Fry's Planet Word | E01 - Babel
Stephen Fry dissects our language in all its guises. He analyses how we use and abuse language and asks whether we are near to beginning to understand the complexities of its DNA. In this first episode, Stephen seeks to uncover the origins of human language and how and why we are the only species on the planet to have this gift.
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00:00Hello. You know, just saying that one word is one of the most complex and extraordinary
00:07operations we know. Seventy muscles and half a billion brain cells go into it. And what's
00:13more, pretty much anyone who can speak English over the age of two can do it without even
00:17having to think. The story of language is surely one of the greatest stories we have.
00:27In this series, I'm going to explore language in all its amazing complexity, variety, and
00:33ingenuity. Our species perhaps could live together without language, but then it wouldn't
00:38be what we call the human species. I'm going to try to understand how we learn it, how
00:43we write it. Oh my goodness, this is magical. How we sometimes lose it. Oh my lordy. How
00:52it defines us to the very core of our being. How it can make us laugh and cry and tear
01:01our hair out or inspire us. It's what I treasure above all else. It is what makes me, me. In
01:14this program, I'm going to take you on a journey to find out why we are the only species to
01:20have developed this miraculous gift of language. We'll see the individual miracle of how we
01:27acquire language at an early age. And celebrate language as one of the most marvellous tools
01:35humanity has. A continual process of innovation and creation.
01:41That really hurts, actually.
02:03To begin my exploration of language, I've come here to northeast Africa, close to where
02:08our species first evolved. There are around 7,000 languages in use on our planet today.
02:20Some spoken by a mere handful of people, others by more than a billion. It's a surprisingly
02:26short time, only about 50,000 years since mankind graduated from uggs and grunts and
02:32growls into linguistic flowering. These are the Turkana, a pastoral nomad tribe who are
02:47about as far away from me and my tribe as you could find. But one thing that I do share
02:58with them is language. Turkana is as sophisticated and complicated a tongue as ancient Greek.
03:05And although I can't understand a word, it actually works much the same as English does.
03:15There are nouns to name things, adjectives to describe them, and verbs to explain what you can do with them.
03:26Every language provides an amazingly rich and adaptable set of tools that mankind shares the world over.
03:34And which every Turkana child imbibes with their mother's milk.
03:41And how old is a baby when they start to speak?
03:58Two years, is that right?
03:59Yeah, two years.
04:00When she's talking about means winter, summer, winter, summer.
04:08I see, winter, summer. Two winters, two summers.
04:22Those are the first words, father, mother. Yeah, the same everywhere.
04:28What's really amazing is that these children, even the smallest of them, within a very short space of time,
04:33are able to grasp the full complexities and all the phonetics and all the metaphors
04:37and all the remarkable depths that the Turkana language is capable of.
04:41It's no more effort for them to acquire a full language than it is for them to grow hair.
04:47It just happens. And yet it's the most complex piece of brain processing that we know of on the planet.
04:53It's a kind of miracle.
04:56Miracle. You are a miracle.
05:01All over the world, from the cradle of man in East Africa to a hutong in China,
05:07this same miraculous process takes place over the course of just a few years.
05:12Baba, baba, baba. Baba, baba, baba. Baba, baba, baba, baba, baba, baba, baba.
05:22This is Ruby, who lives in London.
05:26Ruby.
05:31Ruby is 15 months old and over the next year, we'll be tracking her development from umms and ahs to recognisable speech.
05:40Say ta.
05:45But how do we learn language?
05:51And what exactly is the difference between language and communication?
05:57After all, the natural world is an absolute cacophony of communication.
06:04Birds singing to greet the dawn.
06:08Meerkats whistling to each other to warn off predators.
06:12Elephants trumpeting to attract a mate.
06:15Dolphins clicking to point out food.
06:21The closer you get to us humans on the evolutionary tree, the more sophisticated that communication seems to become.
06:30Monkeys have a whole grammar of whoops, howls and calls that signal everything from fear to joy to love.
06:39But it's still a long way from this to language as our species knows it.
06:47It's not that we haven't looked for an amazing talking ape, it's just that so far we haven't found one.
06:54It's so closely related and yet so completely different.
06:58And I think it is language that's the thing that's most different about us.
07:02If I trained hard, I probably could bounce from tree to tree.
07:06But you could train all your life and you could never say,
07:09Betty had a bit of bitter butter and put it in her batter and made her batter bitter.
07:13Then Betty took a bit of better butter and put it in her bitter batter and made her bitter batter better.
07:18Or if you could, you'd be the wonder of the age.
07:21So how did we manage to develop language when other primates have not?
07:27I've come to the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Leipzig, where they study a number of large primates.
07:38I'm here to meet one of the world's foremost evolutionary linguists, Michael Tomasello.
07:43There's a general assumption that we all have that language is one of the things that separates human beings from all other animals.
07:49But that maybe animals like the great apes, our closest relatives, with whom we share so much DNA famously,
07:55are sort of on a continuum on the way to language, that maybe they can be taught language.
08:01Does your research show that any of this is likely?
08:04Well, in evolutionary biology, it's very difficult to say.
08:07Maybe they can be taught language. Does your research show that any of this is likely?
08:12Well, in evolution, everything's on a continuum, but they're a pretty far step away on that continuum, I would say.
08:18So their vocalizations are pretty hardwired, and before you can get to something like language,
08:23you obviously have to be able to produce sounds when you want to and not when you don't.
08:28So if a food is coming, they make this noise, or if a predator's coming, they make that noise?
08:32They're very much tied to their emotions. So their vocalizations go with emotional states.
08:37So if they're frightened, they scream. If they're excited about food, they hoot.
08:42If they're greeting someone after a long time, then they give a kind of a submissive pant grunt.
08:47And so their vocalizations are fairly stereotypical and with only a little bit of flexibility.
08:54Well, no one can doubt that animals communicate.
08:58I mean, you can see our closest cousins here, primates like us,
09:02they're communicating like billiards in all kinds of ways.
09:05But I don't think we can call that language.
09:07And one of the problems they face, even sophisticated primates,
09:10is that they simply don't have the mechanical apparatus that's necessary for speech.
09:14They don't have the control over breathing.
09:16They don't have the complex facial muscles that allow such extraordinary sounds to be produced.
09:20And I'm making now, though goodness knows they can try and compensate.
09:25Nor do they have the larynx or vocal cords in the right position for speech.
09:29But they can make signs.
09:32So maybe sign language is possible amongst primates.
09:36That's worth thinking about, surely.
09:38Hey? You can't just fart, surely. There must be...
09:41That's better.
09:43Since the 1960s, there have been numerous attempts to do just that,
09:48trying to teach apes language using sign language.
09:54Perhaps the most famous of these experiments was conducted at Columbia University,
09:59where a chimpanzee, cheekily named Nim Chimpsky,
10:03a pun on the great linguist Noam Chomsky,
10:06was born.
10:07Nim became quite adept at signing,
10:10but never grasped how to use grammar.
10:21Around the same time, a three-year-old chimp named Lana
10:25was the subject of an experiment in which she tried to learn how to use grammar.
10:29But she couldn't do it,
10:31because she didn't know how to sign.
10:33A three-year-old chimp named Lana
10:36was the subject of an experiment in a planter.
10:39Lana lives in a transparent plastic cage with a computer.
10:43She operates the machine through a language of symbols.
10:46The symbols have to be pressed in a specific order
10:49for the desired result to be achieved.
10:51Please, machine, give piece of apple full stop.
10:57Although this communication seems sophisticated,
11:00it's not using language in the way that we do.
11:04Chimps have the ability to construct very basic sentences,
11:08but they don't initiate conversations.
11:12There is no linguistic creativity.
11:15Please, machine, give chocolate full stop.
11:20They're doing it only to request things.
11:23They're doing it imperatively,
11:25or in response to some demand from them,
11:27and not with one another in their natural state.
11:29So, pointing for them is not about sharing information
11:32as much as it is about getting what you want.
11:37So, what is your best guess, based on your research,
11:42as to how human beings separated,
11:45why and when they acquired this difference,
11:49this ability to project their personality onto their fellows,
11:53to cooperate, to use language as a social cooperative medium
11:56in a way quite different from others?
11:57I think the initial step was that we ended up
12:01having to collaborate in order to produce food.
12:04So, something in the ecology changed
12:07that meant that we had to put our heads together
12:10to be able to acquire food.
12:12And working together toward a common goal
12:15means that we have to be cooperative
12:17in sharing the food at the end,
12:19we have to coordinate our movements when we do that,
12:21and it puts pressure for communication,
12:23because I think the first major function
12:26of uniquely human communication
12:28was to coordinate collaborative activities.
12:35For simpler types of hunting, gestures and grunts may suffice,
12:40but the pursuit of more elusive quarry
12:43demanded a more complex system of communication.
12:45When the ancestors of these
12:48bauja of the Jingu River in Brazil
12:51first decided to hunt some alligators,
12:54the whole village needed to work together
12:57to catch their prey.
13:02So, somewhere along the line,
13:05cries and grunts turned into words and sentences.
13:10Clearer communication brought other benefits.
13:13The increased efficiency created more free time
13:16to spend together as a community.
13:18As language blossomed,
13:20experiences could be shared and stories told.
13:40I'm going to kill you!
13:45I'm going to kill you!
13:52So language gave us the power to hunt ever more efficiently
13:55and with greater cooperation,
13:57but it also granted us completely unseen new benefits.
14:00We were able to talk about the past
14:03and to project our lives into the future.
14:05This transmission of knowledge across the generations
14:07is what gave us, ultimately, civilization itself.
14:16Language became the foundation of human society and culture,
14:21and for me, thinking about it, using it, playing with it
14:25has always been one of the greatest passions of my life.
14:28So to you, language is more than just a means of communication?
14:31Oh, of course it is, of course it is, of course it is, of course it is.
14:34Language is my mother, my father, my husband, my brother,
14:37my mother-in-law, my mistress, my checkout girl.
14:40Language is a complimentary moist lemon-scented cleansing square
14:43or a handy freshen-up wipe net.
14:45Language is the breath of God.
14:52If our changing environment first forced us to learn language,
14:56what did that language then do to us?
14:59Did it change us physiologically?
15:02Elsewhere, in Leipzig's Max Planck Institute,
15:05leading geneticist Dr Wolfgang Ennard
15:08is unravelling the mysteries of the human genome.
15:12His work is providing some tantalising clues
15:15as to how our brains became hard-wired for language.
15:20Wolfgang, one of the most important things that science can discover
15:24is where speech comes from,
15:26where this extraordinary ability of human beings
15:28to have evolved and to process language,
15:31the thing that marks us out perhaps more than anything else from other animals,
15:35where it comes from.
15:37There are all kinds of theories,
15:39but a recent addition to those theories
15:42has been this mysterious two-letter gene difference
15:46that has been discovered,
15:48that you and your colleagues have discovered.
15:50Can you tell me about it?
15:52It's called FOXPT, is that right?
15:54FOXP2, yes.
15:55Yes, that's how gene names are,
15:57they're kind of strange letters and numbers.
16:00Yeah, I mean, FOXP2 is currently the biggest foot we have in this door, right?
16:06It's kind of how, what the genetics make up is how we evolved language
16:10and how language, or speech at least, functions.
16:15The FOXP2 gene is what's called a forkhead box protein
16:20found on human chromosome 7.
16:23All mammals have it,
16:25but there's only two amino acids different between ours and the chimps
16:29and just three between us and mice.
16:32Its connection to language was realized
16:35when it was discovered that humans with a mutation in the gene
16:38can have extreme speech disorders.
16:41We need to somehow study that, right?
16:44And the clue to that, or the only possibility we really have to study that
16:48is to look in mice, right?
16:50Because we can make mice that have the human version of the FOXP2 gene
16:53and then see how they compare to kind of their normal mouse littermates.
16:58These are pups that have the gene in?
17:01Yes, yes.
17:03So they carry the human version of FOXP2.
17:07Right.
17:09Mice can have litters every few months,
17:13so the study effectively follows an evolutionary process on fast forward.
17:18By closely monitoring these little creatures' squeals and squeaks,
17:22Ennard is already spotting some small but significant changes.
17:29They have some subtle features, especially in their brain,
17:33but also in their vocalization.
17:36Really?
17:38Where there's slight differences,
17:40and we hope that these slight differences gives us some clue
17:43to where and what actually happens.
17:45To where and what actually changed during human FOXP2 evolution.
17:50And you would hope, of course, to discover not just new sound waves
17:55or new frequencies at which they're communicating,
17:58but maybe even an effect in the communication,
18:01which is to say maybe quicker mating or passing of news of food.
18:06I mean, who knows?
18:08Or is that being far too optimistic about the possibilities?
18:10I think that would be asking too much.
18:12The mouse would not start talking.
18:13No, they're not going from squeaking to speaking.
18:15I mean, they're still mouse, right?
18:17Yes, exactly.
18:19So, sadly, despite the fact that Ennard's test subjects
18:23have been dubbed the singing mice,
18:26there doesn't seem to be any chance they will evolve
18:28into something like these old friends.
18:31We will wash it. We will splash it.
18:33We will brush it. We will brush it.
18:35We will dust it. We will brush it.
18:37We will polish it. Top, top, top.
18:40We will polish it. Top, top, top.
18:43But do you think FOXP2 has more secrets to give up for you?
18:47Yes, absolutely.
18:49I mean, we understand so little in terms of what it really does,
18:53because, after all, the brain is a pretty complex organ.
18:57And how certain molecular changes relate
19:02to physiological changes in the brain, to behavioural changes.
19:05This is just a hard problem.
19:07Of course, scientifically appealing and revealing as it might be,
19:11to experiment with FOXP2 on primates would be ethically unthinkable.
19:17But that hasn't stopped us imagining
19:19what communicating with our closest cousins might be like.
19:23Get in the hang of it.
19:25Oh, I can't hold it, Dad.
19:27Don't worry, son. I've shifted more pianos than you've had up to this.
19:30Whee, whee, Mr Shifter. Light refreshment.
19:34Thank you most kindly, madam.
19:36Hold on.
19:38One way of shifting it.
19:39Dad, do you know what a piano's on my foot?
19:42Do you? I mean, son, I'll play it.
19:45Human.
19:49Chimp.
19:53Mouse.
19:56And...
19:59human.
20:01If only we were that simple.
20:03But we are, it seems, beginning to unlock some of the mystery.
20:06A few misplaced atoms on chromosome 7 was probably part of it,
20:11causing some improved communication during hunting,
20:14which led to a better diet,
20:16so that those who had the gene had more children.
20:19But exactly when and where humankind first started to speak,
20:23we'll never know.
20:25But we certainly did learn to speak,
20:27and frankly, ever since then, we've never shut up.
20:30As haven't you, I notice.
20:33Yes.
20:34But absolutely none of that would have been possible
20:37without this exquisite thing,
20:40this glorious three pounds of mushy grey matter,
20:43which differentiates us from all other animals.
20:47The human brain.
20:49With this cauliflower, walnut-like mass,
20:52containing something like a hundred billion neurons,
20:55we are able to think our thoughts, dream our dreams,
20:58dredge the memory banks, to translate them into words,
21:01and then get our bodies actually to speak them.
21:04But the strange thing is,
21:06we know more about the origins and workings of the universe
21:09than we do about the human brain.
21:11It's mankind's final frontier.
21:14So what do we actually know
21:17about this language-producing machine between our ears?
21:22I'm off to have a delve into my own brain.
21:26At the University College London Centre for the Brain,
21:29psychologists, brain boxes, and neurolinguists
21:32have the very latest kit to look into the grey matter.
21:40Ah, this looks like a little office.
21:43It's the control room.
21:45It's through there, right? Oh, yes.
21:47Oh, I've seen these on House and things like that.
21:50Dr Joe Devlin and Professor Cathy Price
21:53are clinical psycholinguists
21:55whose work is focused on how language works.
21:57They're specialising in how strokes affect language ability.
22:02OK.
22:04They're going to have my brain scanned by MRI,
22:07the magnetic resonance imaging technique
22:10that allows scientists to see which parts of the brain are working,
22:14lighting up areas which are being stimulated,
22:17in this case, while I'm speaking.
22:20Magnetic resonance imaging.
22:22It's what I'm undergoing even as I speak,
22:24an extraordinary technology
22:26which allows one to view areas of the brain
22:29and the activity which they undergo when performing certain tasks,
22:33such as this rather self-reflexive one of describing MRI.
22:40Professor Price has now analysed my scan results.
22:44This is your brain here, and this is a model of the brain
22:48where we've superimposed a summary of the activations
22:51during different conditions.
22:52It doesn't matter where the human being has brought up
22:55or how they have learnt to communicate.
22:58The same set of regions are involved,
23:00and it's like looking at bodies.
23:02They're all made up of the same components.
23:05Anyone who learns to play the piano will be taught to do it the same way,
23:10use the same set of instruments.
23:13When it comes to understanding
23:15exactly how our brains work in the language process,
23:18we are still in the neurological equivalent
23:20of the Dark Ages.
23:23But looking at the images,
23:25I can't help but wonder at how much of my brain is involved in it.
23:29Is my grey matter saturated with language?
23:33Language uses most of our brain
23:35because it is integrating all of our sensory sources,
23:38all the different types of memory that we can have,
23:41and then coordinating how we respond to it.
23:44And then everything we do is monitored by language.
23:47So language then becomes an integral part of our human nature.
23:53I do feel that language is what I am.
23:56So what happened to the writer Robert McCrum
23:59is just the sort of thing I would fear most.
24:0215 years ago, a stroke left Robert unable to walk or talk.
24:08Language lived on inside him, but he could not express it.
24:12I had what's called a right-side haemorrhagic infarct.
24:14Goodness me.
24:16Which was quite a bad one.
24:18And I was paralysed from all the way down my left side,
24:22so that right goes to left in the brain.
24:24Yes.
24:26And so I was paralysed and couldn't stand or do anything.
24:29I was completely paralysed.
24:31The stroke took place in what's called the basal ganglia.
24:34It's very deep in the brain.
24:36But I did have language.
24:38I never lost... I couldn't speak because my mouth was all...
24:41So the language was in your head?
24:42The language was in the head,
24:44but the face was sort of frozen, or half-frozen.
24:47But there was a nervous two or three months
24:49when I wasn't sure what I was going to get back.
24:52Right.
24:54As Robert recuperated, his brain did an extraordinary thing.
24:58New parts of it took over to replace the burnt-out ones.
25:02It rewired itself.
25:04And although it's not quite as easy as before,
25:07Robert is now able once again physically to verbalise his thoughts.
25:10It's now believed that somewhere between 50 and 80% of the brain
25:14is involved in language processes.
25:17And then gradually, it's got better.
25:19And even now, when I'm speaking to you,
25:21I still have to sort of make an effort.
25:23So there's a greater amount of conscious production.
25:27Absolutely.
25:29So it's like someone who has to walk by remembering how to use...
25:31Yes, I have to remember to articulate clearly
25:33and not to speak too quickly.
25:35And I have a slight... I mean, you probably don't get this,
25:37or see this, but there's probably a slight stammer.
25:39Particularly if I'm nervous.
25:41Small, tiny things.
25:43So language is clearly integral to being human.
25:46It's hardwired into us at a genetic level,
25:49utilising every part of the brain.
25:51Indeed, the brain will rewire itself just to keep us speaking.
25:54But how intrinsic, how automatic is language?
25:58Is it like eating and sleeping?
26:00Or is it, to some extent, a learned skill?
26:03It's really a kind of nature versus nurture question,
26:05the kind of question that has beguiled and fascinated
26:08scientists and philosophers since time began.
26:11And it's not often that nature affords us an opportunity
26:15to investigate.
26:24In the midst of the craziness of the French Revolution,
26:27a young boy was discovered in the forests
26:30of the southeastern Massif Central,
26:32one of the wildest and least inhabited regions in Europe.
26:37It appeared that the boy had been living alone
26:40and like an animal for some years.
26:54Feral children have fascinated philosophers for centuries,
26:58offering a window into the world
27:00of the human race,
27:02offering a window into human nature
27:05untainted by society's strictures,
27:08and in doing so, revealing how language might be formed.
27:13Finding a real-life feral child
27:16was nothing short of sensation.
27:23He was captured and ended up in Paris,
27:26under the care of the innovative doctor Jean-Marc Itain,
27:30head of the recently established Institute for Deaf Mutes.
27:35The boy, whom they named Victor,
27:38having experienced almost nothing of society and no education,
27:42was considered something of a blank slate.
27:49Most significantly, he was unable to speak,
27:53suggesting that language is not just genetic,
27:56it needs to be learnt from others.
28:01For the next five years, Itain devoted himself to Victor.
28:06He taught him how to eat, how to use the toilet,
28:09how to restrain his animal urges,
28:12in particular with the female inmates once he had reached puberty,
28:15and, of course, how to speak French.
28:18Victor, Victor.
28:20Go and get the pen.
28:22Go and get the pen.
28:27Victor's vocal cords, like any muscle unused to exercise,
28:31needed training.
28:33And just as a baby learns to babble,
28:36so Victor started to learn to articulate sounds.
28:40Ma.
28:42Marto.
28:44Marto.
28:45Marto.
28:46Marto.
28:47To.
28:49Very good.
28:50Go and get the pencil.
28:53Slowly, slowly.
28:54Not so fast.
28:55A little louder.
28:56Like that.
28:57Directly.
28:58Try again.
28:59Despite remaining in Itain's care until his death, aged 42,
29:03Victor never learned to talk.
29:06The reasons why were never established.
29:09Perhaps it was a congenital defect or psychological trauma,
29:12or perhaps Victor simply started to learn too late.
29:17Oui, très bien, très bien.
29:19The trouble is, cases like Victor make for messy scientific study
29:22because, by definition, with all feral children,
29:25their backgrounds are unclear.
29:27What seems certain is that there is a window for language acquisition
29:31which closes round about early puberty, say,
29:34and after that it's much more difficult to acquire language.
29:37Of course, we do, as we often learn foreign languages,
29:39but, as most of us can testify,
29:42it becomes a lot more difficult as the brain loses plasticity.
29:45One thing, though, is certain.
29:47By the age of five, most of us will have acquired the gift of language.
29:54To study this magical process,
29:57Dr Dev Roy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
30:01had cameras installed throughout his house.
30:04For three years, Dr Roy filmed his son as he began to speak.
30:10OK, water, water.
30:14Dr Roy's son was right on schedule.
30:17At first, he spoke in simple phonemes, the wahs and gahs.
30:22By 18 months, he had progressed to words and phrases.
30:31After 24 months, like most other children,
30:34he was acquiring ten new words a day.
30:40And how is Ruby, the little girl we met earlier in the film,
30:44how is she doing?
30:46KNOCK AT DOOR
30:48Hello.
30:50Kermy, Kermy.
30:52What is that?
30:54Who is that?
30:56Kermy.
31:01It's a sort of mixture of melody...
31:04Which sounds so cute.
31:06I have a horrible feeling my first word might have been sorry.
31:10Baby's chair.
31:12Baby's chair.
31:14Baby's chair.
31:16Baby's chair.
31:18That's exactly right.
31:20There's the baby's chair.
31:22Both the babies are on the chair now.
31:24Today is actually her second birthday,
31:27so quite literally she's two.
31:29Yeah.
31:30She's not your first child,
31:32so you've had the opportunity to observe children learning,
31:36acquiring, as I believe the technical phrase is,
31:39language before.
31:41Yes.
31:43And I suppose you're probably more relaxed by the time it's the third one.
31:47Well, yes, and also it's more funny,
31:50because you kind of make it more of a laugh,
31:53rather than...
31:55I think with your first, you're slightly watching
31:57what everyone else's kids are doing.
31:58To see when their language is coming,
32:00is mine advance, is mine behind?
32:02Yes.
32:04Whereas with this one, it doesn't matter,
32:06because you know it'll come whenever she's ready.
32:08And she's got her siblings to help her.
32:11Yeah.
32:12Well, yes, and to be quite annoying,
32:14because they're always trying to get her to say all the bad stuff.
32:17Of course they are.
32:19And ragging her up, which is great,
32:21but it does mean she's not necessarily learning all the words
32:23that you want her to learn.
32:25My apple, thank you.
32:26My apple.
32:28Apple, exactly.
32:30From here on in, Ruby's vocabulary grows day by day.
32:34Bye.
32:36Bye-bye.
32:38Bye-bye.
32:40Hello.
32:42Hello.
32:44I...
32:46I...
32:48Am...
32:50Am...
32:52A...
32:54A...
32:56A...
32:58What is your name?
33:00Mary.
33:02No, what is your name?
33:04Ruby.
33:06Yes, well done!
33:08What is your name?
33:10Ruby.
33:12It's wonderful watching Ruby starting to speak.
33:14I want to know more about how children manage
33:16this miraculous process,
33:18so I've gone to see a bit of a hero of mine,
33:21the renowned academic and author,
33:23Professor Stephen Pinker.
33:24I wondered if you could explain to me
33:26what current thinking might be
33:28about language acquisition.
33:30Presumably it needs society,
33:32it needs encouraging.
33:34Language, at a bare minimum, needs words,
33:36and moreover, the words have to be
33:38the same words that everyone else is using.
33:40If you had your own private language,
33:42even if it were possible for language
33:44to just spring out of the brain,
33:46it would be completely useless.
33:48No one would understand a word you're saying.
33:50So the child has to be attuned
33:52to the words that are floating around
33:54in the academic environment,
33:56but there also has to be
33:58some kind of talent in the child's brain
34:00that allows them not just to parrot back
34:02the exact words and sentences they've heard.
34:04It would be very upsetting
34:06if that's what your child did.
34:08We expect children, right from the beginning,
34:10to compose their own sentences,
34:12to abstract the rules of combination,
34:15the rules of grammar,
34:17so that they can talk about new events
34:19and new thoughts,
34:21and take the familiar words
34:22and rearrange them in new sequences.
34:24What's really amazing
34:26is that with this gift of grammar,
34:28we can go beyond forming
34:30our own simple sentences
34:32and begin to be creative with language.
34:34So even a young child
34:36can actually come up with a sentence
34:38that's never before been uttered
34:40in the history of their language.
34:42Right from the beginning,
34:44from the time at which children
34:46first start putting two words together,
34:48some of those combinations
34:50are clearly from their own creativity.
34:52The mother washed them.
34:54The mother washed off the jam.
34:56The child said,
34:58all gone sticky.
35:00Now that doesn't correspond
35:02to any adult English sentence,
35:04but the child had those two words
35:06and had the formula
35:08that put them in that order
35:10to express the idea of passing of a state.
35:12Imagine a piano keyboard,
35:1488 keys, only 88,
35:16and yet, and yet,
35:18hundreds of new melodies,
35:20new tunes, new harmonies
35:22in our language, Tiger,
35:24our language,
35:26hundreds of thousands
35:28of available words,
35:30trillions of legitimate new ideas,
35:32so that I can say the following sentence
35:34and be utterly sure
35:36that nobody has ever said it before
35:38in the history of human communication.
35:40Hold the newsreader's nose squarely, waiter,
35:42or friendly milk
35:44will countermand my trousers.
35:47Perfectly ordinary words,
35:49but never before put
35:50in that precise order.
35:52A unique child
35:54delivered of a unique mother.
35:56We can't work right now
35:58because you're getting...
36:00A path-breaking way
36:02of investigating how children
36:04instinctively use grammar
36:06was created in 1958
36:08by a pioneering psycholinguist
36:10who I've come to meet today,
36:12Jean Bercow Gleeson.
36:14Hello.
36:16Twyla.
36:18Twyla.
36:20Four and a half.
36:22Twyla was four and a half.
36:24Good age.
36:26OK, Twyla.
36:28Hi.
36:30Hi.
36:32I'm going to show you
36:34some pictures, OK?
36:36It's called the WUG test,
36:38and Jean still uses
36:40the original card
36:42she designed half a century ago.
36:44This is a WUG.
36:46They show that even
36:48with nonsense words
36:50you can use WUGs.
36:52WUGs is great.
36:54Very, very good.
36:56This is a man
36:58who knows how to bing.
37:00He's binging.
37:02He did the same thing yesterday.
37:04What did he do yesterday?
37:06Yesterday he binged.
37:08Very nice.
37:10Here is a man
37:12who knows how to zib.
37:14So what is he doing?
37:16He is...
37:18Zibbing.
37:20Zib.
37:25He has to do it every day.
37:27His job is to zib,
37:29so he's a...
37:31Zibber.
37:33Very, very, very good.
37:35Is there any evidence
37:37as to how many times
37:39a child who's right in the flush
37:41of language acquisition
37:43needs to hear someone
37:45not correct them exactly.
37:47They say, I think that.
37:48The education that parents
37:50provide for their kids
37:52at home before they get to school
37:54is crucial.
37:56Absolutely crucial.
37:58All the research has shown
38:00that hearing a lot of language
38:02and getting the opportunity
38:04to talk in different ways
38:06really is the kind of insurance
38:08you would want for your kids
38:10to be successful in the world.
38:12So actively trying to coach them
38:14or correct them is irrelevant
38:16in your estimation.
38:18It's about engaging them
38:20and listening to what they say
38:22and giving them the opportunity
38:24to engage in different kinds
38:26of linguistic experiences.
38:28In other words,
38:30having them tell you what they did,
38:32narrative,
38:34but having them describe something.
38:36A lot of different, say,
38:38genres that kids might be able
38:40to engage in,
38:42that is a wonderful thing
38:44for young kids.
38:48They talk, they use language
38:50to affirm, to reaffirm,
38:52to confirm, to reassure,
38:54to amuse, to beguile, to delight,
38:56because language itself
38:58seems to fascinate and delight us.
39:00So much so that perhaps
39:02over 400, it's reckoned,
39:04conlangs, constructed languages
39:06have been made up,
39:08usually out of idealism,
39:10like Esperanto I suppose
39:12is the most famous.
39:14Sometimes languages are made up
39:16for more amusing reasons.
39:18One of the newest languages
39:20on the planet
39:22is Klingon,
39:24named after the eponymous
39:26Star Trek species.
39:28My guest appearance
39:30in the Klingon version
39:32of Shakespeare's Hamlet
39:34is not one of my proudest
39:36theatrical moments.
39:38That really hurts actually,
39:40because it's like,
39:42you know,
39:44it's like,
39:46that really hurts actually.
39:59Backstage,
40:01before the performance,
40:03I chatted to a level four
40:05Klingon speaker,
40:07the highest you can be.
40:09Darmand Spears
40:11is a computational linguist
40:13who took the rather unusual step
40:15to invent his first language.
40:17We had a lot of fun.
40:19We would play language games.
40:21So I would say things to him
40:23like,
40:25and he would point to my cheek,
40:27where's my cheek?
40:29And I would say,
40:31and he would point to his nose.
40:33And then one day we're playing
40:35on the carpet in the living room
40:37and I had his bottle
40:39that he would drink from.
40:41And we didn't have a word for bottle,
40:43we didn't have a word for diaper,
40:45I had words for shuttlecraft
40:47and phaser
40:49and transporter ionization unit.
40:51I didn't have bottle, right?
40:53So we were using the word for bottle
40:55that is like a drinking vessel,
40:57and I said to him one day,
40:59you know, we'd had this game,
41:01you know,
41:03and so I said to him,
41:05so I used the word for bottle,
41:07I used it with a suffix,
41:09I used it in a sentence,
41:11I didn't point at it,
41:13I didn't look at it,
41:15I said, you know, baby,
41:17toddler,
41:19started crawling over towards the bottle
41:21and grabbed the bottle.
41:23And at that moment I knew
41:25that this was working,
41:27he was learning this language,
41:29it was very exciting.
41:31Oh, that's rude.
41:33What the heck,
41:35the heck that is?
41:41One of the other things we did
41:43was we had a lullaby
41:45for the Klingon imperial anthem.
41:49Tach, jaj, wo,
41:51may the empire endure.
41:53And we sang it as a lullaby.
41:55I'm picturing this little baby
41:57in a sort of pooh bear onesie
41:59singing the Klingon empire song.
42:01Absolutely right.
42:03So there were things like that
42:05and he was learning to count
42:07and he was learning colors
42:09and he was learning words,
42:11but as he went from about
42:13two and a half to three years old,
42:15he wasn't enjoying
42:17doing it with me as much.
42:19So I would say something to him in Klingon
42:21and he would say it back in English
42:23and I would try to encourage him
42:25and he started to resist it.
42:27And, you know, it was fun
42:29and it was interesting
42:31and when it stopped being fun and interesting
42:33I stopped doing it.
42:35Klingon was little use
42:37to Daman's son
42:39in communicating with the outside world
42:41and that is the key factor
42:43in whether a language survives
42:45or dies.
42:50One of the most
42:52enduringly practical forms
42:54of communication
42:56is sign language for the deaf.
42:58Surprise.
43:00Shock.
43:02Since the first form of it
43:04was codified in Paris
43:06back in 1760,
43:08over 200 different versions
43:10have evolved.
43:12But can we really call this
43:13a sign language?
43:15Can we really call this
43:17a sign language?
43:19Well, I think we can.
43:21So I want to invite you
43:23to come up to the stage
43:25and say hello
43:27and say hello
43:29and say hello
43:31and say hello
43:33to the audience
43:35and you can say
43:37hello
43:39to the audience
43:41and say hello
43:43to explain to me, in all my ignorance,
43:46why sign language is more than just gestures
43:49and why it's a complete language.
43:57Sign language really is part of language
44:00because we can't hear, but we can communicate.
44:06It's a visual language.
44:08Instead of hearing it and depending on our ears,
44:11we sign it and we depend on our eyes.
44:14We don't just make up signs, there are actual words
44:17that have pictures and meaning and structure,
44:20sentence structure and concepts.
44:23Everything is involved so that it's clear
44:26and understandable communication.
44:28And Claudia, you're German.
44:31In Germany, is there a Deutsch language
44:35or is there a Deutsche Zeichensprache?
44:40Go on, say that.
44:43Deutsche Zeichensprache.
44:45She doesn't interpret German.
44:47I'm only kidding, I'm only kidding.
44:49So is there a Germanic sign language?
44:52It's different from French or Italian,
44:54let alone American.
44:57Yes, it's very different.
45:00Just as the writing is different in every language.
45:03So an Italian signer would not be able
45:06to understand a German signer?
45:09Nope.
45:10No.
45:11It's very, very interesting.
45:13One afternoon, there was a large wolf
45:17that waited in a dark forest...
45:27...for a little girl to come along.
45:31Finally, a little girl did come along
45:34and she was carrying a basket of food.
45:39Are you...?
45:41How do you agree on a sign?
45:44Does it spread very quickly,
45:46that this is going to be the sign for Barack Obama, for example?
45:54Really, it starts with a big name, like Obama.
46:00Typically, there's an agreement
46:03and it just sort of develops with...
46:06..with big, deaf politicians.
46:10No?
46:12Population.
46:14So what is Barack Obama, for example?
46:22Right, and can you give me the derivation of that?
46:25Where would that have come from?
46:27Is it O, or is it...? It's not the letters B and O, is it?
46:31It's O. O.
46:34Something about the flag.
46:36Ah, right.
46:38O, emphasise the O, and then, like, the flag, the American flag.
46:42I see. Obama.
46:44I'll ask Claudia this, not meaning to be offensive,
46:47but it's just interesting, because as a German,
46:50there may be a different sign for Adolf Hitler
46:53from one that we might use in the rest of the world, for example.
46:56If you were British, you'd just do the moustache.
46:59What's the American sign? Yeah, the moustache, exactly.
47:02That's what I thought. And in German?
47:05Normally, it's the same, but I have...
47:09..um...
47:11..some people sign...
47:13..like, a combination of Adolf Hitler...
47:16And the salute, hidden in... Yes, very interesting.
47:20OK, Madonna.
47:23I don't want to sign that one.
47:25Oh, so now that's interesting. Is that like pointy breasts?
47:28There, you see? Exactly.
47:30Now, that's what's so wonderful about sign language,
47:33is you can do things that really incorporate the character
47:36and the reputation of the person,
47:38not just the dull spelling of their name.
47:40It could be witty.
47:45I agree with that.
47:48And deaf tend to put more of the spirit in the language.
47:51Yeah.
47:53So that they get a reaction when they laugh.
47:55Oh, OK.
47:57It has a good effect.
47:59Ah!
48:07When she opened the door,
48:09the little girl saw that there was someone in bed
48:12with a nightcap and a nightgown on.
48:16But she had approached no nearer than 25 feet
48:20when she realised it was not her grandmother but the wolf.
48:25For even in a nightcap,
48:27a wolf doesn't look any more like your grandmother
48:30than the MGM lion.
48:32Looks like Calvin Coolidge.
48:37So she reached into her basket,
48:39pulled out an automatic,
48:41and shot the wolf dead.
48:44LAUGHTER
48:49Moral?
48:51It's not so easy to fool little girls nowadays as it used to be.
48:55LAUGHTER
48:57APPLAUSE
48:59PIANO PLAYS
49:14The question of how thought and language came about in the human race
49:19is one of central concern,
49:21so it's hardly surprising we've spent thousands of years
49:24thinking and speaking about it.
49:26The biblical accounts suggest that Adam and Eve spoke
49:29a prelapsarian language, a single language of paradise,
49:32and then came the Tower of Babel
49:34and thousands of languages were unleashed upon the planet
49:37and we were all doomed to crawl on its surface for eternity,
49:40misunderstanding each other.
49:42Not surprisingly, people became rather obsessed with the idea
49:45of what that primary language of Adam and Eve's was,
49:48even if it was only a metaphor.
49:50What did mankind first speak?
50:00The Old Testament Babel myth doesn't quite do it for me,
50:04but 250 years ago,
50:06one of the greatest of linguistic forensic discoveries
50:09was unearthed here by two brothers.
50:14Well, this is the famous Leipzig Christmas Market
50:17and it all looks rather a fairy tale, doesn't it?
50:20That's quite appropriate, because aside from being remembered for J.S. Bach,
50:23Leipzig is also remembered for the Brothers Grimm,
50:26progenitors of some of the best-loved fairy tales Europe ever produced,
50:30but also, and perhaps you may not know this,
50:32the Brothers Grimm were responsible for founding the science of linguistics,
50:36what the Germans call philology,
50:38the tracing back to the very roots of the languages of the world.
50:45Professor Wolfgang Klein is a philologist and psycholinguist
50:49who is currently working on Grimm's original documents.
50:54I suppose, Jakob, his greatest contribution
50:57is something called Grimm's Law or Rusk, Grimm's Law.
51:00That's true. Both terms exist, actually.
51:03I mean, what people noticed, actually began to notice systematically,
51:06so, let me say, the second half of the 18th century,
51:09is that there are many, many similarities and correspondences between languages,
51:13and they even discovered that there are similar words
51:16in languages as remote as Sanskrit, on the one hand,
51:20and Greek, and then the Germanic languages.
51:22Yes, Sanskrit is an ancient Indian language.
51:24That's true, absolutely true.
51:26So there's a huge distance, and still,
51:28words sometimes sound surprisingly similar.
51:31There seems to be... It's not just accidental.
51:33Sometimes these similarities are completely accidental,
51:36but clearly not in that case.
51:39Grimm's Law, as it became known,
51:41showed how the consonants of different Indo-European languages
51:45relate to each other.
51:47For example, there's a regular relationship
51:49between words beginning with P in Sanskrit, Latin or Greek,
51:53and F in Germanic languages, including English.
51:56So pater, in Latin, becomes father, in English.
52:00This single language, Proto-Indo-European, or PIE,
52:04the root to over 2,000,
52:07is thought to have been spoken more than 5,000 years ago
52:10in the steppes of southern Russia.
52:12As tribes migrated through Europe and Asia,
52:15PIE split into a number of dialects,
52:17and these, in time, developed into separate languages.
52:21PIE isn't the first language that humanity spoke,
52:25but it's the first of which we have evidence.
52:28This English that we speak,
52:30that you're very kindly speaking as fluently as anybody can, frankly,
52:35it seems so natural to us and it seems so separate,
52:40it seems so different from German and from French,
52:44certainly different from Danish.
52:46Yeah, it is.
52:48You know, any of these languages and Persian languages,
52:51and yet with this common ancestor.
52:54It's quite extraordinary.
52:56Do you think, in some sense, it's necessary for mankind,
52:59for us to have so many languages?
53:01Well... Why Babel? Why did it happen?
53:04First of all, it's beautiful,
53:06and I wonder, actually, whether this argument, biology,
53:09is not also a kind of fatigue argument.
53:11I really would like to see the evidence that this is necessary,
53:14but it's beautiful to have many species.
53:16Beautiful not to have just one type of cat, but many types of cats.
53:20And so, in that sense, of course,
53:22that argument also applies to languages.
53:24It's beautiful to see all of this.
53:26The Romans said,
53:28so to have many things is beautiful, yeah.
53:31What would you regard as the thing about language
53:35that keeps you getting up every morning
53:37and being excited about your job?
53:39I mean, everything what makes human beings human
53:42is based on language.
53:44I mean, our species perhaps could live together in language,
53:47but then it wouldn't be what we call the human species.
53:50Whatever we know, whatever we have done over the centuries,
53:53it's just based on language, on languages and language.
54:04Some would argue that the 6,000-plus languages we speak on the planet
54:08are structurally just one primal human tongue.
54:12What's amazing is how quickly language evolves
54:14according to how quickly children can develop slang
54:17or how quickly culture and technology demand.
54:21There's a constant practicality about the way we use language,
54:24as well as a deep beauty.
54:26One thing's for certain, language will never stay still.
54:32Mummy! Mummy!
54:34And finally, aged two and three months,
54:38Ruby is chatting away in complete sentences with her siblings.
54:42Has Stanley got it? What's that?
54:44She understands much more than she says,
54:46and over the next year, her vocabulary will explode.
54:50Some children, perhaps Ruby will be one of them,
54:53do not stop at learning one language.
54:57And there are plenty of others to choose from.
55:02There are currently 194 member states belonging to the United Nations,
55:08with over 6,000 languages spoken in them.
55:13Gaddafi now is saying these demonstrators are followers of the United Nations.
55:18These demonstrators are followers of Bin Laden,
55:20and I ask him, is the six-month-old baby who was killed a follower of Bin Laden also?
55:25Maybe many of our species' troubles could be avoided
55:28if we understood each other better.
55:31Would having one world language, be it Esperanto, English,
55:35or, to be utterly neutral and possibly perverse, Klingon,
55:39even be an advantage?
55:42Perhaps in world forums like here in the UN Security Council,
55:46which is currently in session discussing the Libyan crisis, it would.
55:51But then it would also put Zaha Bastami out of a job.
55:55How many working languages are there?
55:57Two, English and French.
55:58So that's it, just English and French?
56:00Yes, for the working languages.
56:01I see, and then there are official languages.
56:04Six of them.
56:05Only six?
56:06Yes, the official languages are English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, and Arabic,
56:13which is the most recent addition to the official languages.
56:17There are no other speakers described on my list.
56:20I now invite council members to informal consultations
56:24to continue our discussion on the subject.
56:27The meeting is adjourned.
56:31Zaha, it's rather wonderful watching you translate simultaneously.
56:35It seems to us like an extraordinary thing.
56:37It's like a conductor being able to read a music score.
56:40It's incredible the human brain can do this.
56:42I look down here and it's almost like a living symbol of the Tower of Babel,
56:46of the fact that mankind split into so many languages.
56:50Do you sometimes think, gosh, the world would be better if everybody spoke Esperanto?
56:54No, there's a beauty to languages.
56:56Each and every language has its own beauty, its own music, its own imagery,
57:02its way of expressing the sentiments and the nature of the people who speak that language.
57:09It would be a loss if that language did not exist.
57:12Oh, I'm very much in favour of the Tower of Babel.
57:28This building where the General Assembly of the United Nations meet
57:31perhaps symbolises more than any other what happened to humankind after Babel.
57:36Thousands of voices upraised in different, mutually incomprehensible tongues
57:41trying to comprehend each other, trying to understand,
57:44trying to build some sort of peace after the wreckage of the 20th century.
57:49Well, they sort of solved their problem by reducing all those languages
57:53to the six working languages of the UN.
57:56And that way, people do understand each other.
57:59They understand how they think, perhaps.
58:01They understand how they communicate and a little of the history of each language.
58:05But languages do so much more than that.
58:08Languages, in many respects, define our identities, who we are.
58:14And that's what I'll be looking at next time.
58:22From Kenya to Israel, Ireland to Occitan, Newcastle to Bath.
58:29I'll be looking at how our 6,000 plus languages
58:33and myriad accents are threatened with extinction
58:36as the global village becomes a reality.
58:43And the series continues next Sunday at 9.
58:46And Stephen Fry's also back in his familiar role in charge of QI on Friday night at 10.
58:53Next tonight, though, it's Match of the Day 2.
59:03♪♪♪