46:39
Mother Tongues: Languages Around the World
This program travels the globe as it surveys a large portion of the world’s languages—25 percent of which are spoken by a mere 0.1 percent of the Earth’s population. Moving from Africa to Oceania and up to Asia and then west to Europe and acro...
47:52
Civilization to Colonization: Language Takes Written Form
Writing is a relative latecomer to the history of language. This program tracks its emergence in Mesopotamia, China, and Mesoamerica and its spread down through the millennia via conquest—usually violent, sometimes benign—and colonization. The c...