Hey, I'm Molly, and I want you to imagine this. It's 500 years ago, the year 1493, to be exact, and we are in Scotland in the King's Palace.

It's a gray and rainy day and King James the 4th is sitting at a huge desk in his castle and his writing.

We have no records of him actually writing anything about this, so this is kind of what I imagine he would have said.

I'll put on my best Scottish accent now.

You're listening to shock and curling.

Since I was going to lad I've been truly fascinated by language. After learning English I also

learned Scott's Gaelic, then Flemish, Latin, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.

But lately, a question has been burning in my mind.

If I had learned none of these, what language would I speak?

Would I speak one at all?

Thus, I have devised a truly revolutionary experiment.

I've arranged for two newborn babies to be taken to the remote Scottish island of Inchkeith. There they will be cared for by a woman who cannot speak.

She will bathe them and feed them, but will not sing them to sleep nor whisper to them when they cry.

They will be raised without language without hearing the sound of another human speaking. I hope to find out whether a basic primitive

language will develop in them. I yearn to know if we are born with language deep

inside us or do we only learn it as we grow?

Wow Molly that was a great impression of a Scottish king. Why thank you Carl I am a successful actor. Do you want to hear my Scottish accent? Yes please. Okay. In the islands of Scotland we we laddies a k-9. Oh no. Okay Carl two things one that was

appalling and two you know that wasn't actually me speaking before, right?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I knew that, yeah, definitely.

Okay.

What you just heard was what we imagined King James the 4th of Scotland would have said about this experiment in the long, long, distant past, over 500 years ago in fact.

So today on Short and Curly, the Search for Knowledge, and whether we sometimes go too far.

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