Stephen Fry explores language, coming to understand how we learn it, write it and sometimes lose it, and why it defines us.

A five-part series in which Stephen Fry explores language, coming to understand how we learn it, write it and sometimes lose it, and why it defines us.

What is it that defines us? Stephen argues that above all, it is the way we speak. Be it a national language, a regional dialect or even class variation - we interpret and define ourselves through our language.

This programme looks at the ways language is used and abused. While not everyone approves of \'bad\' language, Stephen learns that swearing plays an important part in human communication the world over.

Whether it’s English, Spanish, Chinese, or Urdu, babies and young children are able to pick up their native language with remarkable ease; no one language seems any more difficult than any other. Yet few children who are taught a language in school have anything to show for it when they grow up. Why is learning a second or third language so difficult?