This week's programme in the series on Man and Science today

'A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanging. It is the skin of a living thought.'
In this programme a man is given the word Apricots to read. He can describe them, even say he doesn't like them, but can't read the word. What has gone wrong with his mechanisms of speech?
We take speech for granted but the study of language takes us into one of the most mysterious and complex areas ever examined by science.
Parents interviewed in this programme thought children learned to speak by imitation. Can this simple explanation be the answer to such a complex question? To answer this and related questions, Horizon visited Harvard University and MIT and talked to some of the world's leading linguists and psychologists.
(Colour)