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Part 1 - Why do we talk? - BBC Horizon

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    [♪ mysterious/mystical music]
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    Man: It is probably the most amazing thing you do,
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    and it defines you as being human.
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    Woman: And you do it with ease,
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    so much so you barely notice you're doing it.
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    Toddler: Apple. Parents: Yeah! Apple!
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    Woman: Your ability to talk.
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    Man: Or more precisely,
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    the way you use language.
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    [Speaking in different languages]
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    Woman: Language.
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    Robotic Male Voice: Hi, baby.
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    Narrator: From the moment we're born,
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    we have language in our lives.
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    Robotic Female Voice: Hi, baby.
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    Narrator: A unique ability that defines us
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    as human.
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    Man 2: I can walk up to someone I don't know
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    and I can make a sequence of noises
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    that I've never made before
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    by pushing air through my mouth.
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    I will take a thought in my head
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    and make it go into their head.
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    And that's an incredible trick.
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    [Dog barks]
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    Narrator: Other animals may use sounds
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    to communicate.
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    We're the only ones on the planet
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    who can talk.
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    Woman 2: Speech and language distinguishes us
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    from all other species.
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    We are not only using words
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    to be able to express ourselves,
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    but we're really expressing
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    our thought processes that are unique to ourselves.
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    Narrator: For most of us,
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    it just happens.
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    Woman 3: It's such a sophisticated skill,
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    and yet children learn it so easily
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    with minimal effort at all.
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    Girl: That's bubby.
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    Woman 3: And when you start thinking about it
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    it's quite miraculous how the brain does it.
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    Narrator: But despite decades of research,
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    how we learn to talk remains a mystery.
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    How did this ability evolve?
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    Why is it uniquely human?
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    And is it something we're born with
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    or something that we learn?
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    Man 2: It strikes me as surprising and odd
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    that we know an enormous amount
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    about for example,
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    the first fractions of a second
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    in the history of the universe,
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    but we really know very little at all
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    about what makes us human
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    and where language comes from.
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    Toddler: I fell down.
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    Daddy, I don't...
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    [Toddler oohing and ahhing]
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    Narrator: The wonder of language
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    may not yet be fully understood.
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    [Baby cawing and cooing]
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    Baby: Ca. Ca-ca. Car-car.
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    Narrator: But how we start to talk
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    is now being observed minute by minute
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    for the first time.
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    Cognitive scientist Deb Roy,
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    realized that to discover
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    how a child learns to speak,
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    he'd have to be to see and hear them
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    24 hours a day.
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    His solution was to take the extraordinary step
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    of turning his own home into a language laboratory.
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    And his guinea pig was his own son.
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    [Toddler undecipherable]
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    Roy: My wife and I were expecting our first child
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    and we had many conversations around
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    you know, would this possible?
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    Could we set up our home as an observation space
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    and actually capture this kind of
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    rich longitudinal record of
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    our own child's development from birth?
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    And that's what we set up to do.
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    Narrator: And so was born the speech home project.
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    The most ambitious language observation experiment
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    ever seen.
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    Cameras and microphones recorded every second
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    of Deb's son's life
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    from the moment he was born
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    until he was 3 years old.
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    Capturing in precise detail the process
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    of how we learn to talk.
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    Son: Ba. Boo. Boo. Ba. Boo. Booba. Boobal.
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    Roy: Blue ball, yeah.
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    Narrator: From the earliest unintelligible babble
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    to the emergence of a very first word.
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    Wife: You want it?
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    Toddler [whines]: Ba.
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    Roy: Apple.
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    Toddler: Apple. Parents: Yeah! Apple.
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    Roy: My interest going in was
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    really to understand the earliest stages
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    of languages formation.
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    And the typical development stages in language
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    a child will go from babbling
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    to using single words
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    usually as a complete request and descriptions.
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    And then, from that they will start
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    what's called a two-word stage
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    where they'll put two words together
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    like "more milk,"
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    and from that very quickly more complex
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    grammatical structures emerge.
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    My focus and my aim was to capture
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    the phase up to the two word utterance.
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    And that could happen anywhere
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    between 2nd and 3rd birthday.
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    It turned out my son was an early talker,
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    so by the time his 2nd birthday arrived
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    we had the main data set we wanted.
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    Narrator: By the time recording was complete,
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    more than 240,000 hours of information
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    and 16 million words had been collected.
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    Roy: It's a lot of data,
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    but in it's raw form,
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    it's useless.
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    And so, the challenge is this now sets up for us
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    is how to start extracting the right kind
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    of metadata.
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    Transcripts of who said what.
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    Annotations of where those people were.
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    Annotations of how they're moving
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    and the relationships that they were in
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    as they were speaking.
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    And these are the tools that we're now building
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    to analyze the raw data,
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    and from that we're starting to see some early
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    insights into the patterns of language development.
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    Narrator: Despite the mountains
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    of video footage,
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    Deb Roy is already uncovering
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    the intricate effect daily life
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    has on language development.
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    It seems cooing to your baby
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    is not just instinct,
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    it's essential.
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    In the months leading up
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    to their son's first words,
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    he and his wife unconsciously
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    simplified their speech.
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    Then as their son's own speech develops,
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    they began to use longer sentences again,
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    mirroring the child's own development.
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    Toddler: Green car.
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    Roy: What's that over there?
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    Over there. That ball.
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    Toddler: Gren bal.
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    Roy: Ooohhh.
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    Narrator: For the very first time,
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    the analysis has also enabled
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    Deb to piece together the precise emergence
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    of individual words.
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    Charting how a new word is born.
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    Mother: Okay, water. Wa-ter.
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    Toddler: Ga-ga-ga-ga?
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    Roy: So, my son around his first birthday
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    started using the sound "ga-ga"
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    to indicate "water."
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    And then over the next several months,
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    learned to slowly approximate
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    the proper speech form.
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    Mother: Water.
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    Roy: Just like time lapsed video
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    lets you capture a flower blossoming,
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    what we're going to hear
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    is the blossoming of a speech form.
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    Mother: Okay, water. Wa-ter.
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    Roy: Water?
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    Roy: Water?
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    Mother: Water.
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    Roy: That's water.
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    Narrator: It will takes years for Deb Roy
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    and his team to analyze all of the data.
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    But buried within this footage
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    are the secrets of how we learn language.
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    If the patents can be unlocked,
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    then once this remarkable project is complete,
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    we will have the clearest understanding yet
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    of how a child achieves the remarkable feat
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    of learning to talk.
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    [♪ mysterious/mystical music]
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    Woman 1: By the time a child is 5,
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    they'll know as many as 5,000 words.
Title:
Part 1 - Why do we talk? - BBC Horizon
Description:

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Video Language:
English
Duration:
10:00

English subtitles

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