Fry's Planet Word (2011–…): Season 1, Episode 2 - Identity - full transcript

Language is one of the most amazing
things we humans do.

It separates us from the animals.

Gives us theatre, poetry and song.

It can make us laugh,
it can make us cry.

In this episode, I'm going to look
at how our language and our accents

define and shape our identity...

HE SPEAKS HIS OWN LANGUAGE

..and how thousands of languages
are now threatened
with the rise of the global village.

I've always believed
that my language, English,

does the most to define
what makes me me.

But my English is wildly different
from many other people's
across Britain.



The accent we speak in
may seem trivial,

but, in fact, it is a vital element
of our identity.

Our small country boasts
a bewildering and beautiful array
of accents and dialects.

I'm going to see just
what one county of England,
Yorkshire, can offer.

Well, Ian McMillan, hello.
Stephen, how are you?

Delighted to be in Yorkshire,
home of the famous Yorkshire accent.

The Yorkshire accent, which is
a many varied thing, as you can see.
I've got a map here. Oh, yes.

Just about every Yorkshire town.
Each of these has got
their own accent.

From right over here in the east
with Hull, where they talk about,

"I'm gonna have a PARNT o' MARLD
at FARV to FARV."

And I've got all the STERN RERSES
albums. Stern Rerses!

You go west to Leeds and Bradford,
where we are now,
and where they don't say their T's.

They go, "I GO'A GO A Bradford,
GO'A GO A Batley."

And when you go across to
Leeds, somehow the E gets lengthened



and they go, "We don't
EER accent in LEEEDS."

Oh, that's so Alan BENNEEET.

Yeah, that's right, very slow.
It's attenuated.

Then you go down here,
through Wakefield to Barnsley,
where I live,

which is a very kinda harsh,
"Now then, now then."

I think of Geoff Boycott.

Yes, and, "That's proper cricket
is that," and it's like that.

I do generally think it's to do
with the harsh winds of Yorkshire.

Really? That make your mouth
a bit like that.

You don't wanna open your mouth
too far!

Then you go further south,
to Sheffield.

There's a fantastic difference
between Barnsley and Sheffield.

We say, "Now then, now then". As you
approach Sheffield, your vowels go,
"Nar den, nar den."

They go deep. So we call them
deedars, cos they go, "Now den,
what dar doin' darn 'ere?"

That's a bit like in the south
in America where they say BIDNESS
instead of "business", don't they?

Havin' the old biddness.

How extraordinary. Now den.
Now den... Chesterfield,

where they call
their house their arse!

My Aunty Mabel, who was from
Chesterfield, would say things like,

"I've just had double glazing
fitted in my arse".

She'd say, "I've got a detached
arse." Have you really?! The thing
is, they don't think it's funny!

And you go... And they say,
"Why you laughing?"

Our accents are shaped
by where we were born and raised.

Ian McMillan is a poet,

his language moulded by the area
of Yorkshire he has always lived in.

As a poet, do you think
there's Yorkshire in your lines?

Obviously, when you read them,
there clearly is.

In the end,
Barnsley's what I think with.

I think with its history,
I think with its culture,

I think with its hills that you
walk up and get out of breath. Yes!

I think with its wind
that stops me talking in big words,
big mouth openings.

I think, in the end, no matter
how I write on the page,

it'll always come out with Barnsley
cos Barnsley's what I think with.

They used to till the fields

Horses pulled the plough

Corn grew in Barnsley accents

And me father milked a cow

Fool's gold

They used to harvest crops

They used to grind the corn

Fed the bairns turnip tops

"Mine's nesh - how's yourn?"

Fool's gold.

Well, let's have our accent forecast
for the British Isles.

It's a small enough country,
isn't it, Britain, the UK?

And yet it's rich with
teeming micro-climates of accent.

Let's start all the way
here in Belfast, now, here it is.

BELFAST ACCENTS: Belfast!
There's types of Belfast

and there's the lighter type, too,
which is beautiful.

It's a lovely accent -
there's nothing wrong with it.

It's beautiful, so it is.

And then move across,
a lot of influence comes
all the way up from Glasgow, aye.

SCOTTISH ACCENTS: I don't want
to be insulting to anybody who comes
from these places

but we know there are all kinds
of Scottish accents.

And some are very, very refined
and some of them slightly less so.

And they're all beautiful
and they're different
and they're fantastic.

And they're rich. It's like a stew -
England's like a stew.

I'm sounding
like Billy Connolly, now!

No, no, stop it!

Let's go down to...
Well, I guess we'll go down here.

GEORDIE ACCENT: Why aye -
what's down here?

It's the Geordies, isn't it?

Traditionally, Geordie has been
regarded as the accent of coal pits,

poverty and little fishes
on little dishes.

About ten years ago,
all that started to change.

and now Geordie tops the polls
as one of the most desirable accents
around.

I've got your account
information here.

You actually made a redemption
on the 26th of October...

In popular entertainment,
I suppose three of the biggest names
you could mention

are Ant and Dec, if you counted
that as two names, and Cheryl Cole.

I've heard of those.

They've got very proud, obvious,
very clear North Eastern accents.

I couldn't say they were exactly
Newcastle or whatever, but they're
certainly from round these parts.

And they quite clearly don't try to
hide that, and that comes through.
Why should they hide it?

Everybody in this centre will be
very proud of where they're from
and their heritage.

They speak the way they do to their
friends as they will to customers.
And it goes down very, very well.

It might've been a problem with
the time. Would you like me
to investigate?

As I say, it's a household account.
They're going into the same pool,
so to speak, you know?

At this Newcastle call centre,
reassuring Geordie voices

deal with thousands
of customer calls a day,
with remarkably successful results.

In the recent survey
that we had commissioned,

it came out that it was the accent
most likely to give
that feel-good factor to people,

and make people feel happy.

It was very trustworthy.

In addition to that, it was deemed
as being very helpful, as well.

OK, put the lady back on.

The human ear is a marvel
at detecting the minutest nuances
of language

and the differences can have
a profound emotional, financial
and psychological effect.

Accents are probably
one of the most vital parts

of the sensory experience
that we have

with speech processing,
in particular.

That is why places like this,
a contact centre,

are really stuck between
a rock and a hard place

in terms of trying to delight
a customer that calls in.

Because they have no other
aspect of sensory experience.

They don't have visual clues,
or anything at all.

They don't know the person they're
speaking to on the telephone.

What surprised me most is that
when a customer complains,

the call centre falls back on
a more traditional English accent.

If it needs to be escalated, we want
someone speaking like you speak.

That's an air of authority and
it is almost wired into our brain.

That perception that we have.

That's scary. Basically, they make
a call to a busy room like this -
this one's offline at the moment.

And they get the nice Geordie
saying, "Oh, I'm sorry about that.

"We'll try and work it out,
I'm sure it'll be fine".

Then there IS a problem - they say,
"I'll pass you to the manager."

And then I go, "Hello, how may I
help you? I'm so sorry."

The study has shown
that is perfect for a resolution -
a positive resolution.

Even if you're stating
exactly what the call centre
operative was stating,

it is much better coming from you.

Moving on, as you see,
a slew of accents.

South, we go down.

This used to be so popular
in the '60s.

SCOUSE ACCENT: Liverpool.
Like that, you know?

The Beatles. The "Beeeea-tles".
It's bipolar, Liverpool, isn't it?

DEEP VOICE: There's a sort of
Michael Angelis one that's
rather depressed all the time.

HIGH VOICE: And there's the perky
one. Perky! Like that.

It's really livley.

It's lovely.
What a country we live in.

How rich it is.

So many dialects, accents, brogues.

They're all rather wonderful.

WELSH ACCENT: Haven't even
touched Wales, have I? Haven't even
touched it.

But you've got your own,
I've got mine.

Never let it be thought that
a BBC accent like mine
isn't an accent.

It's just as stupid, just as odd,
and, I hope, just as lovable
as everybody else's.

So, within our own
small nation state,

there is an extraordinary variety
in the way we all speak English.

And this determines so much
about our perceptions of each other.

Language, of course,
is a kind of cocktail, isn't it?

If your accent can have such
an impact on your identity,

imagine what a difference
the language you speak has!

We commonly say how there are
100 Eskimo words for "snow".

Well, that story sadly turns out
not to be true, but it does lead one
to think -

does the language we speak actually
alter the way we see, interpret
and engage with the world?

If I spoke an Inuit language
or French, for example,

would I think differently?

All right. Hello.

Sssh.

Lera Boroditsky,
Professor of Linguistics

at Stanford University,
believes exactly that...

Today we'll be talking about
how the languages we speak

shape the way we think.

One of the oldest experiments
on this was done a long time ago

by Roman Jakobson,
a Russian linguist,

and he asked students
at Moscow State University, 1915,

he asked them to personify
different days of the week.

So different days of the week have
different grammatical genders

in Russian, and so he would
tell people, "Act like Monday,

"act like Wednesday." And what he
found was these students, these
Russian-speaking students,

would act like a man if
they're acting like Monday,

but they would act like a woman if
they're acting like Wednesday,

because Monday's grammatically
masculine and Wednesday's
grammatically feminine.

This is a pretty mind-boggling idea.
Variations in the languages we speak

affect not only the way
we describe the world,

but the way we experience it.

There have been lots of other
demonstrations showing...

Oh, yes, le pont, la puento,
whatever it was, or is it
something similar?

The...for bridge, yes...
Yeah.

The word for bridge is different
genders in Spanish and German.

Die Brucke.
That's right.

And so German speakers, because it's
grammatically feminine,

will give more feminine descriptions
of bridges.

They'll say things like bridges are
beautiful or they're elegant,

or they're fragile,
whereas Spanish speakers will say

bridges are strong and
they're long and they're towering.

'So how does being bi-lingual
affect your view of the world?

'Surely things get
very confusing indeed?'

You are bilingual,

so you can perhaps at least
swap languages sometimes,
cos you must ask yourself,

"Am I thinking this because
I'm thinking in English
or because I'm thinking in Russian

"or can I rationally think this

"in a pure, almost machine-like, way
that is outside language?"

I, of course, think about
everything very rationally.

HE LAUGHS
You have the best
of the Russian side

and the best of the English.
That's right.

Actually it's very difficult for me
to design experiments comparing
English and Russian.

Because I speak both,
it seems to me perfectly natural
to have both those ideas in mind.

And then when we do the experiment
and we find that actually English
speakers see it one way

and Russian speakers see it
another way, I'm just shocked.

As someone who speaks both,
what is there that is

characteristically Russian in
the way you feel and experience when
you're thinking in a Russian way?

Russian speakers express much more
collectivist ideas
when they're speaking Russian.

They espouse
more collectivist values,

and they espouse more
individualistic values
when they're speaking English. Gosh.

Even though they're giving an
explanation for the same kind of
phenomena,

when they do it in one language,
they have a different perspective
on it

than when they do it in another
language. So, it kind of...

Language serves as a cue to
the cultural values that... So it's
not a miserable, oppressed Russian,

dark Russian soul sort of way
of looking at the world then?

Well, yeah, that's a very English
way of looking at the Russian souls.
THEY LAUGH

I think of that fabulous Chekhov
short story, Misery!

Russians love being miserable.
They revel in it.

It's the only way to be
an intelligent person

in the world - to really
appreciate the misery

and the horror that
the world has to offer.

I've often wondered if I was
a Hungarian like my grandfather,

would I think differently,
would I still be me?

If a word doesn't exist
in a language, does that imply

the feeling or concept
doesn't exist?

So if you don't have a word
for evil, does it vanish?

While I understand Lera's position
I also agree with the Chomskian view

that all languages have
intrinsically the same structures.

But that doesn't mean
they're all the same,

especially when it comes to humour.

If Hitler had been British, would
we, under similar circumstances,

have been moved, charged up,
fired up

by his inflammatory speeches or
would we simply have laughed?

Is English too ironic to sustain
Hitlerian styles?

Would his language simply run false
in our ears?

My own admittedly unscientific
research has led me to believe

that some languages are simply
intrinsically funnier than others.

My own personal favourite is
Yiddish, that marvellous

Jewish mish-mash of German, Russian,
Polish, Hebrew words.

You're probably familiar with
Yiddish humour

if you know the work of Woody Allen
or Mel Brooks

or Larry David in Seinfeld or
Ben Stiller or Krusty the Clown.

Their work is deeply rooted
in Yiddish tradition.

It's more a mindset than a language,
despite the kitsch

and the schmaltz and the shlongs
and the schmucks or schmier,

a joke can be Yiddish even
when it's told in English.

Guy went to the doctor
and said, "I have trouble peeing."

The doc says, "How old are you?"
And he says, "I'm 80."

He says, "Well, you peed enough."
That's a joke.

The boy's an actor, he's gone to an
audition, he comes back,

his mother says, "Well?"
He said, "I got the part."
She said, "What part?"

He said, "It's the husband."
She said, "Go back
and insist on a speaking part."

That's funny.
THEY LAUGH

But that's so Jewish -
you know what I mean? Exactly.

Every... Yhis is like a competition.

You have a bunch of old Jews sitting
around a table telling jokes.
That's what we do.

But there's no new Yiddish jokes,
so it just becomes a competition.

Who'll call the punchline
before you get to it?

"It's a schmuck!
I know, all right, next."

Because in the end... And it's
always the schmuck. It is
the same joke, isn't it?

A typical Jewish joke
and it's so typically Jewish

and Alan King did it here.

An old man passes out in the street
and somebody comes and they open his

collar and they pick up his head and
they said, "Are you comfortable?"

And he says, "I make a living."
STEPHEN LAUGHS

And Alan King got sick
and he passed out at the bar,

right before he passed away.

And they opened his collar,
the Maitre d', Frank, and they said,

"Alan, are you comfortable?"
And Alan said, "I make a living."

And he said, "I've been waiting
40 years to do that joke."
Oh, that's bliss, isn't it?

But in a serious sense, you might
argue that Yiddish was,

as it were, you travelled light,
all of us, our ancestors

travelled light, because their
property would be taken.

But their language,
their wit, their learning,
they could travel with them.

I always said that Judaism is not
a religion, it's a way of life.

It's a way of living your life.

And Yiddish is
a way of feeling your life.

I grew up and I was bar mitzvahed,
but we didn't talk Hebrew.

We never thought of talking Hebrew.

Cos Hebrew was a language
of the Temple. It was a language of
the Temple,

it was something we had to learn,
where Yiddish,

I would hear my grandparents
and my parents talk Yiddish.

But they didn't want me...
HE SPEAKS YIDDISH
..the kids are listening.

And we would try
and translate what they were saying.

Because Yiddish is the language of
emotion and of sex... Emotion.
..and of failure and hilarity.

Hebrew was the language
of seriousness and ceremony
and solemnity.

There's plenty of failure in Hebrew.
Let's not belittle the
accomplishment of the Hebrew.

I don't know if you've read
the Bible, but we lose a lot.
It's mostly failure.

It's mostly failure and guilt
and a lot of cursing.

Hebrew comes from the vocal cords
and Yiddish comes from the heart.

Well, Yiddish is now on the UNESCO
endangered languages list and when

Stewie Stone and other comedians of
his generation

are plonked like kneidlach
into the great vat of chicken soup
in the sky,

Yiddish will pass into oblivion.

There are around 7,000 languages
spoken on this planet

and many more thousands of dialects,
but it's estimated by some

that by the end of the century
there'll barely be a thousand left.

I would argue that linguicide,
the death of language,

poses as great a threat to
our culture and history as
species extinction.

And why is this rich linguistic
stew of ours being threatened?

Well, it's to do with globalisation
and the rise of the lingua franca,

those national and
transnational languages like English

and Mandarin Chinese, which gobble
up every language in their path.

The fortunes of small
and struggling languages

ebb and flow with the tides of
history. I'm off now to find out

about one that survives not
far from our own shores.

THEY SPEAK IRISH

I'm here in the beautiful, bracing
and chilly Connemara
on the west coast of Ireland.

This is what they call the, um,
I'll try and get this right...

the Gaeltacht Curraghrua,

one of the central areas
for the speaking of the ancient
language of Ireland - Irish.

They don't call it Gaelic
very often - just Irish.

About 80,000 people
still speak this language.

It's taught in school and they have
very proud Irish speakers

all around us
and in Donegal and in Cork.

But it's here in Connemara,
Galway, that we find probably
the majority of Irish speakers.

Irish, being a very old language,
it doesn't have as many words

as the English language,
but its descriptions are very good.

There's a thing called
a smugairle roin.

A smugairle roin is a jellyfish.

And jellyfish is, direct

translation smugairle roin
into English, is a seal's spit.

Oh, very good.

So you can imagine somebody comes...
"What are these things all

"over the...they must be seal spits."

You know, "We'll call them
smugairle roins," and that is

one of the beauties of the Irish
language is that it has this.

And it would be such
a shame to lose.

Would you say you're optimistic
for his future as an Irish speaker?

I would be very optimistic for the
future of the Irish language.

There was a spell there where it
fell out of favour mainly due

to the way it was taught in schools.

It wasn't given the excitement. Yeah.

And nowadays, it's become much more
fashionable to speak Irish.

You'll hear,
especially if you go to the pubs,

you'll hear people speaking Irish,

young people on
the streets speaking Irish,

and it's very important as well
because it is our heritage.

SHE SPEAKS IRISH

The English ruled
Ireland for centuries.

At the height of their
colonial ambitions,

they attempted to suppress Irish
culture and identity entirely.

An 1831 act forbade
the teaching of Irish in schools.

'This coincided with An Gorta Mor,
the Irish potato famine

'of the mid-19th century that killed
over a million of the population.'

It was very nearly the death
knell of the Irish language.

Thankfully,
all that has changed now.

The schools that were
the site of linguistic oppression

in Ireland are now the place
of the language's revival.

THEY SING IN IRISH

Nowadays at the
Connemara Golf Course,

every one of the golfers
speaks Irish...

HE SPEAKS IRISH

As well as negotiating
the perilous task of keeping
their language alive,

they are also dealing
with what must be

one of the world's hardest
courses...

the holes are literally
on different islands!

This is a heck of a place to have a
golf course, isn't it? Incredible.

You must just blink your eyes
on long June days

when you can be playing till
ten at night...

'Imperialist Brit that I am,

'they are kind enough to speak
English to me,

'which, given the history,
is quite an ask.

'This part of Connemara suffered
as much as any,

'but its utter remoteness
helped preserve the language.

'History is never forgotten
in Ireland

'and this sense of storytelling,
be it national or personal,

'the gift of the gab,
I suppose you could say,

'is one of the things
I love about the country.'

Are there things you could
say in Irish that you

couldn't really say in English
and vice versa? Absolutely.

I think everybody
here thinks through Irish.

And do you find
Irish more accurate?

It hits the nail
on the head more often,

you use fewer words,

it's cleaner, more poetic? Is there
some qualities to it that...

Far more ways of saying
the same thing.

There are more ways?
It depends who you're addressing...

Oh, so it has a social...
Oh, it has.

Your interlocutor...
..Or undressing. Oh, right!

Because you can say it's a fine day

in about four different ways

depending on who you're... Four?
..even more.

Depending on whether you're like,

"I hope to God it rains
on that fucker."

You know. Or, "she's a lovely girl".

You know, "I hope the sun shines".
You know?

But it depends totally
on who you're addressing.

So you find when you switch to
English, you're slightly more...

Oh, you have to say,
"Well, it's raining.

"It's going to rain," or, you know,
"there's rain on the way".

That's about the three way...

You know, if it's raining,
it's raining. You know?

But there's rain on the way as well.

But there's 50 different types of
rain, John, and you can
describe every one of them.

And that description,
that wealth of description,

that descriptive quality of
the language is something that we

would treasure here particularly.

On behalf of the club here and its
manager and director of the company,

we offer you life membership
in this golf club.

Oh, what an honour! Thank you so...

You haven't seen me play! You've
seen me swing or try to!

That's so kind. You offer me...
Oh, that is a fabulous thing.

Thank you so much.
This is a truly great honour.

This is one of the most remarkable
golf clubs in the world.
It is, it's an amazing place.

Going to cost me a lot of balls,
because not many of them

will hit land, but it's still
fantastic! We'll follow you closely

to see if we can pick up a few!
Thank you so much!

Oh, dear! I think I've lost
my moment now!

I don't want to waste
any more balls!

Agus, action!

How better to get inside a language

than to act in its favourite
soap opera?

Action!

THEY SPEAK IRISH

Like the Welsh, Ireland has a TV
station in its own language.

The most popular soap is
called Ros na Run,

a Connemara version
of Coronation Street.

'So I'm about to embark on
a daunting task...

'speaking in Irish...'

HE SPEAKS IRISH

Erm...you look hungry.
HE CONTINUES IN IRISH

It's here, it's here somewhere.
Nil aon ocras orm!

Er...racaigh me go Gallimh.

Huh?

Go raibh maith agat
agus slan go fail...

Go foil! That's right! I always
get that bit wrong!

THEY ALL TALK AT ONCE

'Our brief is to
be as popular as possible.'

We are probably quite
important in terms of drawing in

the hesitant Irish speaker as well
as the fluent Irish speaker.

THEY SPEAK IRISH

To some people,
the creation of TG4

was a kind of a white elephant.

A sop to the Irish language
community.

But if you can imagine that when
I was growing up, the only cultural

resources in the Irish language
that were available to me was

Victorian literature which was about
peasant life on the Aran Islands.

Yes, quite. Now for my children,
they can watch cartoons
dubbed into Irish,

they can grow up
and watch a variety of programmes,

which are about Ireland today.

And we've embraced the internet
as a way of trying to
draw in a new audience.

That's why we've created a Facebook
site and a Twitter site,

and we're going to do
webisodes next season,

which will be all about a
younger generation in the town

of Ros na Run
and they will gradually

interact in the broadcast programme
and try to draw them across.

Irish might well survive here,
but these children

and their children will always
need a global language.

So you just change between
the two very happily? Yes.

But you think of yourself as an
Irish speaker first? Yeah.

Is that true of everybody?
ALL: Yes.

Goodness. If you erm,
if you text each other, do...

do you do it in Irish or in English?

ALL: English.

Ah, that's interesting, so things
like the internet or whatever,

are you on Facebook and
things like that? ALL: Yes.

And do you do that in English?
ALL: Yes.

So do you think of English
as the language of the internet,

but Irish the language
of the playground and talking

and friendship and things,
when you're with people? ALL: Yes.

You couldn't imagine yourselves
only speaking Irish? ALL: No.

You wouldn't cope in the world if
you didn't speak English? ALL: Yes.

Yeah. Thank goodness you do speak
English, or we would be having
an embarrassing time when I...

THEY LAUGH
Well, thank you very much.

Mustn't disturb any more
of your lessons, thank you.

Was that...go raibh...
thank you?

ALL: Go raibh maith agat.

I can't get the pronunciation right!
Thank you very much.

Another
small language that has battled

to preserve its identity in the
modern world is found here in Spain.

One of most remarkable
languages in Europe is Basque.

Somewhere between France
and Spain lies the Basque region

and has done for thousands of years.

It's been a long
and extraordinary struggle to

keep their language alive and their
culture and their cuisine...

all the things that
make them Basque.

The people here are passionate
about their food.

The language
is in the DNA of Basque cooking

and preparation techniques, handed
down over many hundreds of years.

Wow! Star Trek!

'Juan Marie Arzak and his daughter
Elena run one of the finest

'restaurants in the world
here in Donostia,

'or what we know as San Sebastian.'

We renovate recently. Really?
It's very lovely.

HE SPEAKS BASQUE

Because this restaurant
is dated from 1897.

His grandfather,
my great grandfather.

HE SPEAKS BASQUE

He's a third generation and me
the fourth generation.

Always here in this restaurant.

So this is the tasting menu
and this is the a la carte here,
is that right?

Would you say that to be Basque
is to speak the language

and to eat the food?

Those are the two things that
make you Basque, the language
and the food?

HE SPEAKS BASQUE

When people ask what
type of food do you make?

Now we say Basque with
Basque spirit,

because we think in Basque,
the taste is from here.

It's the result of our taste
cultural that is in our minds,

and that we cook with,
with this, with this result...

The Basques defiantly defended
their language for 40 years

against the fascist General Franco.

But now there are more than half
a million Basque speakers

here in Spain.
The language, like this restaurant,

is now confident enough to absorb
new elements from outside,

Arzak is the Heston Blumenthal
of Basque country,

exuberantly fusing traditional
Basque ingredients such as
gooseneck,

barnacle, eel and spider crab with
cutting edge molecular cuisine.

We are very open to the world
and we can accept foods...

Influences from...
..all over the world.

It's an exchange of cultures,
of other cultures.

So in the same way that
the Basque language can have

words from other languages,
so the Basque food can have dishes

and ingredients from other places.
That's very good.

It's very curious, yeah. Yeah.

I think it's interesting how
the language and the cuisine are,

are similar, in some ways.
Yes, it's very similar, yeah.

And the cuisine is there,
literally, in the kitchen.
Shall we go to the kitchen?

OK, I'll follow you, thank you. OK.
You're cooking, eh?!

I'll help you! If you trust me!

It's called lichen.
Ah, it's lichen! Yes.

Some fruit sauce.
ARZAK SPEAKS BASQUE

Like so. It's so beautiful.

Maybe I should do it
better to be symmetrical!

It's very well. Very well.
A little oil.

This is olive oil.
Ah, of course.

It's beautiful.
And a little salt.

Can I just take a little
broken bit here?

Oh, a little salt on it.

Ah, this doesn't work,
hey, this is for the guest.

So this is not for the guests,

this would not be good
enough for the guests.

This is once done...
Very good, very well, so...

I feel like someone on MasterChef:
The Professionals

who's made his...
erm, who's plated up.

It is very lovely,
I love the colours.

And so this is made to look
like stone is the idea, the rock.

Si, it's the, the...

When you go to the mountains,
here you can find this type of...

Ancient Basque Cromlechs, yeah,

or Dolmens we call them
sometimes don't we, yeah?

And this was the inspiration
for the plate. Fantastic.

Cuisine and language may
well be so entwined,

because traditionally recipes were
passed on by word of mouth...

It's an oral tradition.

In the Basque history
it's more from spoken

from one generation to
other than written.

I think the first Basque book
was in 1545? I believe.

Very well, very well!

Why do you think the Basque language
has survived in a way that

so many other languages haven't?
Breton, Cornish...

HE SPEAKS BASQUE

We are very proud
of being the people here,

this is why things have survived
the, the, the language so, so much.

In neighbouring France,
it's far harder to preserve

the struggling local language.

We're moving from the Basque country

to the more or less neighbouring
Occitan country.

Occitan is the language
spoken in the south of France
principally in the Langue d'Oc...

they reckon about
seven million people

have a smattering of it at least,
yet nonetheless,

because of its variations and
because it isn't supported

in the way that Basque is,
many people fear

it will suffer from linguicide...
it will die.

like so many of the world's
languages,

it's on the endangered list.

SHE SINGS

Liza Occitan, as she is known,
sings in Provencale,

one of the six dialects of Oc.

She also presents French TV's
regional Occitan news program

and has a devoted
following of Occitan sympathisers.

The Occitanian language is very
beautiful to listen to.

The sounds are beautiful.
It's a Mediterranean language.
It's a Latin based language.

It's much nicer to sing,
for instance, than French, like...

I've made the choice
to sing in Occitan,

because it actually has
beautiful sounds.

The language of Oc is
a romance language

but also a distinctly romantic one.

It was the language of the
Troubadours, it was spoken by Dante

and sung by the minstrel
Blondel in his desperate search

to find his king,
Richard the Lionheart...

Many governments have given up
attempting to repress

regional languages,
and now support and promote them -

the notoriously
centralised French state

continues its policy of
linguistic imperialism.

It's had a pretty tough history
though, hasn't it, Occitan?

The French state decided that they
would try and centralise everything

and eradicate differences.
Around the whole of France

would have one single
version of French,

and therefore any of
the other languages that were spoken
across the whole of France,

any of the Languedoc,
any of the Occitan dialects,
had to be forbidden.

So children were beaten in schools,
so they wouldn't speak it.

It's so interesting, this, cos
it's a story we come across again

and again, with minority languages.

With the Irish under British rule
and their language.

With the Basques under Franco
and their language.

And also with you with
Occitan, the...

A less vicious regime perhaps,
than Franco, but nonetheless

it was a... Homogeneity was the
idea, there must be one French.

I would ask you,
are you essentially optimistic

or pessimistic about the future
of Occitan?

We are forced to be optimistic,
in our situation -

if we become pessimistic, it's over.

This forced optimism is a stark
contrast to the genuine confidence

of Basques in Spain,
but is it just a case of nostalgia,

does it really matter?

Liza thinks Marcel,
one of the few shepherds

traditionally working in the
Alpille, the hills beyond Marseille,

will prove a point.

Little lambs!

This is wonderful.

Is he hopeful that the language will
survive for the next 100 years?

SPEAKS DIALECT

He thinks these languages should live
because it's part linked

to the identity and
the culture of the land.

So he thinks the languages should
definitely continue to exist.

D'accord. So, it's a matter
of pride and identity

to speak the language. It makes
him belong more to the land

and to this region?

SPEAKS DIALECT

France has yet to sign up
for the 1992 Charter

to protect and promote minority
languages.

France's constitution forbids it,

as it enshrines French
as the official language.

Occitan and other French dialects
have struggled for centuries

with one of France's most powerful
and secretive institutions.

This is the French Academy

where the 40 so-called Immortals
meet regularly to rule on which

words may or may not be officially
included in the French language.

It was set up by Cardinal Richelieu
in the 1630s, and since then

it's survived everything from
revolution to Nazi occupation.

The Academy members are drawn
from the creme de la creme
of French society.

They are writers, politicians,
scientists and philosophers.

You could argue that
the Academy has been partly

responsible for homogeneity
of French.

That, for example, Occitan
and Basque have not been given

a full minority status like Welsh
is or, or other...

But, you know, what they,
they have lost is not too much

and in compensation
they have been participated to one

of the most wonderful conversation
possible, the conversation

in Paris, the conversation
in the great towns of France.

For Academy members, it is
their own, French language

and identity that is in peril,
from an influx

of languages from around the world,
primarily English.

In a period where the "Globish"
English is so invading,

it is superfluous I think to take
care so much of these local languages

that are not leading anywhere.

So that is very much your position,
there is an official language,

if you like, that is...
Not an official language,

but an agreed language that is
agreed, by cultured people.

If one speaks rap, the other one
speaks Maroc, Moroccan,

and the third, I don't know,
a language from les banlieues,

there is no possibility
of discussion.

Although the Academy has no legal
authority of its own,

its decisions exert
a huge influence.

Over the years, the Academy

has ruled on new French words to
replace a host of imported ones.

Among them, balader for Walkman,
courriel for email,

in an attempt to hold back
the constant deluge of globish.

Merci.

Well, it's closed to mortals like me
but what the Immortals are now

going to decide "in camera,"
must be off camera.

They're going to decide which
unpleasant "Franglais"

and other interloping words will
be accepted and which rejected,

and admitted into
the French language.

400 years, the best part of,
this has been going on.

It's a very strange
and very French system.

Hmm. They're playing Boules.

Some might say that the Academy
is a typically French relic

of a bygone age,
spitting into the wind.

And as much as they try,
it's impossible to stem

the inevitable mutability
and inventiveness of language.

FRENCH RAP SONG

English may not be the greatest
challenge to the purity of French.

A more potent threat
is much closer to home,

in music made by the immigrants
of the Maghreb,

the ex-colonies
of North Africa.

They are reinventing the language
of Racine and Corneille

to reflect their own identities,
a new kind of French citizen.

I've come to Marseilles to meet
one of the genre's maestros,

rapper and producer DJ Sya Styles.

Do you think that rap language

has changed the French language
generally?

TRANSLATION:

New Maghrebi additions to standard
French include "brelle,"

meaning useless or powerless,
and "kiffer," derived from

the Arabic word for hashish,
which has come to mean, "to love."

TRANSLATION:

'It's hard enough to transform
a language a word at a time.

'All the more extraordinary
is to resurrect an entire
language from the dead,

'as an act of political will, to
gift an identity to a whole nation.'

Israel had a difficult birth,
a tricky childhood
and a stormy adolescence.

Whatever one's views of the current
political situation here

it was a remarkable journey
to statehood,

and language was at
the centre of it.

Hebrew was the language spoken here,
centuries before

a man called Jesus Christ
walked these streets.

But after the Diaspora,
the dispersal of the Jews
throughout Europe

and 2,000 years of persecution,

Hebrew died out
as a spoken language,

remembered only in the Torah,

in rabbinical tradition

and in Friday night suppers
in Jewish homes.

Fast forward to the creation
of the state of Israel

in the aftermath of the
Second World War and the Holocaust.

The most crucial question facing
them was what language do we speak?

Yiddish, the lingua franca
of the Middle European Jew,

was polluted, tainted by the shtetl,
by pogroms and by the death camps.

Russian was too limited,

so they made the bold decision
to reinvent Hebrew

as a modern living language.

Israeli linguist
Ghilad Zuckermann is taking me

to Rishon LeZion where the first
Hebrew school was built in 1889.

Stopping off in a garage for some
mechanical problem solving

exposes an intriguing
linguistic problem...

how do you describe things that
simply didn't exist in the Bible?

HE SPEAKS HEBREW

Stephen. Shalom. How are you?

HE SPEAKS HEBREW

Handbrakes, did you say? Handbrakes.

THEY SPEAK HEBREW

I got that. You said it's
the carburettor and you said,
no it's fuel injected.

Yes. Yeah.
A lot of English words in there.

'Well, they did create Hebrew
words for carburettors, etc,

'but not all of them caught on.'

There are a lot of English words.

Are there any biblical Hebrew words
in there that you can see?

HE SPEAKS HEBREW

Battery is...

It's not...
It's a Hebrew-based word. Right.

But obviously it's a new word
because it's a new concept.

Quite, so wouldn't exist
in the Bible. Right.

It means to collect and to store.

So it's collects like this energy.

Well, that's also known
as a capacitor. Capacitor.

Isn't it, so it's capacitor -
exactly the same idea.

And, and, I mean, they're all,
this bottle here, I mean obviously

there would be Hebrew words
in the Bible for bottles and jars.

The coolant inside,
but the container, the receptacle?

THEY SPEAK HEBREW

It is a Hebrew word
which means container.

That's what I wondered.

That you would find in the Bible,
women carrying pots
and all kinds of...

You know, pots, and lots of words
like that in the Bible.

Potters' vessel.

You'll see modernisation
of ancient terms.

But usually when it comes to cars,
the English wins.

For example, if you have a puncture.

HE SPEAKS HEBREW

Puncture. Puncture.
You call it a puncture.

You see, he knows the Academy
of the Hebrew language word,

but actually people say puncture.

'Ah!

'So Hebrew has an Academy as well!

'Not so surprising, I suppose,
when they started a language
from scratch.

'Car duly fixed, we're off now to
visit the place where it all began.'

HE SPEAKS HEBREW

'When Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the prime
force behind the revival of Hebrew,

'began to teach here, Palestine was
still part of the Ottoman Empire

'and his students would
have been dressed as these
children have today.

'The slow process of re-inventing
modern Hebrew had begun.

'Ironically, the Yiddish language,
sturdy enough to survive

'the Holocaust, was now facing
a more serious threat...

'from the state of Israel.'

In this classroom these were
the young pioneers, whatever you

call them, the early Zionists,
which was not then necessarily

a coloured political word, it just
meant they wanted to live here.

They were being taught
what kind of Hebrew?

Because the Hebrew you speak,
which you call Israeli,

which seems a sensible idea,

presumably was not the same
as the one that was being developed?

They were taught in the best Hebrew,

which was available
for their teachers.

Let us remember that the teachers
were not Hebrew speakers.

Wasn't their first language.
It was not their first language.

They were not native Hebrew speakers.
There were none. They were
mostly Yiddish speakers.

They could not in fact rid themselves
from the structures of Yiddish.

But modern Israeli Hebrew
has been an enormous success.

It is a first language for most
of the population of the country.

And how is it that this engineered
language managed to succeed?

I think that at the end of the day
there was a lot of ideology for,

and the wish to, have a language
for the future state.

And the other thing was
to have a language

which was a unifying tongue
for all the Jews

because Jews came from
all over the world.

Right. Speaking different languages.

So in a sense it was political will,
and it was identity that drove it?

Right. Definitely identity.
But the important thing to realise is

the success of Israeli, of course,
is not only the revival of Hebrew,

but rather the survival of all the
other languages like Yiddish, etc.

Israeli, if you want,
is on the one hand a phoenix

rising from the ashes, Hebrew.

On the other hand it's a cuckoo,
laying its eggs in the nest

of another bird, tricking
it to believe that it is its own
bird. This is Yiddish.

On the other hand it's a magpie
stealing from America

and then Polish.
So it's a phoenix-cuckoo hybrid.

Three birds. Well, with some magpie
characteristics.

And in fact I would argue
that Israeli is not

the murder of Yiddish,
but rather Yiddish...
HE SPEAKS HEBREW

So, Yiddish...

speaks itself within Israeli
and this is the irony of history.

Ben-Yehuda and many other
revivalists wanted very much

to reject Yiddish,
but history tells us,

"No, Yiddish
survives beneath Israeli."

So Israeli is a story of revival
and survival.

The only thing I'd say is that
if Yiddish was chosen

as the language for Israel, it
would have been a funnier country.

It just would have been funnier.

Don't you think? Oy!
But we, but we keep...

Schlep your bag for you, sir?!

In our globalised world, this
kind of phoenix-cuckoo hybrid

may be the most workable way
of keeping local languages alive.

Here in Africa, Kenya alone
has 69 languages.

The mother tongue of
the Turkana people only has

anything in common with
two of those.

This fierce warrior tribe of
pastoral nomads are, like the Jews,

attempting their own journey
of survival and revival,

involving three languages.

'Turkana children learn English in
the mission schools they attend.'

Four times 14.
Do we have any division?

The official state
language, Swahili,

is spoken in the towns for everyday
activities such as shopping.

'And, in their own communities,
Turkana teachers are passing on

'the mother tongue to
the next generation.'

HE SPEAKS NATIVE LANGUAGE

So while the purity of
the language may be lost,

hopefully Turkana,
along with all the other

languages we have explored, will
survive in a new and hybrid form.

I really do hope so.

Because, in the end, our
attachment to our language

is about emotion not intellect.

Our identity is all about feelings.

What better way to celebrate
the end of my travels than a game

'at Carrow Road, the home ground
of my beloved Norwich City
Football Club.'

On The Ball, City, the oldest
football song in the world.

All the tribal identity issues
we have as human beings,

and we would be foolish to deny,

are allowed to take place on
the football field.

Against the run of play.

Come on. OK, we score back.

Come on, you Yellows!

Aaaagh!

Oh, no!

Oh, my lordy!

We're doomed!

There are those who say,
it doesn't matter to me,

I have no sense of identity, it
doesn't matter that I'm British,

it doesn't matter that I'm English,
it doesn't matter that I'm from

Shropshire, or Yorkshire,
or Norfolk.

Maybe they're right,
but I can't feel like that.

I have this...
I can't help but belong.

And, I think it was Clemenceau,
the French prime minister

in the early part
of the 20th century,

who said that he was a patriot
but he wasn't a nationalist.

And they said to him,
what do you mean by that?

He said, well, I think
a patriot loves his country,

but a nationalist hates
everybody else's country.

And I think a good football team
to support is you love

your football team,
you love your region,

you love your city,
you love your county,

but it doesn't mean you hate
everybody else's.

And the best of belonging
is that embracing of who you are

and it's just like an extra
dimension in your life.

An extra feeling. It's a
sort of hugging feeling,

of belonging. I find it very
important in my life,

and without it, I think my life
would be poorer.

Oh, too much. Come on! Come on!

'Football terraces
are a cauldron of passion,

'bad language and,
surprisingly, wit.

'The way we use, and, of course,
abuse language with new ways

'of swearing, or jargon, or slang
are a testament to our creativity

'but also give us a deeper insight
into the workings of the mind.

'And this is what I'll be
looking at next time.

'So you'd better
sodding well tune in.'

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd