1 00:00:04,680 --> 00:00:08,640 Language is one of the most amazing things we humans do. 2 00:00:10,080 --> 00:00:11,920 It separates us from the animals. 3 00:00:11,920 --> 00:00:14,560 Gives us theatre, poetry and song. 4 00:00:16,120 --> 00:00:19,160 It can make us laugh, it can make us cry. 5 00:00:19,160 --> 00:00:23,560 In this episode, I'm going to look at how our language and our accents 6 00:00:23,560 --> 00:00:26,440 define and shape our identity... 7 00:00:26,440 --> 00:00:28,480 HE SPEAKS HIS OWN LANGUAGE 8 00:00:28,480 --> 00:00:33,960 ..and how thousands of languages are now threatened with the rise of the global village. 9 00:00:47,120 --> 00:00:49,760 I've always believed that my language, English, 10 00:00:49,760 --> 00:00:52,800 does the most to define what makes me me. 11 00:00:52,800 --> 00:00:57,440 But my English is wildly different from many other people's across Britain. 12 00:00:57,440 --> 00:01:00,160 The accent we speak in may seem trivial, 13 00:01:00,160 --> 00:01:03,360 but, in fact, it is a vital element of our identity. 14 00:01:03,360 --> 00:01:08,360 Our small country boasts a bewildering and beautiful array of accents and dialects. 15 00:01:08,360 --> 00:01:12,080 I'm going to see just what one county of England, Yorkshire, can offer. 16 00:01:13,320 --> 00:01:16,880 Well, Ian McMillan, hello. Stephen, how are you? 17 00:01:16,880 --> 00:01:20,360 Delighted to be in Yorkshire, home of the famous Yorkshire accent. 18 00:01:20,360 --> 00:01:24,920 The Yorkshire accent, which is a many varied thing, as you can see. I've got a map here. Oh, yes. 19 00:01:24,920 --> 00:01:29,040 Just about every Yorkshire town. Each of these has got their own accent. 20 00:01:29,040 --> 00:01:33,440 From right over here in the east with Hull, where they talk about, 21 00:01:33,440 --> 00:01:36,560 "I'm gonna have a PARNT o' MARLD at FARV to FARV." 22 00:01:36,560 --> 00:01:40,360 And I've got all the STERN RERSES albums. Stern Rerses! 23 00:01:40,360 --> 00:01:44,760 You go west to Leeds and Bradford, where we are now, and where they don't say their T's. 24 00:01:44,760 --> 00:01:47,880 They go, "I GO'A GO A Bradford, GO'A GO A Batley." 25 00:01:47,880 --> 00:01:51,000 And when you go across to Leeds, somehow the E gets lengthened 26 00:01:51,000 --> 00:01:54,720 and they go, "We don't EER accent in LEEEDS." 27 00:01:54,720 --> 00:01:56,440 Oh, that's so Alan BENNEEET. 28 00:01:56,440 --> 00:01:59,440 Yeah, that's right, very slow. It's attenuated. 29 00:01:59,440 --> 00:02:02,920 Then you go down here, through Wakefield to Barnsley, where I live, 30 00:02:02,920 --> 00:02:05,320 which is a very kinda harsh, "Now then, now then." 31 00:02:05,320 --> 00:02:06,840 I think of Geoff Boycott. 32 00:02:06,840 --> 00:02:10,600 Yes, and, "That's proper cricket is that," and it's like that. 33 00:02:10,600 --> 00:02:13,960 I do generally think it's to do with the harsh winds of Yorkshire. 34 00:02:13,960 --> 00:02:16,400 Really? That make your mouth a bit like that. 35 00:02:16,400 --> 00:02:18,800 You don't wanna open your mouth too far! 36 00:02:18,800 --> 00:02:21,120 Then you go further south, to Sheffield. 37 00:02:21,120 --> 00:02:24,400 There's a fantastic difference between Barnsley and Sheffield. 38 00:02:24,400 --> 00:02:29,960 We say, "Now then, now then". As you approach Sheffield, your vowels go, "Nar den, nar den." 39 00:02:29,960 --> 00:02:34,240 They go deep. So we call them deedars, cos they go, "Now den, what dar doin' darn 'ere?" 40 00:02:34,240 --> 00:02:39,400 That's a bit like in the south in America where they say BIDNESS instead of "business", don't they? 41 00:02:39,400 --> 00:02:41,200 Havin' the old biddness. 42 00:02:41,200 --> 00:02:44,080 How extraordinary. Now den. Now den... Chesterfield, 43 00:02:44,080 --> 00:02:46,160 where they call their house their arse! 44 00:02:46,160 --> 00:02:49,360 My Aunty Mabel, who was from Chesterfield, would say things like, 45 00:02:49,360 --> 00:02:52,200 "I've just had double glazing fitted in my arse". 46 00:02:52,200 --> 00:02:57,160 She'd say, "I've got a detached arse." Have you really?! The thing is, they don't think it's funny! 47 00:02:57,160 --> 00:03:00,360 And you go... And they say, "Why you laughing?" 48 00:03:03,520 --> 00:03:07,880 Our accents are shaped by where we were born and raised. 49 00:03:07,880 --> 00:03:10,200 Ian McMillan is a poet, 50 00:03:10,200 --> 00:03:14,920 his language moulded by the area of Yorkshire he has always lived in. 51 00:03:14,920 --> 00:03:19,800 As a poet, do you think there's Yorkshire in your lines? 52 00:03:19,800 --> 00:03:22,360 Obviously, when you read them, there clearly is. 53 00:03:22,360 --> 00:03:24,800 In the end, Barnsley's what I think with. 54 00:03:24,800 --> 00:03:27,760 I think with its history, I think with its culture, 55 00:03:27,760 --> 00:03:30,880 I think with its hills that you walk up and get out of breath. Yes! 56 00:03:30,880 --> 00:03:35,520 I think with its wind that stops me talking in big words, big mouth openings. 57 00:03:35,520 --> 00:03:38,280 I think, in the end, no matter how I write on the page, 58 00:03:38,280 --> 00:03:41,880 it'll always come out with Barnsley cos Barnsley's what I think with. 59 00:03:45,960 --> 00:03:47,440 They used to till the fields 60 00:03:47,440 --> 00:03:49,520 Horses pulled the plough 61 00:03:49,520 --> 00:03:51,040 Corn grew in Barnsley accents 62 00:03:51,040 --> 00:03:52,360 And me father milked a cow 63 00:03:52,360 --> 00:03:54,360 Fool's gold 64 00:03:54,360 --> 00:03:55,760 They used to harvest crops 65 00:03:55,760 --> 00:03:57,200 They used to grind the corn 66 00:03:57,200 --> 00:03:59,320 Fed the bairns turnip tops 67 00:03:59,320 --> 00:04:01,240 "Mine's nesh - how's yourn?" 68 00:04:01,240 --> 00:04:03,080 Fool's gold. 69 00:04:08,000 --> 00:04:11,120 Well, let's have our accent forecast for the British Isles. 70 00:04:11,120 --> 00:04:15,160 It's a small enough country, isn't it, Britain, the UK? 71 00:04:15,160 --> 00:04:20,160 And yet it's rich with teeming micro-climates of accent. 72 00:04:20,160 --> 00:04:24,440 Let's start all the way here in Belfast, now, here it is. 73 00:04:24,440 --> 00:04:27,440 BELFAST ACCENTS: Belfast! There's types of Belfast 74 00:04:27,440 --> 00:04:30,240 and there's the lighter type, too, which is beautiful. 75 00:04:30,240 --> 00:04:33,080 It's a lovely accent - there's nothing wrong with it. 76 00:04:33,080 --> 00:04:35,000 It's beautiful, so it is. 77 00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:40,480 And then move across, a lot of influence comes all the way up from Glasgow, aye. 78 00:04:40,480 --> 00:04:44,760 SCOTTISH ACCENTS: I don't want to be insulting to anybody who comes from these places 79 00:04:44,760 --> 00:04:47,760 but we know there are all kinds of Scottish accents. 80 00:04:47,760 --> 00:04:52,280 And some are very, very refined and some of them slightly less so. 81 00:04:52,280 --> 00:04:56,360 And they're all beautiful and they're different and they're fantastic. 82 00:04:56,360 --> 00:05:01,320 And they're rich. It's like a stew - England's like a stew. 83 00:05:01,320 --> 00:05:04,040 I'm sounding like Billy Connolly, now! 84 00:05:04,040 --> 00:05:06,240 No, no, stop it! 85 00:05:06,240 --> 00:05:10,200 Let's go down to... Well, I guess we'll go down here. 86 00:05:10,200 --> 00:05:13,400 GEORDIE ACCENT: Why aye - what's down here? 87 00:05:13,400 --> 00:05:15,080 It's the Geordies, isn't it? 88 00:05:20,120 --> 00:05:23,720 Traditionally, Geordie has been regarded as the accent of coal pits, 89 00:05:23,720 --> 00:05:26,720 poverty and little fishes on little dishes. 90 00:05:29,080 --> 00:05:31,600 About ten years ago, all that started to change. 91 00:05:31,600 --> 00:05:36,600 and now Geordie tops the polls as one of the most desirable accents around. 92 00:05:38,040 --> 00:05:40,560 I've got your account information here. 93 00:05:40,560 --> 00:05:44,800 You actually made a redemption on the 26th of October... 94 00:05:44,800 --> 00:05:50,280 In popular entertainment, I suppose three of the biggest names you could mention 95 00:05:50,280 --> 00:05:54,160 are Ant and Dec, if you counted that as two names, and Cheryl Cole. 96 00:05:54,160 --> 00:05:55,760 I've heard of those. 97 00:05:55,760 --> 00:06:00,200 They've got very proud, obvious, very clear North Eastern accents. 98 00:06:00,200 --> 00:06:05,240 I couldn't say they were exactly Newcastle or whatever, but they're certainly from round these parts. 99 00:06:05,240 --> 00:06:09,800 And they quite clearly don't try to hide that, and that comes through. Why should they hide it? 100 00:06:09,800 --> 00:06:15,080 Everybody in this centre will be very proud of where they're from and their heritage. 101 00:06:15,080 --> 00:06:20,240 They speak the way they do to their friends as they will to customers. And it goes down very, very well. 102 00:06:20,240 --> 00:06:23,840 It might've been a problem with the time. Would you like me to investigate? 103 00:06:23,840 --> 00:06:28,440 As I say, it's a household account. They're going into the same pool, so to speak, you know? 104 00:06:28,440 --> 00:06:32,560 At this Newcastle call centre, reassuring Geordie voices 105 00:06:32,560 --> 00:06:37,840 deal with thousands of customer calls a day, with remarkably successful results. 106 00:06:37,840 --> 00:06:40,520 In the recent survey that we had commissioned, 107 00:06:40,520 --> 00:06:45,360 it came out that it was the accent most likely to give that feel-good factor to people, 108 00:06:45,360 --> 00:06:47,640 and make people feel happy. 109 00:06:47,640 --> 00:06:49,800 It was very trustworthy. 110 00:06:49,800 --> 00:06:52,960 In addition to that, it was deemed as being very helpful, as well. 111 00:06:52,960 --> 00:06:56,000 OK, put the lady back on. 112 00:06:56,000 --> 00:07:01,320 The human ear is a marvel at detecting the minutest nuances of language 113 00:07:01,320 --> 00:07:07,040 and the differences can have a profound emotional, financial and psychological effect. 114 00:07:07,040 --> 00:07:10,600 Accents are probably one of the most vital parts 115 00:07:10,600 --> 00:07:12,840 of the sensory experience that we have 116 00:07:12,840 --> 00:07:15,160 with speech processing, in particular. 117 00:07:15,160 --> 00:07:18,000 That is why places like this, a contact centre, 118 00:07:18,000 --> 00:07:21,040 are really stuck between a rock and a hard place 119 00:07:21,040 --> 00:07:24,360 in terms of trying to delight a customer that calls in. 120 00:07:24,360 --> 00:07:27,360 Because they have no other aspect of sensory experience. 121 00:07:27,360 --> 00:07:29,960 They don't have visual clues, or anything at all. 122 00:07:29,960 --> 00:07:33,520 They don't know the person they're speaking to on the telephone. 123 00:07:33,520 --> 00:07:36,960 What surprised me most is that when a customer complains, 124 00:07:36,960 --> 00:07:40,840 the call centre falls back on a more traditional English accent. 125 00:07:40,840 --> 00:07:45,800 If it needs to be escalated, we want someone speaking like you speak. 126 00:07:45,800 --> 00:07:50,080 That's an air of authority and it is almost wired into our brain. 127 00:07:50,080 --> 00:07:52,320 That perception that we have. 128 00:07:52,320 --> 00:07:57,760 That's scary. Basically, they make a call to a busy room like this - this one's offline at the moment. 129 00:07:57,760 --> 00:08:01,240 And they get the nice Geordie saying, "Oh, I'm sorry about that. 130 00:08:01,240 --> 00:08:03,720 "We'll try and work it out, I'm sure it'll be fine". 131 00:08:03,720 --> 00:08:06,920 Then there IS a problem - they say, "I'll pass you to the manager." 132 00:08:06,920 --> 00:08:11,040 And then I go, "Hello, how may I help you? I'm so sorry." 133 00:08:11,040 --> 00:08:17,080 The study has shown that is perfect for a resolution - a positive resolution. 134 00:08:17,080 --> 00:08:21,760 Even if you're stating exactly what the call centre operative was stating, 135 00:08:21,760 --> 00:08:23,880 it is much better coming from you. 136 00:08:27,000 --> 00:08:29,640 Moving on, as you see, a slew of accents. 137 00:08:29,640 --> 00:08:32,320 South, we go down. 138 00:08:32,320 --> 00:08:34,920 This used to be so popular in the '60s. 139 00:08:34,920 --> 00:08:37,720 SCOUSE ACCENT: Liverpool. Like that, you know? 140 00:08:37,720 --> 00:08:42,560 The Beatles. The "Beeeea-tles". It's bipolar, Liverpool, isn't it? 141 00:08:42,560 --> 00:08:47,120 DEEP VOICE: There's a sort of Michael Angelis one that's rather depressed all the time. 142 00:08:47,120 --> 00:08:50,400 HIGH VOICE: And there's the perky one. Perky! Like that. 143 00:08:50,400 --> 00:08:51,680 It's really livley. 144 00:08:51,680 --> 00:08:53,840 It's lovely. What a country we live in. 145 00:08:53,840 --> 00:08:55,160 How rich it is. 146 00:08:55,160 --> 00:08:58,840 So many dialects, accents, brogues. 147 00:08:58,840 --> 00:09:00,720 They're all rather wonderful. 148 00:09:00,720 --> 00:09:04,640 WELSH ACCENT: Haven't even touched Wales, have I? Haven't even touched it. 149 00:09:04,640 --> 00:09:07,520 But you've got your own, I've got mine. 150 00:09:07,520 --> 00:09:11,000 Never let it be thought that a BBC accent like mine isn't an accent. 151 00:09:11,000 --> 00:09:15,080 It's just as stupid, just as odd, and, I hope, just as lovable as everybody else's. 152 00:09:18,400 --> 00:09:20,440 So, within our own small nation state, 153 00:09:20,440 --> 00:09:23,880 there is an extraordinary variety in the way we all speak English. 154 00:09:23,880 --> 00:09:28,600 And this determines so much about our perceptions of each other. 155 00:09:32,600 --> 00:09:36,280 Language, of course, is a kind of cocktail, isn't it? 156 00:09:38,760 --> 00:09:42,440 If your accent can have such an impact on your identity, 157 00:09:42,440 --> 00:09:46,400 imagine what a difference the language you speak has! 158 00:09:47,920 --> 00:09:51,680 We commonly say how there are 100 Eskimo words for "snow". 159 00:09:51,680 --> 00:09:56,640 Well, that story sadly turns out not to be true, but it does lead one to think - 160 00:09:56,640 --> 00:10:02,160 does the language we speak actually alter the way we see, interpret and engage with the world? 161 00:10:02,160 --> 00:10:05,400 If I spoke an Inuit language or French, for example, 162 00:10:05,400 --> 00:10:08,520 would I think differently? 163 00:10:10,880 --> 00:10:13,240 All right. Hello. 164 00:10:13,240 --> 00:10:15,200 Sssh. 165 00:10:15,200 --> 00:10:18,000 Lera Boroditsky, Professor of Linguistics 166 00:10:18,000 --> 00:10:21,480 at Stanford University, believes exactly that... 167 00:10:21,480 --> 00:10:24,240 Today we'll be talking about how the languages we speak 168 00:10:24,240 --> 00:10:25,520 shape the way we think. 169 00:10:25,520 --> 00:10:28,560 One of the oldest experiments on this was done a long time ago 170 00:10:28,560 --> 00:10:31,360 by Roman Jakobson, a Russian linguist, 171 00:10:31,360 --> 00:10:34,760 and he asked students at Moscow State University, 1915, 172 00:10:34,760 --> 00:10:37,440 he asked them to personify different days of the week. 173 00:10:37,440 --> 00:10:41,520 So different days of the week have different grammatical genders 174 00:10:41,520 --> 00:10:44,440 in Russian, and so he would tell people, "Act like Monday, 175 00:10:44,440 --> 00:10:48,960 "act like Wednesday." And what he found was these students, these Russian-speaking students, 176 00:10:48,960 --> 00:10:51,800 would act like a man if they're acting like Monday, 177 00:10:51,800 --> 00:10:55,120 but they would act like a woman if they're acting like Wednesday, 178 00:10:55,120 --> 00:10:59,480 because Monday's grammatically masculine and Wednesday's grammatically feminine. 179 00:11:00,680 --> 00:11:05,080 This is a pretty mind-boggling idea. Variations in the languages we speak 180 00:11:05,080 --> 00:11:08,360 affect not only the way we describe the world, 181 00:11:08,360 --> 00:11:10,480 but the way we experience it. 182 00:11:10,480 --> 00:11:13,680 There have been lots of other demonstrations showing... 183 00:11:13,680 --> 00:11:17,840 Oh, yes, le pont, la puento, whatever it was, or is it something similar? 184 00:11:17,840 --> 00:11:19,560 The...for bridge, yes... Yeah. 185 00:11:19,560 --> 00:11:23,280 The word for bridge is different genders in Spanish and German. 186 00:11:23,280 --> 00:11:25,320 Die Brucke. That's right. 187 00:11:25,320 --> 00:11:28,840 And so German speakers, because it's grammatically feminine, 188 00:11:28,840 --> 00:11:31,640 will give more feminine descriptions of bridges. 189 00:11:31,640 --> 00:11:35,600 They'll say things like bridges are beautiful or they're elegant, 190 00:11:35,600 --> 00:11:38,400 or they're fragile, whereas Spanish speakers will say 191 00:11:38,400 --> 00:11:41,320 bridges are strong and they're long and they're towering. 192 00:11:41,320 --> 00:11:45,360 'So how does being bi-lingual affect your view of the world? 193 00:11:45,360 --> 00:11:48,120 'Surely things get very confusing indeed?' 194 00:11:48,120 --> 00:11:50,520 You are bilingual, 195 00:11:50,520 --> 00:11:55,520 so you can perhaps at least swap languages sometimes, cos you must ask yourself, 196 00:11:55,520 --> 00:12:00,360 "Am I thinking this because I'm thinking in English or because I'm thinking in Russian 197 00:12:00,360 --> 00:12:02,800 "or can I rationally think this 198 00:12:02,800 --> 00:12:06,720 "in a pure, almost machine-like, way that is outside language?" 199 00:12:06,720 --> 00:12:09,840 I, of course, think about everything very rationally. 200 00:12:09,840 --> 00:12:12,360 HE LAUGHS You have the best of the Russian side 201 00:12:12,360 --> 00:12:14,600 and the best of the English. That's right. 202 00:12:14,600 --> 00:12:19,280 Actually it's very difficult for me to design experiments comparing English and Russian. 203 00:12:19,280 --> 00:12:24,800 Because I speak both, it seems to me perfectly natural to have both those ideas in mind. 204 00:12:24,800 --> 00:12:30,040 And then when we do the experiment and we find that actually English speakers see it one way 205 00:12:30,040 --> 00:12:33,360 and Russian speakers see it another way, I'm just shocked. 206 00:12:33,360 --> 00:12:37,120 As someone who speaks both, what is there that is 207 00:12:37,120 --> 00:12:42,240 characteristically Russian in the way you feel and experience when you're thinking in a Russian way? 208 00:12:42,240 --> 00:12:46,520 Russian speakers express much more collectivist ideas when they're speaking Russian. 209 00:12:46,520 --> 00:12:48,600 They espouse more collectivist values, 210 00:12:48,600 --> 00:12:52,920 and they espouse more individualistic values when they're speaking English. Gosh. 211 00:12:52,920 --> 00:12:56,520 Even though they're giving an explanation for the same kind of phenomena, 212 00:12:56,520 --> 00:12:59,960 when they do it in one language, they have a different perspective on it 213 00:12:59,960 --> 00:13:02,800 than when they do it in another language. So, it kind of... 214 00:13:02,800 --> 00:13:08,320 Language serves as a cue to the cultural values that... So it's not a miserable, oppressed Russian, 215 00:13:08,320 --> 00:13:11,240 dark Russian soul sort of way of looking at the world then? 216 00:13:11,240 --> 00:13:17,240 Well, yeah, that's a very English way of looking at the Russian souls. THEY LAUGH 217 00:13:17,240 --> 00:13:20,840 I think of that fabulous Chekhov short story, Misery! 218 00:13:20,840 --> 00:13:25,080 Russians love being miserable. They revel in it. 219 00:13:25,080 --> 00:13:27,800 It's the only way to be an intelligent person 220 00:13:27,800 --> 00:13:30,240 in the world - to really appreciate the misery 221 00:13:30,240 --> 00:13:32,920 and the horror that the world has to offer. 222 00:13:34,800 --> 00:13:38,160 I've often wondered if I was a Hungarian like my grandfather, 223 00:13:38,160 --> 00:13:41,960 would I think differently, would I still be me? 224 00:13:41,960 --> 00:13:45,120 If a word doesn't exist in a language, does that imply 225 00:13:45,120 --> 00:13:49,000 the feeling or concept doesn't exist? 226 00:13:49,000 --> 00:13:51,480 So if you don't have a word for evil, does it vanish? 227 00:13:51,480 --> 00:13:55,400 While I understand Lera's position I also agree with the Chomskian view 228 00:13:55,400 --> 00:13:58,600 that all languages have intrinsically the same structures. 229 00:13:58,600 --> 00:14:00,760 But that doesn't mean they're all the same, 230 00:14:00,760 --> 00:14:03,400 especially when it comes to humour. 231 00:14:03,400 --> 00:14:07,840 If Hitler had been British, would we, under similar circumstances, 232 00:14:07,840 --> 00:14:10,320 have been moved, charged up, fired up 233 00:14:10,320 --> 00:14:13,960 by his inflammatory speeches or would we simply have laughed? 234 00:14:13,960 --> 00:14:17,720 Is English too ironic to sustain Hitlerian styles? 235 00:14:17,720 --> 00:14:22,360 Would his language simply run false in our ears? 236 00:14:22,360 --> 00:14:25,560 My own admittedly unscientific research has led me to believe 237 00:14:25,560 --> 00:14:29,040 that some languages are simply intrinsically funnier than others. 238 00:14:29,040 --> 00:14:32,200 My own personal favourite is Yiddish, that marvellous 239 00:14:32,200 --> 00:14:36,760 Jewish mish-mash of German, Russian, Polish, Hebrew words. 240 00:14:36,760 --> 00:14:39,120 You're probably familiar with Yiddish humour 241 00:14:39,120 --> 00:14:41,520 if you know the work of Woody Allen or Mel Brooks 242 00:14:41,520 --> 00:14:46,280 or Larry David in Seinfeld or Ben Stiller or Krusty the Clown. 243 00:14:46,280 --> 00:14:49,800 Their work is deeply rooted in Yiddish tradition. 244 00:14:49,800 --> 00:14:53,240 It's more a mindset than a language, despite the kitsch 245 00:14:53,240 --> 00:14:57,200 and the schmaltz and the shlongs and the schmucks or schmier, 246 00:14:57,200 --> 00:15:02,040 a joke can be Yiddish even when it's told in English. 247 00:15:15,840 --> 00:15:20,120 Guy went to the doctor and said, "I have trouble peeing." 248 00:15:20,120 --> 00:15:22,920 The doc says, "How old are you?" And he says, "I'm 80." 249 00:15:22,920 --> 00:15:25,280 He says, "Well, you peed enough." That's a joke. 250 00:15:25,280 --> 00:15:28,160 The boy's an actor, he's gone to an audition, he comes back, 251 00:15:28,160 --> 00:15:31,760 his mother says, "Well?" He said, "I got the part." She said, "What part?" 252 00:15:31,760 --> 00:15:36,040 He said, "It's the husband." She said, "Go back and insist on a speaking part." 253 00:15:36,040 --> 00:15:37,960 That's funny. THEY LAUGH 254 00:15:37,960 --> 00:15:41,760 But that's so Jewish - you know what I mean? Exactly. 255 00:15:41,760 --> 00:15:44,120 Every... Yhis is like a competition. 256 00:15:44,120 --> 00:15:48,280 You have a bunch of old Jews sitting around a table telling jokes. That's what we do. 257 00:15:48,280 --> 00:15:51,600 But there's no new Yiddish jokes, so it just becomes a competition. 258 00:15:51,600 --> 00:15:54,040 Who'll call the punchline before you get to it? 259 00:15:54,040 --> 00:15:56,120 "It's a schmuck! I know, all right, next." 260 00:15:56,120 --> 00:16:00,440 Because in the end... And it's always the schmuck. It is the same joke, isn't it? 261 00:16:00,440 --> 00:16:03,320 A typical Jewish joke and it's so typically Jewish 262 00:16:03,320 --> 00:16:05,760 and Alan King did it here. 263 00:16:05,760 --> 00:16:09,680 An old man passes out in the street and somebody comes and they open his 264 00:16:09,680 --> 00:16:13,040 collar and they pick up his head and they said, "Are you comfortable?" 265 00:16:13,040 --> 00:16:16,480 And he says, "I make a living." STEPHEN LAUGHS 266 00:16:16,480 --> 00:16:19,920 And Alan King got sick and he passed out at the bar, 267 00:16:19,920 --> 00:16:22,320 right before he passed away. 268 00:16:22,320 --> 00:16:25,560 And they opened his collar, the Maitre d', Frank, and they said, 269 00:16:25,560 --> 00:16:29,120 "Alan, are you comfortable?" And Alan said, "I make a living." 270 00:16:29,120 --> 00:16:34,200 And he said, "I've been waiting 40 years to do that joke." Oh, that's bliss, isn't it? 271 00:16:34,200 --> 00:16:39,480 But in a serious sense, you might argue that Yiddish was, 272 00:16:39,480 --> 00:16:44,680 as it were, you travelled light, all of us, our ancestors 273 00:16:44,680 --> 00:16:47,480 travelled light, because their property would be taken. 274 00:16:47,480 --> 00:16:51,800 But their language, their wit, their learning, they could travel with them. 275 00:16:51,800 --> 00:16:55,200 I always said that Judaism is not a religion, it's a way of life. 276 00:16:55,200 --> 00:16:57,320 It's a way of living your life. 277 00:16:57,320 --> 00:17:00,160 And Yiddish is a way of feeling your life. 278 00:17:00,160 --> 00:17:03,880 I grew up and I was bar mitzvahed, but we didn't talk Hebrew. 279 00:17:03,880 --> 00:17:06,400 We never thought of talking Hebrew. 280 00:17:06,400 --> 00:17:09,440 Cos Hebrew was a language of the Temple. It was a language of the Temple, 281 00:17:09,440 --> 00:17:13,000 it was something we had to learn, where Yiddish, 282 00:17:13,000 --> 00:17:17,520 I would hear my grandparents and my parents talk Yiddish. 283 00:17:17,520 --> 00:17:21,360 But they didn't want me... HE SPEAKS YIDDISH ..the kids are listening. 284 00:17:21,360 --> 00:17:24,960 And we would try and translate what they were saying. 285 00:17:24,960 --> 00:17:30,000 Because Yiddish is the language of emotion and of sex... Emotion. ..and of failure and hilarity. 286 00:17:30,000 --> 00:17:33,320 Hebrew was the language of seriousness and ceremony and solemnity. 287 00:17:33,320 --> 00:17:37,640 There's plenty of failure in Hebrew. Let's not belittle the accomplishment of the Hebrew. 288 00:17:37,640 --> 00:17:41,280 I don't know if you've read the Bible, but we lose a lot. It's mostly failure. 289 00:17:41,280 --> 00:17:44,400 It's mostly failure and guilt and a lot of cursing. 290 00:17:44,400 --> 00:17:49,320 Hebrew comes from the vocal cords and Yiddish comes from the heart. 291 00:17:49,320 --> 00:17:54,400 Well, Yiddish is now on the UNESCO endangered languages list and when 292 00:17:54,400 --> 00:17:57,600 Stewie Stone and other comedians of his generation 293 00:17:57,600 --> 00:18:02,040 are plonked like kneidlach into the great vat of chicken soup in the sky, 294 00:18:02,040 --> 00:18:04,760 Yiddish will pass into oblivion. 295 00:18:04,760 --> 00:18:07,720 There are around 7,000 languages spoken on this planet 296 00:18:07,720 --> 00:18:11,240 and many more thousands of dialects, but it's estimated by some 297 00:18:11,240 --> 00:18:15,560 that by the end of the century there'll barely be a thousand left. 298 00:18:15,560 --> 00:18:19,560 I would argue that linguicide, the death of language, 299 00:18:19,560 --> 00:18:25,320 poses as great a threat to our culture and history as species extinction. 300 00:18:25,320 --> 00:18:29,920 And why is this rich linguistic stew of ours being threatened? 301 00:18:29,920 --> 00:18:33,600 Well, it's to do with globalisation and the rise of the lingua franca, 302 00:18:33,600 --> 00:18:36,600 those national and transnational languages like English 303 00:18:36,600 --> 00:18:41,160 and Mandarin Chinese, which gobble up every language in their path. 304 00:18:44,920 --> 00:18:47,880 The fortunes of small and struggling languages 305 00:18:47,880 --> 00:18:52,400 ebb and flow with the tides of history. I'm off now to find out 306 00:18:52,400 --> 00:18:55,480 about one that survives not far from our own shores. 307 00:18:58,840 --> 00:19:02,520 THEY SPEAK IRISH 308 00:19:07,560 --> 00:19:13,240 I'm here in the beautiful, bracing and chilly Connemara on the west coast of Ireland. 309 00:19:13,240 --> 00:19:16,640 This is what they call the, um, I'll try and get this right... 310 00:19:16,640 --> 00:19:18,640 the Gaeltacht Curraghrua, 311 00:19:18,640 --> 00:19:23,720 one of the central areas for the speaking of the ancient language of Ireland - Irish. 312 00:19:23,720 --> 00:19:26,200 They don't call it Gaelic very often - just Irish. 313 00:19:26,200 --> 00:19:29,160 About 80,000 people still speak this language. 314 00:19:29,160 --> 00:19:33,720 It's taught in school and they have very proud Irish speakers 315 00:19:33,720 --> 00:19:37,200 all around us and in Donegal and in Cork. 316 00:19:37,200 --> 00:19:42,360 But it's here in Connemara, Galway, that we find probably the majority of Irish speakers. 317 00:19:45,320 --> 00:19:49,560 Irish, being a very old language, it doesn't have as many words 318 00:19:49,560 --> 00:19:55,400 as the English language, but its descriptions are very good. 319 00:19:55,400 --> 00:19:58,200 There's a thing called a smugairle roin. 320 00:19:58,200 --> 00:20:00,720 A smugairle roin is a jellyfish. 321 00:20:00,720 --> 00:20:04,320 And jellyfish is, direct 322 00:20:04,320 --> 00:20:08,640 translation smugairle roin into English, is a seal's spit. 323 00:20:08,640 --> 00:20:10,480 Oh, very good. 324 00:20:10,480 --> 00:20:14,640 So you can imagine somebody comes... "What are these things all 325 00:20:14,640 --> 00:20:16,760 "over the...they must be seal spits." 326 00:20:16,760 --> 00:20:19,680 You know, "We'll call them smugairle roins," and that is 327 00:20:19,680 --> 00:20:22,600 one of the beauties of the Irish language is that it has this. 328 00:20:22,600 --> 00:20:24,320 And it would be such a shame to lose. 329 00:20:35,840 --> 00:20:39,120 Would you say you're optimistic for his future as an Irish speaker? 330 00:20:39,120 --> 00:20:42,320 I would be very optimistic for the future of the Irish language. 331 00:20:42,320 --> 00:20:46,640 There was a spell there where it fell out of favour mainly due 332 00:20:46,640 --> 00:20:49,880 to the way it was taught in schools. 333 00:20:49,880 --> 00:20:52,680 It wasn't given the excitement. Yeah. 334 00:20:52,680 --> 00:20:55,960 And nowadays, it's become much more fashionable to speak Irish. 335 00:20:55,960 --> 00:20:58,520 You'll hear, especially if you go to the pubs, 336 00:20:58,520 --> 00:21:00,280 you'll hear people speaking Irish, 337 00:21:00,280 --> 00:21:02,560 young people on the streets speaking Irish, 338 00:21:02,560 --> 00:21:07,160 and it's very important as well because it is our heritage. 339 00:21:15,080 --> 00:21:18,000 SHE SPEAKS IRISH 340 00:21:23,400 --> 00:21:27,640 The English ruled Ireland for centuries. 341 00:21:27,640 --> 00:21:29,960 At the height of their colonial ambitions, 342 00:21:29,960 --> 00:21:34,480 they attempted to suppress Irish culture and identity entirely. 343 00:21:34,480 --> 00:21:39,000 An 1831 act forbade the teaching of Irish in schools. 344 00:21:39,000 --> 00:21:43,760 'This coincided with An Gorta Mor, the Irish potato famine 345 00:21:43,760 --> 00:21:49,240 'of the mid-19th century that killed over a million of the population.' 346 00:21:49,240 --> 00:21:53,320 It was very nearly the death knell of the Irish language. 347 00:21:53,320 --> 00:21:56,360 Thankfully, all that has changed now. 348 00:21:56,360 --> 00:22:00,120 The schools that were the site of linguistic oppression 349 00:22:00,120 --> 00:22:02,680 in Ireland are now the place of the language's revival. 350 00:22:02,680 --> 00:22:06,000 THEY SING IN IRISH 351 00:22:14,040 --> 00:22:16,280 Nowadays at the Connemara Golf Course, 352 00:22:16,280 --> 00:22:19,840 every one of the golfers speaks Irish... 353 00:22:19,840 --> 00:22:23,200 HE SPEAKS IRISH 354 00:22:28,600 --> 00:22:32,480 As well as negotiating the perilous task of keeping their language alive, 355 00:22:32,480 --> 00:22:35,000 they are also dealing with what must be 356 00:22:35,000 --> 00:22:37,640 one of the world's hardest courses... 357 00:22:37,640 --> 00:22:40,320 the holes are literally on different islands! 358 00:22:46,080 --> 00:22:49,680 This is a heck of a place to have a golf course, isn't it? Incredible. 359 00:22:49,680 --> 00:22:52,880 You must just blink your eyes on long June days 360 00:22:52,880 --> 00:22:55,840 when you can be playing till ten at night... 361 00:22:55,840 --> 00:22:57,680 'Imperialist Brit that I am, 362 00:22:57,680 --> 00:23:00,440 'they are kind enough to speak English to me, 363 00:23:00,440 --> 00:23:03,000 'which, given the history, is quite an ask. 364 00:23:05,240 --> 00:23:07,720 'This part of Connemara suffered as much as any, 365 00:23:07,720 --> 00:23:11,520 'but its utter remoteness helped preserve the language. 366 00:23:13,920 --> 00:23:16,480 'History is never forgotten in Ireland 367 00:23:16,480 --> 00:23:20,680 'and this sense of storytelling, be it national or personal, 368 00:23:20,680 --> 00:23:22,960 'the gift of the gab, I suppose you could say, 369 00:23:22,960 --> 00:23:25,680 'is one of the things I love about the country.' 370 00:23:25,680 --> 00:23:28,040 Are there things you could say in Irish that you 371 00:23:28,040 --> 00:23:31,920 couldn't really say in English and vice versa? Absolutely. 372 00:23:31,920 --> 00:23:35,600 I think everybody here thinks through Irish. 373 00:23:35,600 --> 00:23:37,800 And do you find Irish more accurate? 374 00:23:37,800 --> 00:23:39,760 It hits the nail on the head more often, 375 00:23:39,760 --> 00:23:41,240 you use fewer words, 376 00:23:41,240 --> 00:23:44,440 it's cleaner, more poetic? Is there some qualities to it that... 377 00:23:44,440 --> 00:23:46,320 Far more ways of saying the same thing. 378 00:23:46,320 --> 00:23:49,400 There are more ways? It depends who you're addressing... 379 00:23:49,400 --> 00:23:53,080 Oh, so it has a social... Oh, it has. 380 00:23:53,080 --> 00:23:57,520 Your interlocutor... ..Or undressing. Oh, right! 381 00:23:57,520 --> 00:24:03,000 Because you can say it's a fine day 382 00:24:03,000 --> 00:24:04,560 in about four different ways 383 00:24:04,560 --> 00:24:07,080 depending on who you're... Four? ..even more. 384 00:24:07,080 --> 00:24:09,760 Depending on whether you're like, 385 00:24:09,760 --> 00:24:12,480 "I hope to God it rains on that fucker." 386 00:24:12,480 --> 00:24:14,600 You know. Or, "she's a lovely girl". 387 00:24:14,600 --> 00:24:18,120 You know, "I hope the sun shines". You know? 388 00:24:18,120 --> 00:24:22,000 But it depends totally on who you're addressing. 389 00:24:22,000 --> 00:24:26,160 So you find when you switch to English, you're slightly more... 390 00:24:26,160 --> 00:24:28,240 Oh, you have to say, "Well, it's raining. 391 00:24:28,240 --> 00:24:31,440 "It's going to rain," or, you know, "there's rain on the way". 392 00:24:31,440 --> 00:24:32,960 That's about the three way... 393 00:24:32,960 --> 00:24:35,520 You know, if it's raining, it's raining. You know? 394 00:24:35,520 --> 00:24:37,400 But there's rain on the way as well. 395 00:24:37,400 --> 00:24:41,600 But there's 50 different types of rain, John, and you can describe every one of them. 396 00:24:42,720 --> 00:24:45,840 And that description, that wealth of description, 397 00:24:45,840 --> 00:24:49,400 that descriptive quality of the language is something that we 398 00:24:49,400 --> 00:24:51,640 would treasure here particularly. 399 00:24:52,840 --> 00:24:57,200 On behalf of the club here and its manager and director of the company, 400 00:24:57,200 --> 00:25:00,200 we offer you life membership in this golf club. 401 00:25:00,200 --> 00:25:02,400 Oh, what an honour! Thank you so... 402 00:25:02,400 --> 00:25:05,120 You haven't seen me play! You've seen me swing or try to! 403 00:25:05,120 --> 00:25:08,960 That's so kind. You offer me... Oh, that is a fabulous thing. 404 00:25:08,960 --> 00:25:11,920 Thank you so much. This is a truly great honour. 405 00:25:11,920 --> 00:25:16,120 This is one of the most remarkable golf clubs in the world. It is, it's an amazing place. 406 00:25:16,120 --> 00:25:18,760 Going to cost me a lot of balls, because not many of them 407 00:25:18,760 --> 00:25:21,960 will hit land, but it's still fantastic! We'll follow you closely 408 00:25:21,960 --> 00:25:25,120 to see if we can pick up a few! Thank you so much! 409 00:25:26,280 --> 00:25:29,120 Oh, dear! I think I've lost my moment now! 410 00:25:29,120 --> 00:25:31,760 I don't want to waste any more balls! 411 00:25:31,760 --> 00:25:34,080 Agus, action! 412 00:25:35,720 --> 00:25:37,680 How better to get inside a language 413 00:25:37,680 --> 00:25:40,560 than to act in its favourite soap opera? 414 00:25:40,560 --> 00:25:42,520 Action! 415 00:25:42,520 --> 00:25:48,200 THEY SPEAK IRISH 416 00:25:48,200 --> 00:25:52,480 Like the Welsh, Ireland has a TV station in its own language. 417 00:25:52,480 --> 00:25:55,400 The most popular soap is called Ros na Run, 418 00:25:55,400 --> 00:25:58,720 a Connemara version of Coronation Street. 419 00:26:03,000 --> 00:26:05,800 'So I'm about to embark on a daunting task... 420 00:26:05,800 --> 00:26:08,080 'speaking in Irish...' 421 00:26:08,080 --> 00:26:13,600 HE SPEAKS IRISH 422 00:26:13,600 --> 00:26:18,520 Erm...you look hungry. HE CONTINUES IN IRISH 423 00:26:18,520 --> 00:26:22,400 It's here, it's here somewhere. Nil aon ocras orm! 424 00:26:24,920 --> 00:26:28,920 Er...racaigh me go Gallimh. 425 00:26:28,920 --> 00:26:31,080 Huh? 426 00:26:31,080 --> 00:26:34,560 Go raibh maith agat agus slan go fail... 427 00:26:34,560 --> 00:26:38,640 Go foil! That's right! I always get that bit wrong! 428 00:26:38,640 --> 00:26:42,280 THEY ALL TALK AT ONCE 429 00:26:47,560 --> 00:26:49,760 'Our brief is to be as popular as possible.' 430 00:26:49,760 --> 00:26:53,520 We are probably quite important in terms of drawing in 431 00:26:53,520 --> 00:26:57,760 the hesitant Irish speaker as well as the fluent Irish speaker. 432 00:26:57,760 --> 00:27:02,440 THEY SPEAK IRISH 433 00:27:05,120 --> 00:27:07,800 To some people, the creation of TG4 434 00:27:07,800 --> 00:27:10,560 was a kind of a white elephant. 435 00:27:10,560 --> 00:27:13,760 A sop to the Irish language community. 436 00:27:13,760 --> 00:27:17,360 But if you can imagine that when I was growing up, the only cultural 437 00:27:17,360 --> 00:27:20,600 resources in the Irish language that were available to me was 438 00:27:20,600 --> 00:27:24,640 Victorian literature which was about peasant life on the Aran Islands. 439 00:27:24,640 --> 00:27:30,880 Yes, quite. Now for my children, they can watch cartoons dubbed into Irish, 440 00:27:30,880 --> 00:27:34,400 they can grow up and watch a variety of programmes, 441 00:27:34,400 --> 00:27:37,720 which are about Ireland today. 442 00:27:37,720 --> 00:27:42,120 And we've embraced the internet as a way of trying to draw in a new audience. 443 00:27:42,120 --> 00:27:46,120 That's why we've created a Facebook site and a Twitter site, 444 00:27:46,120 --> 00:27:50,120 and we're going to do webisodes next season, 445 00:27:50,120 --> 00:27:53,320 which will be all about a younger generation in the town 446 00:27:53,320 --> 00:27:55,600 of Ros na Run and they will gradually 447 00:27:55,600 --> 00:27:59,240 interact in the broadcast programme and try to draw them across. 448 00:28:03,080 --> 00:28:06,560 Irish might well survive here, but these children 449 00:28:06,560 --> 00:28:11,120 and their children will always need a global language. 450 00:28:11,120 --> 00:28:14,880 So you just change between the two very happily? Yes. 451 00:28:14,880 --> 00:28:18,160 But you think of yourself as an Irish speaker first? Yeah. 452 00:28:18,160 --> 00:28:20,880 Is that true of everybody? ALL: Yes. 453 00:28:20,880 --> 00:28:23,400 Goodness. If you erm, if you text each other, do... 454 00:28:23,400 --> 00:28:25,120 do you do it in Irish or in English? 455 00:28:25,120 --> 00:28:26,360 ALL: English. 456 00:28:26,360 --> 00:28:29,960 Ah, that's interesting, so things like the internet or whatever, 457 00:28:29,960 --> 00:28:32,480 are you on Facebook and things like that? ALL: Yes. 458 00:28:32,480 --> 00:28:34,760 And do you do that in English? ALL: Yes. 459 00:28:34,760 --> 00:28:37,560 So do you think of English as the language of the internet, 460 00:28:37,560 --> 00:28:40,320 but Irish the language of the playground and talking 461 00:28:40,320 --> 00:28:43,800 and friendship and things, when you're with people? ALL: Yes. 462 00:28:43,800 --> 00:28:47,560 You couldn't imagine yourselves only speaking Irish? ALL: No. 463 00:28:47,560 --> 00:28:51,800 You wouldn't cope in the world if you didn't speak English? ALL: Yes. 464 00:28:51,800 --> 00:28:56,480 Yeah. Thank goodness you do speak English, or we would be having an embarrassing time when I... 465 00:28:56,480 --> 00:28:58,960 THEY LAUGH Well, thank you very much. 466 00:28:58,960 --> 00:29:02,360 Mustn't disturb any more of your lessons, thank you. 467 00:29:02,360 --> 00:29:04,840 Was that...go raibh... thank you? 468 00:29:04,840 --> 00:29:07,520 ALL: Go raibh maith agat. 469 00:29:07,520 --> 00:29:12,680 I can't get the pronunciation right! Thank you very much. 470 00:29:18,600 --> 00:29:21,080 Another small language that has battled 471 00:29:21,080 --> 00:29:25,160 to preserve its identity in the modern world is found here in Spain. 472 00:29:27,840 --> 00:29:32,320 One of most remarkable languages in Europe is Basque. 473 00:29:32,320 --> 00:29:35,720 Somewhere between France and Spain lies the Basque region 474 00:29:35,720 --> 00:29:38,240 and has done for thousands of years. 475 00:29:38,240 --> 00:29:40,680 It's been a long and extraordinary struggle to 476 00:29:40,680 --> 00:29:44,880 keep their language alive and their culture and their cuisine... 477 00:29:44,880 --> 00:29:48,280 all the things that make them Basque. 478 00:29:50,760 --> 00:29:53,760 The people here are passionate about their food. 479 00:29:53,760 --> 00:29:56,880 The language is in the DNA of Basque cooking 480 00:29:56,880 --> 00:30:01,040 and preparation techniques, handed down over many hundreds of years. 481 00:30:05,040 --> 00:30:07,360 Wow! Star Trek! 482 00:30:10,560 --> 00:30:14,120 'Juan Marie Arzak and his daughter Elena run one of the finest 483 00:30:14,120 --> 00:30:16,480 'restaurants in the world here in Donostia, 484 00:30:16,480 --> 00:30:19,480 'or what we know as San Sebastian.' 485 00:30:19,480 --> 00:30:23,280 We renovate recently. Really? It's very lovely. 486 00:30:23,280 --> 00:30:25,600 HE SPEAKS BASQUE 487 00:30:25,600 --> 00:30:31,240 Because this restaurant is dated from 1897. 488 00:30:31,240 --> 00:30:34,200 His grandfather, my great grandfather. 489 00:30:34,200 --> 00:30:36,080 HE SPEAKS BASQUE 490 00:30:40,280 --> 00:30:43,880 He's a third generation and me the fourth generation. 491 00:30:43,880 --> 00:30:46,600 Always here in this restaurant. 492 00:30:46,600 --> 00:30:50,160 So this is the tasting menu and this is the a la carte here, is that right? 493 00:30:50,160 --> 00:30:53,240 Would you say that to be Basque is to speak the language 494 00:30:53,240 --> 00:30:56,160 and to eat the food? 495 00:30:56,160 --> 00:31:01,040 Those are the two things that make you Basque, the language and the food? 496 00:31:01,040 --> 00:31:03,520 HE SPEAKS BASQUE 497 00:31:03,520 --> 00:31:07,040 When people ask what type of food do you make? 498 00:31:07,040 --> 00:31:11,000 Now we say Basque with Basque spirit, 499 00:31:11,000 --> 00:31:14,800 because we think in Basque, the taste is from here. 500 00:31:14,800 --> 00:31:20,400 It's the result of our taste cultural that is in our minds, 501 00:31:20,400 --> 00:31:24,640 and that we cook with, with this, with this result... 502 00:31:24,640 --> 00:31:28,680 The Basques defiantly defended their language for 40 years 503 00:31:28,680 --> 00:31:31,360 against the fascist General Franco. 504 00:31:31,360 --> 00:31:34,760 But now there are more than half a million Basque speakers 505 00:31:34,760 --> 00:31:37,640 here in Spain. The language, like this restaurant, 506 00:31:37,640 --> 00:31:42,520 is now confident enough to absorb new elements from outside, 507 00:31:42,520 --> 00:31:45,760 Arzak is the Heston Blumenthal of Basque country, 508 00:31:45,760 --> 00:31:50,320 exuberantly fusing traditional Basque ingredients such as gooseneck, 509 00:31:50,320 --> 00:31:55,600 barnacle, eel and spider crab with cutting edge molecular cuisine. 510 00:31:55,600 --> 00:32:00,960 We are very open to the world and we can accept foods... 511 00:32:00,960 --> 00:32:03,800 Influences from... ..all over the world. 512 00:32:05,480 --> 00:32:09,680 It's an exchange of cultures, of other cultures. 513 00:32:09,680 --> 00:32:12,880 So in the same way that the Basque language can have 514 00:32:12,880 --> 00:32:17,440 words from other languages, so the Basque food can have dishes 515 00:32:17,440 --> 00:32:20,320 and ingredients from other places. That's very good. 516 00:32:20,320 --> 00:32:22,160 It's very curious, yeah. Yeah. 517 00:32:22,160 --> 00:32:25,440 I think it's interesting how the language and the cuisine are, 518 00:32:25,440 --> 00:32:28,600 are similar, in some ways. Yes, it's very similar, yeah. 519 00:32:28,600 --> 00:32:32,760 And the cuisine is there, literally, in the kitchen. Shall we go to the kitchen? 520 00:32:32,760 --> 00:32:35,560 OK, I'll follow you, thank you. OK. You're cooking, eh?! 521 00:32:35,560 --> 00:32:37,040 I'll help you! If you trust me! 522 00:32:47,880 --> 00:32:50,840 It's called lichen. Ah, it's lichen! Yes. 523 00:32:51,840 --> 00:32:55,480 Some fruit sauce. ARZAK SPEAKS BASQUE 524 00:32:57,240 --> 00:32:59,520 Like so. It's so beautiful. 525 00:33:00,560 --> 00:33:04,120 Maybe I should do it better to be symmetrical! 526 00:33:04,120 --> 00:33:06,480 It's very well. Very well. A little oil. 527 00:33:06,480 --> 00:33:09,320 This is olive oil. Ah, of course. 528 00:33:12,200 --> 00:33:15,440 It's beautiful. And a little salt. 529 00:33:15,440 --> 00:33:17,760 Can I just take a little broken bit here? 530 00:33:17,760 --> 00:33:19,120 Oh, a little salt on it. 531 00:33:19,120 --> 00:33:22,400 Ah, this doesn't work, hey, this is for the guest. 532 00:33:22,400 --> 00:33:24,040 So this is not for the guests, 533 00:33:24,040 --> 00:33:26,560 this would not be good enough for the guests. 534 00:33:26,560 --> 00:33:29,880 This is once done... Very good, very well, so... 535 00:33:29,880 --> 00:33:32,760 I feel like someone on MasterChef: The Professionals 536 00:33:32,760 --> 00:33:35,160 who's made his... erm, who's plated up. 537 00:33:35,160 --> 00:33:37,480 It is very lovely, I love the colours. 538 00:33:37,480 --> 00:33:40,840 And so this is made to look like stone is the idea, the rock. 539 00:33:40,840 --> 00:33:42,400 Si, it's the, the... 540 00:33:42,400 --> 00:33:48,200 When you go to the mountains, here you can find this type of... 541 00:33:48,200 --> 00:33:50,200 Ancient Basque Cromlechs, yeah, 542 00:33:50,200 --> 00:33:53,000 or Dolmens we call them sometimes don't we, yeah? 543 00:33:53,000 --> 00:33:56,440 And this was the inspiration for the plate. Fantastic. 544 00:33:59,880 --> 00:34:02,920 Cuisine and language may well be so entwined, 545 00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:08,040 because traditionally recipes were passed on by word of mouth... 546 00:34:08,040 --> 00:34:09,400 It's an oral tradition. 547 00:34:09,400 --> 00:34:12,000 In the Basque history it's more from spoken 548 00:34:12,000 --> 00:34:14,720 from one generation to other than written. 549 00:34:14,720 --> 00:34:18,640 I think the first Basque book was in 1545? I believe. 550 00:34:19,920 --> 00:34:22,680 Very well, very well! 551 00:34:22,680 --> 00:34:26,080 Why do you think the Basque language has survived in a way that 552 00:34:26,080 --> 00:34:31,240 so many other languages haven't? Breton, Cornish... 553 00:34:31,240 --> 00:34:33,240 HE SPEAKS BASQUE 554 00:34:45,400 --> 00:34:48,640 We are very proud of being the people here, 555 00:34:48,640 --> 00:34:54,840 this is why things have survived the, the, the language so, so much. 556 00:35:00,840 --> 00:35:04,440 In neighbouring France, it's far harder to preserve 557 00:35:04,440 --> 00:35:06,920 the struggling local language. 558 00:35:06,920 --> 00:35:09,200 We're moving from the Basque country 559 00:35:09,200 --> 00:35:12,280 to the more or less neighbouring Occitan country. 560 00:35:12,280 --> 00:35:16,760 Occitan is the language spoken in the south of France principally in the Langue d'Oc... 561 00:35:16,760 --> 00:35:19,480 they reckon about seven million people 562 00:35:19,480 --> 00:35:22,160 have a smattering of it at least, yet nonetheless, 563 00:35:22,160 --> 00:35:25,480 because of its variations and because it isn't supported 564 00:35:25,480 --> 00:35:28,320 in the way that Basque is, many people fear 565 00:35:28,320 --> 00:35:32,160 it will suffer from linguicide... it will die. 566 00:35:32,160 --> 00:35:34,240 like so many of the world's languages, 567 00:35:34,240 --> 00:35:36,400 it's on the endangered list. 568 00:35:43,480 --> 00:35:48,080 SHE SINGS 569 00:35:52,440 --> 00:35:56,320 Liza Occitan, as she is known, sings in Provencale, 570 00:35:56,320 --> 00:35:59,360 one of the six dialects of Oc. 571 00:36:04,320 --> 00:36:09,240 She also presents French TV's regional Occitan news program 572 00:36:09,240 --> 00:36:12,720 and has a devoted following of Occitan sympathisers. 573 00:36:15,880 --> 00:36:18,840 The Occitanian language is very beautiful to listen to. 574 00:36:18,840 --> 00:36:23,440 The sounds are beautiful. It's a Mediterranean language. It's a Latin based language. 575 00:36:23,440 --> 00:36:26,440 It's much nicer to sing, for instance, than French, like... 576 00:36:26,440 --> 00:36:28,520 I've made the choice to sing in Occitan, 577 00:36:28,520 --> 00:36:31,080 because it actually has beautiful sounds. 578 00:36:37,000 --> 00:36:39,600 The language of Oc is a romance language 579 00:36:39,600 --> 00:36:43,040 but also a distinctly romantic one. 580 00:36:43,040 --> 00:36:46,120 It was the language of the Troubadours, it was spoken by Dante 581 00:36:46,120 --> 00:36:49,640 and sung by the minstrel Blondel in his desperate search 582 00:36:49,640 --> 00:36:52,760 to find his king, Richard the Lionheart... 583 00:37:02,160 --> 00:37:04,920 Many governments have given up attempting to repress 584 00:37:04,920 --> 00:37:08,160 regional languages, and now support and promote them - 585 00:37:08,160 --> 00:37:10,760 the notoriously centralised French state 586 00:37:10,760 --> 00:37:14,760 continues its policy of linguistic imperialism. 587 00:37:14,760 --> 00:37:17,840 It's had a pretty tough history though, hasn't it, Occitan? 588 00:37:17,840 --> 00:37:21,760 The French state decided that they would try and centralise everything 589 00:37:21,760 --> 00:37:24,800 and eradicate differences. Around the whole of France 590 00:37:24,800 --> 00:37:26,880 would have one single version of French, 591 00:37:26,880 --> 00:37:30,960 and therefore any of the other languages that were spoken across the whole of France, 592 00:37:30,960 --> 00:37:35,520 any of the Languedoc, any of the Occitan dialects, had to be forbidden. 593 00:37:35,520 --> 00:37:39,400 So children were beaten in schools, so they wouldn't speak it. 594 00:37:39,400 --> 00:37:42,680 It's so interesting, this, cos it's a story we come across again 595 00:37:42,680 --> 00:37:44,560 and again, with minority languages. 596 00:37:44,560 --> 00:37:48,400 With the Irish under British rule and their language. 597 00:37:48,400 --> 00:37:51,840 With the Basques under Franco and their language. 598 00:37:51,840 --> 00:37:54,000 And also with you with Occitan, the... 599 00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:57,120 A less vicious regime perhaps, than Franco, but nonetheless 600 00:37:57,120 --> 00:38:01,680 it was a... Homogeneity was the idea, there must be one French. 601 00:38:01,680 --> 00:38:04,800 I would ask you, are you essentially optimistic 602 00:38:04,800 --> 00:38:07,560 or pessimistic about the future of Occitan? 603 00:38:07,560 --> 00:38:12,640 We are forced to be optimistic, in our situation - 604 00:38:12,640 --> 00:38:16,120 if we become pessimistic, it's over. 605 00:38:16,120 --> 00:38:21,240 This forced optimism is a stark contrast to the genuine confidence 606 00:38:21,240 --> 00:38:25,280 of Basques in Spain, but is it just a case of nostalgia, 607 00:38:25,280 --> 00:38:27,480 does it really matter? 608 00:38:27,480 --> 00:38:30,320 Liza thinks Marcel, one of the few shepherds 609 00:38:30,320 --> 00:38:33,760 traditionally working in the Alpille, the hills beyond Marseille, 610 00:38:33,760 --> 00:38:34,960 will prove a point. 611 00:38:34,960 --> 00:38:36,160 Little lambs! 612 00:38:39,000 --> 00:38:40,800 This is wonderful. 613 00:38:40,800 --> 00:38:46,680 Is he hopeful that the language will survive for the next 100 years? 614 00:38:46,680 --> 00:38:48,840 SPEAKS DIALECT 615 00:39:07,640 --> 00:39:10,840 He thinks these languages should live because it's part linked 616 00:39:10,840 --> 00:39:13,160 to the identity and the culture of the land. 617 00:39:13,160 --> 00:39:18,520 So he thinks the languages should definitely continue to exist. 618 00:39:18,520 --> 00:39:22,520 D'accord. So, it's a matter of pride and identity 619 00:39:22,520 --> 00:39:25,480 to speak the language. It makes him belong more to the land 620 00:39:25,480 --> 00:39:27,560 and to this region? 621 00:39:27,560 --> 00:39:31,120 SPEAKS DIALECT 622 00:39:59,080 --> 00:40:02,960 France has yet to sign up for the 1992 Charter 623 00:40:02,960 --> 00:40:06,120 to protect and promote minority languages. 624 00:40:06,120 --> 00:40:08,080 France's constitution forbids it, 625 00:40:08,080 --> 00:40:11,960 as it enshrines French as the official language. 626 00:40:11,960 --> 00:40:16,320 Occitan and other French dialects have struggled for centuries 627 00:40:16,320 --> 00:40:20,920 with one of France's most powerful and secretive institutions. 628 00:40:23,800 --> 00:40:26,040 This is the French Academy 629 00:40:26,040 --> 00:40:31,320 where the 40 so-called Immortals meet regularly to rule on which 630 00:40:31,320 --> 00:40:34,720 words may or may not be officially included in the French language. 631 00:40:34,720 --> 00:40:38,280 It was set up by Cardinal Richelieu in the 1630s, and since then 632 00:40:38,280 --> 00:40:41,680 it's survived everything from revolution to Nazi occupation. 633 00:40:48,920 --> 00:40:53,000 The Academy members are drawn from the creme de la creme of French society. 634 00:40:53,000 --> 00:40:56,960 They are writers, politicians, scientists and philosophers. 635 00:41:01,920 --> 00:41:05,600 You could argue that the Academy has been partly 636 00:41:05,600 --> 00:41:09,000 responsible for homogeneity of French. 637 00:41:09,000 --> 00:41:12,320 That, for example, Occitan and Basque have not been given 638 00:41:12,320 --> 00:41:16,880 a full minority status like Welsh is or, or other... 639 00:41:16,880 --> 00:41:22,080 But, you know, what they, they have lost is not too much 640 00:41:22,080 --> 00:41:27,200 and in compensation they have been participated to one 641 00:41:27,200 --> 00:41:31,440 of the most wonderful conversation possible, the conversation 642 00:41:31,440 --> 00:41:36,280 in Paris, the conversation in the great towns of France. 643 00:41:36,280 --> 00:41:40,120 For Academy members, it is their own, French language 644 00:41:40,120 --> 00:41:42,560 and identity that is in peril, from an influx 645 00:41:42,560 --> 00:41:47,200 of languages from around the world, primarily English. 646 00:41:48,520 --> 00:41:55,400 In a period where the "Globish" English is so invading, 647 00:41:55,400 --> 00:42:03,040 it is superfluous I think to take care so much of these local languages 648 00:42:03,040 --> 00:42:06,640 that are not leading anywhere. 649 00:42:06,640 --> 00:42:10,000 So that is very much your position, there is an official language, 650 00:42:10,000 --> 00:42:14,120 if you like, that is... Not an official language, 651 00:42:14,120 --> 00:42:19,600 but an agreed language that is agreed, by cultured people. 652 00:42:19,600 --> 00:42:22,840 If one speaks rap, the other one speaks Maroc, Moroccan, 653 00:42:22,840 --> 00:42:28,800 and the third, I don't know, a language from les banlieues, 654 00:42:28,800 --> 00:42:31,400 there is no possibility of discussion. 655 00:42:34,000 --> 00:42:37,120 Although the Academy has no legal authority of its own, 656 00:42:37,120 --> 00:42:40,720 its decisions exert a huge influence. 657 00:42:40,720 --> 00:42:42,560 Over the years, the Academy 658 00:42:42,560 --> 00:42:47,320 has ruled on new French words to replace a host of imported ones. 659 00:42:47,320 --> 00:42:50,560 Among them, balader for Walkman, courriel for email, 660 00:42:50,560 --> 00:42:54,680 in an attempt to hold back the constant deluge of globish. 661 00:43:00,480 --> 00:43:01,520 Merci. 662 00:43:07,080 --> 00:43:12,960 Well, it's closed to mortals like me but what the Immortals are now 663 00:43:12,960 --> 00:43:16,440 going to decide "in camera," must be off camera. 664 00:43:16,440 --> 00:43:19,520 They're going to decide which unpleasant "Franglais" 665 00:43:19,520 --> 00:43:23,000 and other interloping words will be accepted and which rejected, 666 00:43:23,000 --> 00:43:26,360 and admitted into the French language. 667 00:43:26,360 --> 00:43:28,960 400 years, the best part of, this has been going on. 668 00:43:30,440 --> 00:43:32,680 It's a very strange and very French system. 669 00:43:37,880 --> 00:43:40,440 Hmm. They're playing Boules. 670 00:43:44,000 --> 00:43:48,600 Some might say that the Academy is a typically French relic 671 00:43:48,600 --> 00:43:51,800 of a bygone age, spitting into the wind. 672 00:43:51,800 --> 00:43:54,960 And as much as they try, it's impossible to stem 673 00:43:54,960 --> 00:43:59,000 the inevitable mutability and inventiveness of language. 674 00:44:03,840 --> 00:44:09,560 FRENCH RAP SONG 675 00:44:09,560 --> 00:44:14,280 English may not be the greatest challenge to the purity of French. 676 00:44:14,280 --> 00:44:17,200 A more potent threat is much closer to home, 677 00:44:17,200 --> 00:44:20,120 in music made by the immigrants of the Maghreb, 678 00:44:20,120 --> 00:44:22,480 the ex-colonies of North Africa. 679 00:44:22,480 --> 00:44:25,440 They are reinventing the language of Racine and Corneille 680 00:44:25,440 --> 00:44:29,720 to reflect their own identities, a new kind of French citizen. 681 00:44:33,560 --> 00:44:36,600 I've come to Marseilles to meet one of the genre's maestros, 682 00:44:36,600 --> 00:44:39,640 rapper and producer DJ Sya Styles. 683 00:44:43,760 --> 00:44:46,160 Do you think that rap language 684 00:44:46,160 --> 00:44:49,760 has changed the French language generally? 685 00:44:49,760 --> 00:44:52,880 TRANSLATION: 686 00:45:22,920 --> 00:45:26,640 New Maghrebi additions to standard French include "brelle," 687 00:45:26,640 --> 00:45:29,920 meaning useless or powerless, and "kiffer," derived from 688 00:45:29,920 --> 00:45:34,200 the Arabic word for hashish, which has come to mean, "to love." 689 00:45:34,200 --> 00:45:36,480 TRANSLATION: 690 00:46:50,200 --> 00:46:54,320 'It's hard enough to transform a language a word at a time. 691 00:46:54,320 --> 00:46:58,920 'All the more extraordinary is to resurrect an entire language from the dead, 692 00:46:58,920 --> 00:47:03,760 'as an act of political will, to gift an identity to a whole nation.' 693 00:47:06,360 --> 00:47:10,160 Israel had a difficult birth, a tricky childhood and a stormy adolescence. 694 00:47:10,160 --> 00:47:13,200 Whatever one's views of the current political situation here 695 00:47:13,200 --> 00:47:15,560 it was a remarkable journey to statehood, 696 00:47:15,560 --> 00:47:17,480 and language was at the centre of it. 697 00:47:17,480 --> 00:47:21,640 Hebrew was the language spoken here, centuries before 698 00:47:21,640 --> 00:47:24,320 a man called Jesus Christ walked these streets. 699 00:47:24,320 --> 00:47:27,880 But after the Diaspora, the dispersal of the Jews throughout Europe 700 00:47:27,880 --> 00:47:30,360 and 2,000 years of persecution, 701 00:47:30,360 --> 00:47:32,640 Hebrew died out as a spoken language, 702 00:47:32,640 --> 00:47:34,160 remembered only in the Torah, 703 00:47:34,160 --> 00:47:35,800 in rabbinical tradition 704 00:47:35,800 --> 00:47:38,680 and in Friday night suppers in Jewish homes. 705 00:47:40,200 --> 00:47:43,080 Fast forward to the creation of the state of Israel 706 00:47:43,080 --> 00:47:46,960 in the aftermath of the Second World War and the Holocaust. 707 00:47:46,960 --> 00:47:51,040 The most crucial question facing them was what language do we speak? 708 00:47:51,040 --> 00:47:55,760 Yiddish, the lingua franca of the Middle European Jew, 709 00:47:55,760 --> 00:48:01,160 was polluted, tainted by the shtetl, by pogroms and by the death camps. 710 00:48:01,160 --> 00:48:02,520 Russian was too limited, 711 00:48:02,520 --> 00:48:06,680 so they made the bold decision to reinvent Hebrew 712 00:48:06,680 --> 00:48:08,800 as a modern living language. 713 00:48:17,600 --> 00:48:21,400 Israeli linguist Ghilad Zuckermann is taking me 714 00:48:21,400 --> 00:48:26,320 to Rishon LeZion where the first Hebrew school was built in 1889. 715 00:48:27,560 --> 00:48:31,200 Stopping off in a garage for some mechanical problem solving 716 00:48:31,200 --> 00:48:34,400 exposes an intriguing linguistic problem... 717 00:48:34,400 --> 00:48:39,240 how do you describe things that simply didn't exist in the Bible? 718 00:48:39,240 --> 00:48:40,920 HE SPEAKS HEBREW 719 00:48:45,320 --> 00:48:49,120 Stephen. Shalom. How are you? 720 00:48:49,120 --> 00:48:52,160 HE SPEAKS HEBREW 721 00:48:58,160 --> 00:49:01,320 Handbrakes, did you say? Handbrakes. 722 00:49:01,320 --> 00:49:02,680 THEY SPEAK HEBREW 723 00:49:05,920 --> 00:49:09,760 I got that. You said it's the carburettor and you said, no it's fuel injected. 724 00:49:09,760 --> 00:49:12,320 Yes. Yeah. A lot of English words in there. 725 00:49:13,360 --> 00:49:17,040 'Well, they did create Hebrew words for carburettors, etc, 726 00:49:17,040 --> 00:49:19,560 'but not all of them caught on.' 727 00:49:19,560 --> 00:49:22,320 There are a lot of English words. 728 00:49:22,320 --> 00:49:25,840 Are there any biblical Hebrew words in there that you can see? 729 00:49:25,840 --> 00:49:27,000 HE SPEAKS HEBREW 730 00:49:28,400 --> 00:49:30,200 Battery is... 731 00:49:30,200 --> 00:49:35,800 It's not... It's a Hebrew-based word. Right. 732 00:49:35,800 --> 00:49:38,920 But obviously it's a new word because it's a new concept. 733 00:49:38,920 --> 00:49:41,240 Quite, so wouldn't exist in the Bible. Right. 734 00:49:41,240 --> 00:49:45,600 It means to collect and to store. 735 00:49:45,600 --> 00:49:48,160 So it's collects like this energy. 736 00:49:48,160 --> 00:49:51,040 Well, that's also known as a capacitor. Capacitor. 737 00:49:51,040 --> 00:49:54,040 Isn't it, so it's capacitor - exactly the same idea. 738 00:49:54,040 --> 00:49:57,240 And, and, I mean, they're all, this bottle here, I mean obviously 739 00:49:57,240 --> 00:50:01,280 there would be Hebrew words in the Bible for bottles and jars. 740 00:50:01,280 --> 00:50:05,080 The coolant inside, but the container, the receptacle? 741 00:50:05,080 --> 00:50:09,520 THEY SPEAK HEBREW 742 00:50:09,520 --> 00:50:11,800 It is a Hebrew word which means container. 743 00:50:11,800 --> 00:50:13,000 That's what I wondered. 744 00:50:13,000 --> 00:50:16,400 That you would find in the Bible, women carrying pots and all kinds of... 745 00:50:16,400 --> 00:50:19,440 You know, pots, and lots of words like that in the Bible. 746 00:50:19,440 --> 00:50:22,520 Potters' vessel. 747 00:50:22,520 --> 00:50:28,080 You'll see modernisation of ancient terms. 748 00:50:28,080 --> 00:50:32,040 But usually when it comes to cars, the English wins. 749 00:50:32,040 --> 00:50:35,200 For example, if you have a puncture. 750 00:50:35,200 --> 00:50:36,840 HE SPEAKS HEBREW 751 00:50:36,840 --> 00:50:39,360 Puncture. Puncture. You call it a puncture. 752 00:50:39,360 --> 00:50:43,520 You see, he knows the Academy of the Hebrew language word, 753 00:50:43,520 --> 00:50:46,200 but actually people say puncture. 754 00:50:46,200 --> 00:50:48,240 'Ah! 755 00:50:48,240 --> 00:50:51,360 'So Hebrew has an Academy as well! 756 00:50:51,360 --> 00:50:56,000 'Not so surprising, I suppose, when they started a language from scratch. 757 00:50:56,000 --> 00:51:01,200 'Car duly fixed, we're off now to visit the place where it all began.' 758 00:51:01,200 --> 00:51:03,600 HE SPEAKS HEBREW 759 00:51:07,240 --> 00:51:12,520 'When Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the prime force behind the revival of Hebrew, 760 00:51:12,520 --> 00:51:16,800 'began to teach here, Palestine was still part of the Ottoman Empire 761 00:51:16,800 --> 00:51:20,400 'and his students would have been dressed as these children have today. 762 00:51:20,400 --> 00:51:24,840 'The slow process of re-inventing modern Hebrew had begun. 763 00:51:24,840 --> 00:51:28,920 'Ironically, the Yiddish language, sturdy enough to survive 764 00:51:28,920 --> 00:51:32,080 'the Holocaust, was now facing a more serious threat... 765 00:51:32,080 --> 00:51:33,560 'from the state of Israel.' 766 00:51:33,560 --> 00:51:37,240 In this classroom these were the young pioneers, whatever you 767 00:51:37,240 --> 00:51:41,120 call them, the early Zionists, which was not then necessarily 768 00:51:41,120 --> 00:51:44,320 a coloured political word, it just meant they wanted to live here. 769 00:51:44,320 --> 00:51:46,880 They were being taught what kind of Hebrew? 770 00:51:46,880 --> 00:51:49,600 Because the Hebrew you speak, which you call Israeli, 771 00:51:49,600 --> 00:51:51,080 which seems a sensible idea, 772 00:51:51,080 --> 00:51:55,000 presumably was not the same as the one that was being developed? 773 00:51:55,000 --> 00:51:58,400 They were taught in the best Hebrew, 774 00:51:58,400 --> 00:52:01,400 which was available for their teachers. 775 00:52:01,400 --> 00:52:05,080 Let us remember that the teachers were not Hebrew speakers. 776 00:52:05,080 --> 00:52:08,240 Wasn't their first language. It was not their first language. 777 00:52:08,240 --> 00:52:12,800 They were not native Hebrew speakers. There were none. They were mostly Yiddish speakers. 778 00:52:12,800 --> 00:52:17,720 They could not in fact rid themselves from the structures of Yiddish. 779 00:52:17,720 --> 00:52:21,080 But modern Israeli Hebrew has been an enormous success. 780 00:52:21,080 --> 00:52:24,360 It is a first language for most of the population of the country. 781 00:52:24,360 --> 00:52:28,280 And how is it that this engineered language managed to succeed? 782 00:52:28,280 --> 00:52:33,280 I think that at the end of the day there was a lot of ideology for, 783 00:52:33,280 --> 00:52:37,560 and the wish to, have a language for the future state. 784 00:52:37,560 --> 00:52:39,560 And the other thing was to have a language 785 00:52:39,560 --> 00:52:41,960 which was a unifying tongue for all the Jews 786 00:52:41,960 --> 00:52:44,320 because Jews came from all over the world. 787 00:52:44,320 --> 00:52:46,520 Right. Speaking different languages. 788 00:52:46,520 --> 00:52:50,360 So in a sense it was political will, and it was identity that drove it? 789 00:52:50,360 --> 00:52:55,400 Right. Definitely identity. But the important thing to realise is 790 00:52:55,400 --> 00:53:00,480 the success of Israeli, of course, is not only the revival of Hebrew, 791 00:53:00,480 --> 00:53:04,440 but rather the survival of all the other languages like Yiddish, etc. 792 00:53:04,440 --> 00:53:07,960 Israeli, if you want, is on the one hand a phoenix 793 00:53:07,960 --> 00:53:10,120 rising from the ashes, Hebrew. 794 00:53:10,120 --> 00:53:14,000 On the other hand it's a cuckoo, laying its eggs in the nest 795 00:53:14,000 --> 00:53:18,360 of another bird, tricking it to believe that it is its own bird. This is Yiddish. 796 00:53:18,360 --> 00:53:22,240 On the other hand it's a magpie stealing from America 797 00:53:22,240 --> 00:53:25,080 and then Polish. So it's a phoenix-cuckoo hybrid. 798 00:53:25,080 --> 00:53:28,040 Three birds. Well, with some magpie characteristics. 799 00:53:28,040 --> 00:53:30,480 And in fact I would argue that Israeli is not 800 00:53:30,480 --> 00:53:34,200 the murder of Yiddish, but rather Yiddish... HE SPEAKS HEBREW 801 00:53:34,200 --> 00:53:36,040 So, Yiddish... 802 00:53:36,040 --> 00:53:41,200 speaks itself within Israeli and this is the irony of history. 803 00:53:41,200 --> 00:53:44,960 Ben-Yehuda and many other revivalists wanted very much 804 00:53:44,960 --> 00:53:47,800 to reject Yiddish, but history tells us, 805 00:53:47,800 --> 00:53:50,840 "No, Yiddish survives beneath Israeli." 806 00:53:50,840 --> 00:53:55,320 So Israeli is a story of revival and survival. 807 00:53:55,320 --> 00:53:57,760 The only thing I'd say is that if Yiddish was chosen 808 00:53:57,760 --> 00:54:01,400 as the language for Israel, it would have been a funnier country. 809 00:54:01,400 --> 00:54:03,320 It just would have been funnier. 810 00:54:03,320 --> 00:54:06,280 Don't you think? Oy! But we, but we keep... 811 00:54:06,280 --> 00:54:09,360 Schlep your bag for you, sir?! 812 00:54:14,720 --> 00:54:19,360 In our globalised world, this kind of phoenix-cuckoo hybrid 813 00:54:19,360 --> 00:54:22,560 may be the most workable way of keeping local languages alive. 814 00:54:23,960 --> 00:54:29,000 Here in Africa, Kenya alone has 69 languages. 815 00:54:29,000 --> 00:54:32,640 The mother tongue of the Turkana people only has 816 00:54:32,640 --> 00:54:35,280 anything in common with two of those. 817 00:54:35,280 --> 00:54:40,120 This fierce warrior tribe of pastoral nomads are, like the Jews, 818 00:54:40,120 --> 00:54:44,280 attempting their own journey of survival and revival, 819 00:54:44,280 --> 00:54:45,960 involving three languages. 820 00:54:47,160 --> 00:54:52,440 'Turkana children learn English in the mission schools they attend.' 821 00:54:52,440 --> 00:54:55,880 Four times 14. Do we have any division? 822 00:54:55,880 --> 00:54:58,840 The official state language, Swahili, 823 00:54:58,840 --> 00:55:03,040 is spoken in the towns for everyday activities such as shopping. 824 00:55:04,040 --> 00:55:07,720 'And, in their own communities, Turkana teachers are passing on 825 00:55:07,720 --> 00:55:10,400 'the mother tongue to the next generation.' 826 00:55:14,560 --> 00:55:16,640 HE SPEAKS NATIVE LANGUAGE 827 00:55:20,640 --> 00:55:23,040 So while the purity of the language may be lost, 828 00:55:23,040 --> 00:55:25,360 hopefully Turkana, along with all the other 829 00:55:25,360 --> 00:55:30,880 languages we have explored, will survive in a new and hybrid form. 830 00:55:30,880 --> 00:55:33,080 I really do hope so. 831 00:55:33,080 --> 00:55:36,200 Because, in the end, our attachment to our language 832 00:55:36,200 --> 00:55:39,920 is about emotion not intellect. 833 00:55:39,920 --> 00:55:43,560 Our identity is all about feelings. 834 00:55:50,760 --> 00:55:55,240 What better way to celebrate the end of my travels than a game 835 00:55:55,240 --> 00:55:59,720 'at Carrow Road, the home ground of my beloved Norwich City Football Club.' 836 00:55:59,720 --> 00:56:05,080 On The Ball, City, the oldest football song in the world. 837 00:56:07,280 --> 00:56:10,960 All the tribal identity issues we have as human beings, 838 00:56:10,960 --> 00:56:12,920 and we would be foolish to deny, 839 00:56:12,920 --> 00:56:16,680 are allowed to take place on the football field. 840 00:56:19,520 --> 00:56:21,040 Against the run of play. 841 00:56:24,200 --> 00:56:27,320 Come on. OK, we score back. 842 00:56:27,320 --> 00:56:29,880 Come on, you Yellows! 843 00:56:31,920 --> 00:56:35,320 Aaaagh! 844 00:56:35,320 --> 00:56:37,200 Oh, no! 845 00:56:40,400 --> 00:56:44,160 Oh, my lordy! 846 00:56:46,760 --> 00:56:47,920 We're doomed! 847 00:56:54,120 --> 00:56:57,360 There are those who say, it doesn't matter to me, 848 00:56:57,360 --> 00:57:00,520 I have no sense of identity, it doesn't matter that I'm British, 849 00:57:00,520 --> 00:57:03,880 it doesn't matter that I'm English, it doesn't matter that I'm from 850 00:57:03,880 --> 00:57:06,040 Shropshire, or Yorkshire, or Norfolk. 851 00:57:06,040 --> 00:57:08,960 Maybe they're right, but I can't feel like that. 852 00:57:08,960 --> 00:57:13,200 I have this... I can't help but belong. 853 00:57:13,200 --> 00:57:18,000 And, I think it was Clemenceau, the French prime minister 854 00:57:18,000 --> 00:57:19,960 in the early part of the 20th century, 855 00:57:19,960 --> 00:57:23,320 who said that he was a patriot but he wasn't a nationalist. 856 00:57:23,320 --> 00:57:26,320 And they said to him, what do you mean by that? 857 00:57:26,320 --> 00:57:30,160 He said, well, I think a patriot loves his country, 858 00:57:30,160 --> 00:57:34,120 but a nationalist hates everybody else's country. 859 00:57:34,120 --> 00:57:38,400 And I think a good football team to support is you love 860 00:57:38,400 --> 00:57:40,840 your football team, you love your region, 861 00:57:40,840 --> 00:57:44,720 you love your city, you love your county, 862 00:57:44,720 --> 00:57:47,760 but it doesn't mean you hate everybody else's. 863 00:57:47,760 --> 00:57:53,000 And the best of belonging is that embracing of who you are 864 00:57:53,000 --> 00:57:55,840 and it's just like an extra dimension in your life. 865 00:57:55,840 --> 00:57:58,920 An extra feeling. It's a sort of hugging feeling, 866 00:57:58,920 --> 00:58:02,160 of belonging. I find it very important in my life, 867 00:58:02,160 --> 00:58:04,560 and without it, I think my life would be poorer. 868 00:58:04,560 --> 00:58:07,680 Oh, too much. Come on! Come on! 869 00:58:07,680 --> 00:58:11,040 'Football terraces are a cauldron of passion, 870 00:58:11,040 --> 00:58:14,000 'bad language and, surprisingly, wit. 871 00:58:14,000 --> 00:58:18,600 'The way we use, and, of course, abuse language with new ways 872 00:58:18,600 --> 00:58:22,000 'of swearing, or jargon, or slang are a testament to our creativity 873 00:58:22,000 --> 00:58:26,040 'but also give us a deeper insight into the workings of the mind. 874 00:58:26,040 --> 00:58:28,720 'And this is what I'll be looking at next time. 875 00:58:28,720 --> 00:58:31,720 'So you'd better sodding well tune in.' 876 00:58:54,560 --> 00:58:56,600 Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd 877 00:58:56,600 --> 00:58:58,640 E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk