Why do we talk?

**Daos** · 03-24-2011, 12:44 PM

Talking is something that is unique to humans, yet it still remains a mystery. Horizon meets the scientists beginning to unlock the secrets of speech - including a father who is filming every second of his son's first three years in order to discover how we learn to talk, the autistic savant who can speak more than 20 languages, and the first scientist to identify a gene that makes speech possible.

Horizon also hears from the godfather of linguistics, Noam Chomsky, the first to suggest that our ability to talk is innate. A unique experiment shows how a new alien language can emerge in just one afternoon, in a bid to understand where language comes from and why it is the way it is.

Spoiler!

**Blossom** · 03-24-2011, 12:51 PM

Once, they teached us (me) in Philosophy that our need to express ourself and languages got their origin on the cavemen. When women gave birth to new little trolls, the relationship between little troll and cavewomen started to be tight because of the need of those trolls to get fed in order to survive. Then, started the feeling to be into a group, to help eachother, to communicate and express feelings, to be more attached to a bunch of caveguys...improve the hunting, bring more food,...etc. Then, when the society of the cavemen started, started our desire to talk.

That's what they teach in schools.