New BBC Stephen Fry Documentary 'Planet Word' Focuses on Sign Language

The BBC's new documentry 'Planet Word' presented by Stephen Fry began last night on BBC 2 and focused on some themes of interest to PDDCS News.

The series explores the development and diversity of language across the human species and in the first episode, Fry uncovers the origins of language. During the programme, Fry wonders if sign language is really a language at all. To answer that question he meets a deaf theatre company in America and learns about how ASL (American Sign Language) works. 

Other interesting aspects from a childhood deafness point of view were about language acquisition. A part of the show focused on how early on in life children develop speech and how difficult learning speech can be without that early start.

Watch the show here: The sign language section is about 43 minutes in