their emotions.

The vocalisations go
with emotional states.

If they're frightened, they scream.

If they're excited about food,
they hoot.

If they're grieving someone
after a long time,

they give a kind of submissive
pant-grunt.

And so their vocalisations
are fairly stereotypical,

with only a little bit
of flexibility.

Well, no-one can doubt
that animals communicate.

You can see our closest cousins
here, primates like us,

communicating like Billy-o
in all kinds of ways.

But I don't think
we can call that language.

One of the problems they face,
even sophisticated primates, -

is that they simply don't have
the mechanical apparatus

necessary for speech.

They don't have the control
over breathing,

the complex facial muscles that
allow such extraordinary sounds

that we can make,
and I'm making now,

though goodness knows,
they can try and compensate.

Nor do they have the larynx or vocal
cords in the right position for speech,

but they can make signs.

Maybe sign language is possible
amongst primates.

That's worth
thinking about, surely. Eh?

You can't JUST fart, surely.
That's better!

Since the 1960s, there have been
numerous attempts to do just that -

trying to teach apes language
using sign language.

Perhaps the most famous
of these experiments

was conducted at Columbia
University, where a chimpanzee,

cheekily named Nim Chimpsky -

a pun on the great linguist
Noam Chomsky -

was brought up like a human child

in an attempt to mirror a human
child's linguistic development.

Nim became quite adept at signing,

but never grasped
how to use grammar.

Around the same time,
a three-year-old chimp named Lana

was the subject of an experiment
in Atlanta.

"Lana lives in a transparent
plastic cage with a computer".

"She operates the machine
through a language of symbols".

"The symbols have to be pressed
in a specific order

for the desired
result to be achieved".

"Please, machine,
give piece of apple, full stop."

Although this communication
seems sophisticated,

it's not using language
in the way that we do.

Chimps have the ability to construct
very basic sentences,

but they don't
initiate conversations.

There is no linguistic creativity.

"Please, machine,
give chocolate, full stop."

They're doing it only
to request things.

They're doing it imperatively,

or in response to
some demand from them,

and not with one another
in their natural state.

So, pointing, for them, is not about

sharing information as much as it is
about getting what you want.

So, what is your best guess,
based on your research,

as to how human beings separated?

Why and when they acquired
this difference,

this ability to project their
personality on to their fellows,

to co-operate and use language
as a social, co-operative medium

in a way quite different
from others?

I think the initial step
was that we ended up

having to collaborate
in order to produce food.

Something in the ecology changed
that meant

that we had to put our heads
together to be able to acquire food.

And working together
towards a common goal

means we have to be co-operative
in sharing the food at the end,

we have to co-ordinate our
movements when we do that

and it puts pressure on for
communication,

because I think the first major
function of human,

uniquely human communication,

was to co-ordinate
collaborative activities.

For simpler types of hunting,
gestures and grunts may suffice,

but the pursuit
of more elusive quarry

demanded a more complex
system of communication.

When the ancestors of these Wauja
of the Xingu River in Brazil

first decided to hunt
some alligators,

the whole village needed to work
together to catch their prey.

So, somewhere along the line,

cries and grunts turned into
words and sentences.

Clearer communication
brought other benefits.

Increased efficiency
created more free time

to spend together as a community.

As language blossomed, experiences
could be shared and stories told.

♪

♪

♪

♪

So language gave us the power
to hunt ever more efficiently

and with greater co-operation,

but it also granted us completely
unseen new benefits.

We were able
to talk about the past

and to project our lives
into the future.

This transmission of knowledge
across the generations

is what gave us,
ultimately, civilisation itself.

Language became the foundation
of human society and culture

and for me, thinking about it,
using it, playing with it,

has always been one of
the greatest passions of my life.

To you, language is more than
a means of communication?

Of course it is, of course it is,
of course it is, of course it is,

Language is my mother, my father,
my husband, my brother,

my sister, my whore,
my mistress, my checkout girl.

Language is a complimentary moist
lemon-scented cleansing square,

or handy freshen-up wipette.

Language is the breath of God.

If our changing environment first
forced us to learn language,

what did that language
then do to us?

Did it change us physiologically?

Elsewhere in Leipzig's
Max Planck Institute,

leading geneticist Dr Wolfgang Enard

is unravelling the mysteries
of the human genome.

His work is providing
some tantalising clues

as to how our brains became
hard-wired for language.

Wolfgang, one of the most important
things that science can discover

is where speech comes from.

Where this extraordinary ability
of human beings to have evolved

and to process language, the thing
that marks us out perhaps more than

anything else from other animals,
where it comes from.

There are all kinds of theories, but
a recent addition to those theories

has been this mysterious
two-letter gene difference

that you and your colleagues
have discovered.

- Can you tell me about it? It's
called FOXPT - is that right? - FOXP2.

Yes, that's how gene names are.
They are strange letters and numbers.

FOXP2 is currently the biggest foot
we have in this door.

What the genetic make-up is and
how we evolved language

and how language or
speech, at least, functions.

The FOXP2 gene is what's called
a forkhead box protein,

found on human chromosome 7.

All mammals have it and, in fact,

there are only two amino acids
different between ours and the chimps'

and just three between us and mice.

Its connection to language was
realised when it was discovered

that humans with a mutation in the
gene can have extreme speech disorders.

We need to somehow study that
and the clue to that -

or the only possibility we really
have to study that - is to look in mice.

If you can make mice that have
the human version of the FOXP2 gene,

and then see how they compare
to a normal mouse. Litter mates.

- These are pups that have
the gene in? - Yes, yes.

So they... They carry
the human version of FOXP2.

Mice can have litters
every few months,

so the study effectively follows
an evolutionary process on fast forward.

By closely monitoring these little
creatures' squeals and squeaks,

Enard is already spotting some small
but significant changes.

They have some sudden features,
especially in their brain,

but also in their vocalisation.

Really?

Slight differences and we hope these
slight differences give us some clue

to where and what actually changed
in human FOXP2 evolution.

And you would hope, of course, to
discover not just new sound waves

or new frequencies at which
they're communicating,

but maybe even
an effect in the communication,

which is to say quicker mating
or passing of news of food,

or who knows? Or is that being far too
optimistic about the possibilities?

I think that would be asking
too much. The mouse would not...

start talking.

- No, they're not going from squeaking
to speaking. - I mean

- they're still a mouse, right?
- Exactly.

So sadly, despite the fact
that Enard's test subjects

have been dubbed "the singing mice,"
there doesn't seem to be any chance

they will evolve into
something like these old friends:

♪ We will wash it, we will splosh it ♪

♪ Bring the bucket and mop, mop, mop ♪

♪ We will dust it, we will brush it ♪

♪ We will polish its top, top, top ♪

♪ We will polish its top, top, top. ♪

- Do you think FOXP2 has more secrets
to give up for you? - Absolutely.

I mean, er, we understand so little
in terms of what it really does

because, after all,
the brain is a pretty complex organ.

How certain molecular changes
relate to physiological changes

in the brain, behavioural changes,
it is a hard problem.

Of course, scientifically appealing
and revealing as it might be,

to experiment with FOXP2
on primates

would be ethically unthinkable.

But that hasn't stopped us
imagining what communicating

with our closest cousins
might be like.

- Getting the hang of it. Mind
the banisters, son. - I can't hold it, Dad.

Don't worry, son. I've shifted more
pianos than you've had hot dinners.

Coo-ee. Coo-ee, Mr Shifter.
Light refreshment?

Thank you most kindly, madam.

Oh, my!

One way of shifting it.

- Dad, do you know the piano's on my
foot? - You hum it, son, I'll play it.

Human.

Chimp.

Mm... Mouse.

And...

human.

If only it were that simple.

But we are, it seems, beginning
to unlock some of the mystery.

A few misplaced atoms on chromosome
7 was probably part of it,

causing some improved communication
during hunting,

which led to a better diet so that those
who had the gene had more children.

But exactly when and where
humankind first started to speak,

we'll never know.

But we certainly did learn to speak
and, frankly, ever since then,

we've never shut up.

As haven't you, I notice. Yes.

But absolutely none of that
would have been possible

without this exquisite thing, this glorious
three pounds of mushy grey matter

which differentiates us
from all other animals.

The human brain.

With this cauliflower-walnut-like mass

containing something like
100 billion neurons,

we're able to think our thoughts,
dream our dreams,

dredge the memory banks,
to translate them into words

and then get our bodies
actually to speak them.

The strange thing is,

we know more about the origins
and workings of the universe

than we do about the human brain.

It's mankind's final frontier.

So what do we actually know

about this language-producing
machine between our ears?

I'm off to have
a delve into my own brain.

At the University College London
Centre for Neuroimaging,

psychologists, brain boxes
and neurolinguists

have the very latest kit
to look into the grey matter.

- Ah, this looks like a little office.
- Control room.

It's through there, right? Oh, yes.

Yes, I've seen these on House
and things like that.

Dr Joe Devlin and Professor Cathy
Price are clinical psycholinguists,

whose work is focused on
how language works in the brain,

specialising in how strokes
affect language ability.

OK.

They're going to have my brain
scanned by MRI,

the magnetic resonance imaging
technique that allows scientists

to see which parts
of the brain are working,

lighting up areas
which are being stimulated,

in this case, while I'm speaking.

Magnetic resonance imaging.

It's what I'm undergoing
even as I speak.

An extraordinary technology
which allows one to view

areas of the brain and the activity
which they undergo

when performing certain tasks,

such as this rather self-reflexive
one of describing MRI.

Professor Price has now
analysed my scan results.

This is your brain here and this is
a model of the brain,

where we've superimposed
a summary of the activations

during different conditions.

It doesn't matter where
the human being is brought up

or how they have learned
to communicate.

The same set of regions
are involved.

It's like looking at bodies.

They're all made up of
the same components.

Anyone who learns to play
the piano will be taught to do it

the same way,
to use the same set of instruments.

When it comes to understanding

exactly how our brains work
in the language process,

we are still in the neurological
equivalent of the dark ages.

But looking at the images,

I can't help but wonder at how
much of my brain is involved in it.

Is my grey matter
saturated with language?

Language uses most of our brain

because it is integrating all of our
sensory sources,

all the different types of memory
that we can have

and then co-ordinating
how we respond to it.

And then everything we do
is then monitored by language,

so language then becomes an integral
part of our human nature.

I do feel that language
is what I am,

so what happened to the writer
Robert McCrum

is just the sort of thing
I would fear most.

15 years ago, a stroke left Robert
unable to walk or talk.

Language lived on inside him,
but he could not express it.

I had what's called a right-side
haemorrhagic infarct.

Goodness me.

Which is quite a bad one,

and I was paralysed
all the way down my left side.

The right goes to left in the brain,

so I was paralysed
and couldn't stand or do anything.

I was completely poleaxed.

The stroke took place in what's
called the basal ganglia.

It's very deep in the brain.

But I did have language,
and never lost...

I couldn't speak,
cos my mouth was all...

So the language was in your head?

The language was in my head but the
face was frozen, or half-frozen.

There was a nervous
two or three months

- when I wasn't sure
what I was going to get back. - Right.

As Robert recuperated, his brain
did an extraordinary thing.

New parts of it took over
to replace the burnt-out ones.

It rewired itself.

And although it's not
quite as easy as before,

Robert is now able once again
physically to verbalise his thoughts.

It's now believed that somewhere
between 50 and 80% of the brain

is involved in language processes.

Gradually, it's got better.

Even now, when I'm speaking to you
I still have to make an effort.

- There's a greater amount of
conscious production? - Absolutely.

So it's like someone who has to
walk by remembering how to use...

Have to remember to articulate
clearly and not to speak too quickly

and I have a slight - you probably
didn't get this or see this -

but there's probably a slight stammer,
particularly if I'm nervous.

Tiny things.

So language is clearly integral
to being human.

It's hard-wired into us
at a genetic level,

utilising every part of the brain.

Indeed, the brain will rewire itself
just to keep us speaking.

But how intrinsic -
how automatic - is language?

Is it like eating and sleeping or is
it, to some extent, a learned skill?

It's really a kind of
nature-versus-nurture question.

The kind of question that has

beguiled and fascinated scientists
and philosophers since time began.

It's not often that nature affords
us an opportunity to investigate.

In the midst of the craziness
of the French Revolution,

a young boy was discovered
in the forests

of the south-eastern Massif Central,

one of the wildest and
least inhabited regions in Europe.

It appeared that the boy had
been living alone,

and like an animal, for some years.

Feral children have fascinated
philosophers for centuries,

offering a window into human nature
untainted by society's strictures.

And in doing so, revealing how
language might be formed.

Finding a real-life feral child
was nothing short of sensational.

He was captured
and ended up in Paris

under the care of the innovative
doctor Jean Marc Itard,

who was working at the recently
established Institute for Deaf Mutes.

The boy, whom they named Victor,

having experienced almost nothing of
society and no education,

was considered
something of a blank slate.

Victor?

"Tu veux un peu de lait? Du lait?"

Most significantly, he was unable to
speak, suggesting that language

is not just genetic -
it needs to be learned from others.

"Doucement, doucement.
Pas si vite, pas si vite".

For the next five years,
Itard devoted himself to Victor.

He taught him how to eat,
how to use the toilet,

how to restrain his animal urges,

in particular with the female
inmates once he had reached puberty.

And of course, how to speak French.

Victor, Victor.

Va chercher la plume.
Va chercher la plume.

Victor's vocal cords, like any muscle
unused to exercise, needed training.

Just as a baby learns to babble,

so Victor started to learn
to articulate sounds.

Mar...

Mar-teau. Mar-teau. Mar-teau.

..teau.

Tres bien. Prends le pomme de terre.

Doucement, doucement. Pas si vite.

Le retrouve. Fort, comme ca. Direct.
Encore.

Despite remaining in Itard's care
until his death aged 42,

Victor never learned to talk.

The reasons why
were never established.

Perhaps it was a congenital defect
or psychological trauma,

or perhaps Victor simply started
to learn too late.

Oui. Tres bien, tres bien.

The trouble is, cases like Victor
make for messy scientific study

because, by definition, with all feral
children their backgrounds are unclear.

What seems certain is that there is
a window for language acquisition,

which closes round about
early puberty, say.

And after that it's much more difficult
to acquire language.

Of course we do, as we often
learn foreign languages

but, as most of us can testify,

it becomes a lot more difficult
as the brain loses plasticity.

One thing, though, is certain -
by the age of five,

most of us will have acquired
the gift of language.

To study this magical process,

Dr Deb Roy of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology

had cameras installed
throughout his house.

For three years, Dr Roy filmed
his son as he began to talk.

OK, water. Water.

Dr Roy's son was right on schedule.

At first, he spoke
in simple phonemes -

the "wahs" and "gahs".

By 18 months, he had progressed
to words and phrases.

After 24 months,
like most other children,

he was acquiring
ten new words a day.

And how is Ruby, the little girl
we met earlier in the film,

how is she doing?

Hello.

Come in.

- Who's that? Who said that noise?
- Poo.

It's a mixture of melody...

I've a horrible feeling my first
word might even have been "sorry".

- Baby's chair. - Baby's chair.
- Baby chair.

Baby chair. That's exactly right.

There is the baby's chair and both
the babies are on the chair now.

Today is actually her second birthday,
so quite literally she is two.

And she's not your first child.

So you've had the opportunity
to observe children learning,

acquiring, as I believe
the technical phrase is, language before.

- Yes. - And I suppose you are probably
more relaxed by the time it's the third one.

Well, yes, and also it's more funny,

because you kind of make it
more of a laugh rather than...

With your first, you're slightly watching
what everyone else's kids are doing -

to see when their language is coming,
is mine advanced, is mine behind?

Whereas with this one,
it doesn't matter.

You know it will come
whenever she's ready.

And she's got her siblings
to help her.

Well, yes, and to be quite annoying.

Because they are always trying to
get her to say all the bad stuff.

Of course they are.

Which is great, but it also means

she's not necessarily learning the
words you want her to learn.

My apple, thank you.

- Apple.
- Apple. Exactly.

From here on in,
Ruby's vocabulary grows day by day.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Hello.

Hello.

I... I...

..am...am...

..a...a...

..banana.
..bana-nana.

What is your name?

Mary.

No, what is your name?

Ruby.

Yes! Well done.

What is your name? Ruby.

It's wonderful watching
Ruby starting to speak.

I want to know more about how
children manage this miraculous process,

so I've come to
see a bit of a hero of mine -

the renowned academic and author,
Professor Steven Pinker.

I wondered if you could

explain to me what current thinking
might be about language acquisition.

Presumably, it needs society,
it needs encouraging.

Language, at a bare minimum,
needs words,

and the words have to be the same
words that everyone else is using.

If you had your own private language,

even if it were possible
for language

to spring up out of
the brain, it would be useless.

No-one would know or understand
a word you're saying.

So the child has to be attuned to
the words that are floating around

in the linguistic environment.

There also has to be some
kind of talent in the child's brain

that allows them
not just to parrot back

the exact words and
sentences they've heard,

it would be upsetting
if that's what your child did.

We expect children, right from the
beginning, to compose their own sentences.

To abstract the rules of combination,
the rules of grammar,

so that they can talk about
new events and new thoughts

and take the familiar words
but rearrange them in new sequences.

What's really amazing is that
with this gift of grammar,

we can go beyond forming
our own simple sentences

and begin to be creative
with language.

Even a young child can
come up with a sentence

that has never been uttered
in the history of their language?

Right from the beginning,
from the time at which children

first start putting words together,

some of those combinations are
clearly from their own creativity.

An example - a child whose hands
were covered with jam

and wanted mother to wash them.

Mother washed off the jam and
the child said, "All gone, sticky."

That doesn't correspond
to any adult English sentence,

but the child had those two words and had
the formula that put them in that order

to express the idea of
the passing of a state.

Imagine a piano keyboard.

88 keys, only 88, and yet hundreds of
new melodies, new tunes, new harmonies

are being composed on hundreds
of keyboards every day in Dorset alone.

Our language, tiger,

our language, hundreds of thousands
of available words,

frillions of legitimate new ideas,

so that I can say the following sentence
and be utterly sure that nobody

has ever said it before in the history
of human communication.

Hold the newsreader's nose squarely,
waiter,

or friendly milk
will countermand my trousers.

Perfectly ordinary words, but never
before put in that precise order.

A unique child
delivered of a unique mother.

A path-breaking way of
investigating how children

instinctively use grammar
was created in 1958

by a pioneering psycholinguist,
who I've come to meet today...

Jean Berko Gleason.

- Hello.
- This is Twyla.

Twyla. One of my favourites names.

- Twyla is a famous woman. - How old
are you, Twyla? - Four-and-a-half.

- Four-and-a-half! A good age.
- OK, Twyla, er, hi. - Hi.

I'm going to show you
some pictures, OK?

It's called the Wug test and Jean
still uses the original cards

- she designed half a century ago.
- This is a wag.

They show that even with nonsense
words they've never heard before,

children can use grammatical rules
that they've somehow absorbed.

- What are they?
You tell me. - Wugs.

- Say that louder. - Wugs.
- Wugs is great.

Very good.

OK.

This is a man who knows how to bing.
He is binging.

He did the same thing yesterday.

What did he do yesterday?
Yesterday, he...?

- Binged.
- Binged. Very nice.

- Yes. - Here is a man
who knows how to zib.

So what is he doing? He is...?

Zib...

- Zibbing. - Zibbing!
- Zibbing! Very good.

What would you call a man
whose job is to zib?

He has to do it every day,
his job is to zib. So he is a...?

- Zibber.
- Mmm!

Very, very, very good.

Is there any evidence as to how many
times a child who's right in the flush

of language acquisition needs to hear
someone... not correct them, exactly...

they say, "I think that..."
"Oh, you thought it, did you?"

But the amount of speech that parents
provide for their kids at home,

before they get to school,
is crucial,

absolutely crucial.
All the research has shown that...

hearing a lot of language, and getting
the opportunity to talk in different ways,

really is the kind of insurance you would
want for your kids to be successful.

So actually trying to coach them,
or correct them,

- is irrelevant in your estimation?
- I think so.

I think coaching... But, reading
the books and talking to them

and listening to what they say,
and giving them

the opportunity to engage in different
kinds of linguistic experiences,

in other words, having them
tell you what they did, narrative,

but having them describe something.

A lot of different genres that kids
might be able to engage in,

that is a wonderful thing
for young kids.

Wherever people congregate,
they talk, they use language

to affirm, to reaffirm, to confirm,
to reassure, to amuse, to beguile,

to delight, because language itself
seems to fascinate and delight us.

So much so that perhaps over 400
conlangs, constructed languages,

have been made up,
usually out of idealism,

like Esperanto,
I suppose is the most famous.

Sometimes, languages are made up
for more amusing reasons.

One of the newest languages
on the planet is Klingon,

named after the eponymous
Star Trek species.

My guest appearance in the Klingon
version of Shakespeare's Hamlet

is not one of my proudest
theatrical moments.

That really hurts, actually.

Backstage, before the performance,

I chatted to a level 4 Klingon
speaker, the highest you can be.

D'Armond Speers is a computational
linguist who took the unusual step

of teaching his son
Klingon as his first language.

We had a lot of fun.
We would play language games,

so I would say things to him like...

He would point to my cheek -
where's my cheek?

I would say...

..and he would point to his nose.
Wow.

One day, we were playing on
the carpet in the living room

and I had his bottle
that he would drink from.

We didn't have a word for bottle,
we didn't have a word for diaper,

we didn't have a word for,
you know, high chair.

Domestic things. They're not
domestic people, the Klingons.

I had words for shuttlecraft,
and phaser

and transporter ionisation unit -
I didn't have "bottle", right?

So we were using the word for bottle
that is a drinking vessel.

And I said to him one day...
We had this game, "This or that".

And so I said to him...

So I used the word for bottle,
I used it with a suffix,

I used it in a sentence.

I didn't point at it, look at it,
I didn't do anything like that.

And this two-year old kid,
baby, toddler,

started crawling over to the bottle
and grabbed the bottle.

At that moment,
I knew this was working.

He was learning this
language. It was very exciting.

One of the other things we did was we had
a lullaby that we would sing every night.

The Klingon imperial anthem.

"May The Empire Endure.

And we sang it as a lullaby.

I'm so picturing this baby
in a Pooh Bear onesie,

singing the Klingon Empire song.
Absolutely right.

There were things like that
and he was learning to count

and he was learning colours,
and he was learning words.

But as he went from two-and-a-half
to three years old, he stopped.

He stopped being interested,

he stopped enjoying doing it
with me as much.

I would say something in Klingon
and he would say it back in English,

- and I would try to encourage him.
- Ooh... - He started to resist it.

And it was fun and interesting.

and when it stopped being fun
and interesting, I stopped doing it.

Klingon was little use to D'Armond's son
in communicating with the outside world

and that is the key factor in whether a
language survives and flourishes, or dies.

One of the most enduringly
practical forms of communication

is sign language for the deaf.

Surprise.

Shock.

Since the first form of it
was codified in Paris in 1760,

over 200 different versions
have evolved.

But can we really call this
a language?

Hello. My name is
Claudia. And I am from Germany.

Hello. I'm Ian.
And I'm from New Hampshire.

Hello. I'm Janice
and I'm from Oklahoma.

And we're
the Little Theatre Of The Deaf.

So, Janice, perhaps you can ask Ian
and Claudia to explain to me,

in all my ignorance,

why sign language is more
than just gestures,

and why it is a complete language.

Sign language really
is part of language because...

we can't hear,
but we can communicate.

It's a visual language.

Instead of hearing it
and depending on our ears,

we sign it and we depend on our eyes.

We don't just make up signs, there
are actual words that have

pictures and meaning and structure,

sentence structure and concepts.

Everything is involved so that it's clear
and understandable communication.

And Claudia, you're German.

In Germany, is there a... is there
a Deutsche Zeichensprache?

Go on, say that!

- Deutsche Zeichensprache.
- She doesn't interpret German!

I'm only kidding. But is there
a Germanic sign language

that's different from French
or Italian, let alone American?

Yes, it's very different.

Just as the writing
is different in every language.

So an Italian signer would not be
able to understand a German signer?

No. No.

It's very interesting.

One afternoon, there was a large wolf
that waited in a dark forest...

... for a little girl to come along.

Finally, a little girl did come along

and she was carrying
a basket of food.

Are you...

How do you agree on a sign?

Does it spread very quickly?'

That this is going to be the sign
for Barack Obama, for example?

Really, it starts with
a big name, like Obama.

Typically, there's an agreement
and it just sort of develops

with...

with big deaf... politicians.

No? P... Population.

What is Barack Obama, for example?

Right. And can you give me
the derivation of that?

Where would that have come from?
Is it BO,

or is it... It's not
the letters "B" and "O", is it?

It's "O". "O".

- Something about the flag.
- Ah, right.

Emphasise the "O" and then,

- like, the flag, the American flag.
- I see. - Obama.

Ask Claudia this,
not meaning to be offensive

but it's interesting,
because as a German,

there may be a different
sign for Adolf Hitler

from one that we might use in
the rest of the world, for example.

He is one of
the most famous images...

I guess, if you were British,
you'd just do the moustache.

- What's the American sign?
- Yeah. The moustache, exactly.

That's what I thought.
And in German?

Normally, it's the same
but I have...

Um...

Some people sign...

like a combination of how...

And the salute, hidden into...
Yes. Very interesting.

OK, Madonna.

I don't want to sign that one.

That's interesting,
is that like pointy breasts?

There. You see. Exactly.

That's what's so wonderful
about sign languages,

you can do things
that really incorporate

the character and the reputation
of the person,

not just the dull spelling
of their name. It can be witty.

I agree with that.

- And deaf tend to put more of
the spirit in the language. - Yeah.

So that they get a reaction... "OK."

It has a good effect.

When she opened the door,

all the girls saw that there someone in bed
with the nightcap and a nightgown on.

But she had approached
no nearer than 25 feet

when she realised
it was not her grandmother,

but the wolf.

For even in a nightcap, a wolf does not
look any more like your grandmother

than the MGM lion
looks like Calvin Coolidge.

So, she reached into her basket,

pulled out an automatic

And shot the wolf dead.

Moral:

it's not so easy to fool little
girls nowadays as it used to be.

The question of how thought and language
came about in the human race

is one of central concern, so it's hardly
surprising we've spent thousands of years

thinking and speaking about it.

The biblical account suggests Adam
and Eve spoke a prelapsarian language,

a single language of paradise.

And then came the Tower of Babel

and thousands of languages
were unleashed upon the planet,

and we were all doomed to
crawl on its surface for eternity,

misunderstanding each other.

Not surprisingly, people became
obsessed with the idea

of what that primary language
of Adam and Eve's was,

even if it was only a metaphor.
What did mankind first speak?

The Old Testament Babel myth
doesn't quite do it for me,

but, 250 years ago, one of the greatest
of linguistic forensic discoveries

was unearthed here
by two brothers.

This is the famous
Leipzig Christmas market,

and it all looks rather
a fairy tale, doesn't it?

It's quite appropriate, because aside
from being remembered for JS Bach,

Leipzig is also remembered
for the Brothers Grimm,

progenitors of some of the best loved
fairy tales Europe ever produced.

Also, and perhaps you may not
know this, the Brothers Grimm

were responsible for founding
the signs of linguistics,

what the Germans call philology,
tracing back to the very roots,

the languages of the world.

Professor Wolfgang Klein is
a philologist and psycholinguistic,

currently working on
Grimm's original documents.

I suppose Jacob's greatest contribution is
called Grimm's Law, or Rask's-Grimm's Law?

That's true,
both terms exist, actually.

What people noticed, actually began
to notice systematically,

let me say the second half
of the 18th century,

is there are many many similarities and
correspondences between languages.

They discovered there are similar words in
languages, as remote as Sanskrit on one hand

and Greek, and then
the Germanic languages.

- Sanskrit is an ancient Indian
language? - True. Absolutely true.

There is huge distance and still words
sometimes sound surprisingly similar.

It's not just accidental. Sometimes the
similarities are completely accidental,

but clearly not in that case.

Grimm's Law, as it became known,

showed how the consonants of
different Indo-European languages

relate to each other.

For example, there's a relationship
between words beginning with "P"

in Sanskrit, Latin or Greek,

and "F" in Germanic languages,
including English.

So "pater" in Latin
becomes "father" in English.

This single language - proto-Indo-European,
or PIE - the root to over 2,000,

is thought to have been spoken
more than 5,000 years ago

in the Steppes of Southern Russia.

As tribes migrated
through Europe and Asia,

PIE split into a number
of dialects,

and these, in time,
developed into separate languages.

PIE isn't the first language
that humanity spoke,

but is the first of which
we have evidence.

This English that we speak that
you are very kindly speaking

as fluently as anybody can, frankly,

it seems so natural to us
and it seems so separate.

It seems so different from German,
from French,

certainly different from Danish.

Yeah. It is.

Any of these languages
and Persian languages,

and yet, with this common ancestor.
It's quite extraordinary.

Do you think in some sense

it's necessary for mankind
to have so many languages?

- Well...
- Why Babel? Why did it happen?

First of all, it's beautiful
and I wonder

whether this argument, biology,
is not also a romantic argument.

I really would like to see
the evidence that it is necessary,

but it's beautiful
to have many species.

Beautiful not to have just one
type of cat, but many types of cats.

In that sense, that argument
also applies to languages.

Beautiful to see all of this.
The Romans said "varietas delectat".

They have many things
that are beautiful here.

What would you regard as the thing
about language

that keeps you getting up every morning
and being excited about your job?

I mean, everything, what makes human
beings human, is based on language.

Our species perhaps could
live together without a language,

but then it wouldn't be what
we call the human species.

Whatever we know, whatever
we have done over the centuries

is based on language,
on languages and language.

Some would argue that the 6,000-plus
languages we speak on the planet

are structurally just
one primal human tongue.

What's amazing is how quickly
language evolves

according to how quickly children
can develop slang

or how quickly culture
and technology demands.

There's a constant
practicality about the way

we use language,
as well as a deep beauty.

One thing's for certain,
language will never stay still.

Mummy! Mummy!

And finally,
aged two and three months,

Ruby is chatting away in complete
sentences with her siblings.

She understands much more than
she says and, over the next year,

her vocabulary will explode.'

Some children,
perhaps Ruby will be one of them,

do not stop at learning
one language.

And there are plenty of others
to choose from.

There are currently
194 member states

belonging to the United Nations,

with over 6,000 languages
spoken in them.

They are saying these demonstrators
are followers of Bin Laden

and I ask him is the six-month-old
baby who was killed

a follower of Bin Laden, also?

Maybe many of our species'
troubles could be avoided

if we understood
each other better.

Would having one world language,
be it Esperanto, English

or, to be utterly neutral
and possibly perverse, Klingon,

even be an advantage?

Perhaps in world forums like here
in the UN Security Council,

which is currently in session
discussing the Libyan crisis,

it would. But then it would also
put Zahar out of the job.

- How many working languages
are there? - Two.

- English and French.
- So that's it?

- Just English and French.
- For the working languages. - I see.

- Then there are official languages.
- Six of them.

- Only six?
- Yes.

The official languages are English,
French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese

and Arabic, which is the most recent
addition to the official languages.

That is rather wonderful, watching
you translate simultaneously,

it seems to us like an extraordinary
thing, like a conductor

being able to read a music score.

It's incredible the human brain
can do this.

I look down here and it's almost like
a living symbol of the Tower of Babel,

of the fact that mankind
split into so many languages.

Do you sometimes think: Gosh,

the world would be better
if everybody spoke Esperanto?

No, there is a beauty to languages,

each and every language has
its own beauty, its own music,

its own imagery,
its way of expressing the sentiments

and the nature of the people
who speak that language.

It would be a loss
if that language did not exist.

I am very much in favour
of the Tower of Babel.

This building where the General
Assembly of the United Nations meet

perhaps symbolises more than any other
what happened to humankind after Babel.

Thousands of voices upraised in different
mutually incomprehensible tongues,

trying to comprehend each other,
trying to understand,

trying to build some sort of peace
out of the wreckage of the 20th century.

Well, they sort of solved
the problem by reducing

all those languages to the six
working languages of the UN.

And, that way,
people do understand each other.

They understand
how they think, perhaps,

they understand
how they communicate

and a little of the history
of each language.

But languages do
so much more than that.

Languages, in many respects,
defined our identities, who we are.

And that's what I'll be
looking at next time.

Four times 14.

From Kenya to Israel,

Ireland to Oxytown,
Newcastle to Barnsley...

..I'll be looking at how our
6,000-plus languages and myriad accents

are threatened with extinction
as the global village becomes a reality.

Subtitles for the deaf and
hard-of-hearing by Red Bee Media