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Naturebang: Zebra Finches and Learning a Language

Zebra Finches and Learning a Language

BBC Radio 4 - Naturebang, Zebra Finches and Learning a Language

How to birds learn to sing? How do we learn to talk? And what happens when it goes wrong?

Becky Ripley and Emily Knight find out what it takes to learn the language of your people, with the help of some extremely chatty little birds.

The song of the zebra finch has been compared to a 90's dial-up modem running triple-speed, or an alien fax machine. But to a female zebra finch, it's a song of irresistible seduction. The males learn their song in a very similar way to the way we learn language, and it all starts with the babies. Through babbling, then copying, then innovating motifs of their own, the zebra finches take their language and then put their own distinctive stamp on it.

But if they don't learn it at just the right time, as a chick, they can't learn it as an adult.

How does human language acquisition work, and what would happen if you denied a baby the opportunity to learn to speak? The surprising answer takes us to 1970s Nicaragua, and the extraordinary story of the birth of a language...

Produced by Becky Ripley and Emily Knight. Featuring Professor Ofer Tchernichovski from Hunter College at CUNY, and Dr Judy Shepard-Kegl from the University of Southern Maine.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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Factual: Science & Nature

Making sense of what it means to be human by looking to the natural world.

Becky Ripley and Emily Knight make sense of what it means to be human by looking to the natural world... Science meets storytelling with a philosophical twist.

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