All engine running.

running.

Absolutely genius.

Welcome.

This is the show where we bring science.

What that essentially means is discovery is

the glasses, research, technology, unbelievable.

Without further ado, this is the naked scientist.

Hello, welcome to this week's naked scientists,

the show where we bring you the latest breakthroughs

in science, technology and medicine with me Chris Smith

And this week we're asking what is a language

From Cambridge University's Institute of Continuing Education, this is the

Naked Scientists. It's probably a question you don't think about very often, but it governs pretty much everything

we do, including how we communicate, learn, comprehend, and even express our identities.

So this week we're going to explore the science of language, which is called linguistics,

and a bit later on, I'm even going to have a crack at learning a bit of Greek.

But first to explore the purpose of language here's David Crystal who's an honorary

professor of linguistics at the University of Bangor.

Well language is a system of communication, obviously.

Everybody knows that.

But the point is, it exists in three big forms,

...