A MUSEUM OF LANGUAGES has opened in College Park, Maryland:

Museum benefits from university partnership
Diana Elbasha (The Diamondback)
Issue date: 6/26/08 Section: News

Carrie Clarady, a senior research assistant for the university's Center for the Advanced Study of Language, kicked off the National Museum of Language's current lecture series Sunday standing beside a projected image of "The Cherokee Syllabary," an alphabet-like array of the language's native phonetics.

The museum, which opened in College Park in May, will host presentations explaining the complexities of the Cherokee language, "one of the 300 languages native to North America," Clarady said.

"The university already has a strong linguistic program," she added. "I hope to see it one day become a language research center." In its first month of existence, and in the months of preparations preceding its grand opening, students have already been put to work, researching and drafting lectures for various lecturers.

Clarady spoke to a crowd of about 25 in a room wallpapered with displays of the "founding languages" - Sumerian, Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Hebrew and Arabic. Each language's display contained the alphabets of their influential writing systems, as well as various photos and artifacts.

The museum also hosts an interactive exhibit called "The Name Game." Going well beyond its icebreaker namesake, the activity allows users to type their names into a computer and within seconds have a printed sheet with such written in four foreign languages: Arabic, Assyrian, Hebrew and Punjabi.

"A large chunk of today's world is about language," said Amelia Murdoch, a former employee of the National Security Agency. She said the NSA often did not understand how language and culture were intertwined or language nuances such as different dialects. This ignorance inspired her to found the National Museum of Language, she said.

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Well done.