Nice timing of this 5-part series on language by Stephen Fry as I begin teaching the unit language and society in the new academic year. Unfortunately though, the first of these programmes was a little bit disappointing. There was clearly a bigger budget than that afforded Fry on radio 4 and the programme, filmed over a year, saw the polymath travelling amongst the Turkana people of rural Kenya, interviewing Stephen Pinker, visiting Leipsig to talk to a philologist to explain proto indo-european, and having his brain scanned in London. But it skirted the issues rather than dealing with them in depth or having a particualr point of view of them. And if anyone does have a point of view it’s going to be Stephen Fry about language. More than a tweet and less than a considered essay, the result was a little thin.

Much better, the film The Human Language Series made by Searchinger and shown on PBS in 2005. That’s the one that I’ll be looking at with the students on Friday, though I will recommend they watch Planet Word over the next five weeks.