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The BBC are planning on creating another fascinating TV series. This time the subject is not nature, the space or even religion. No, this time the subject is one that would have fascinated me just a few years ago. (Not that it doesn’t fascinate me now, but my situation is different and I view the subject with different eyes)
The subject is Language.
Whilst I was at Uni, Linguistics was one the subjects that I had a love-hate relationship with. I hated the lessons and tests, but I used to love reading the books. I never, however, got too deep into the subject, so I could only talk about generic stuff, never without enough knowledge as to hold a proper conversation with a real linguist. It’s a bit sarcarstic, that in the subject of Linguistics I am more of a listener than a speaker 
Out of the two main parts that comprise linguisitics, my favourite always was Grammar (oh, my beloved morphology and syntax!) Even from an early stage of my basic education, grammar was one of my favourite subjects. As a learner of English as a foreign language, this in-depth knowledge of grammar structures came in very handy. And nowadays I can boast that my grammar in English is considerably better than that of many native speakers (this is not because I am that clever, but because for many many years grammar was not taught at schools in the UK…) I don’t, for a moment, believe that I hold the absolute truth about English grammar, but having to teach the MD of your company the difference between a “Saxon genitive” and a simple -s (plural) is quite something.
I suppose the BBC series will be focused on psycolinguistics, language acquisition and sociolinguistics. Subjects that interest me a lot because I never had the time to explore them in depth when I had the time. Fry said at an interview:
“I haven’t seen a good documentary about language, where it comes from, how we speak it, the variations of it, whether languages are dying, whether we are better at speaking than we were. There are so many questions.
“I’m going to Beijing to interview the man who invented Pinyin, a phonetic version of the Chinese language. He’s 105 years old… if he dies on me I’m going to be so annoyed.”
So looking forward to it!
