Established | May 3, 2008 |
---|---|
Location | P.O. Box 453 Greenbelt, Maryland, United States |
Coordinates | 38°58′36″N76°56′19″W / 38.976793°N 76.93863°W |
Type | Online museum |
President | Laura K. Murray |
Website | National Museum of Language |
The National Museum of Language, located in College Park, Maryland, is a cultural institution established in 1997 to "examine the history, impact, and art of language," [1] [2] and remains one of the few institutions designed for this purpose. [3]
The museum opened officially on May 3, 2008 in College Park, with an exhibition entitled "Writing Language: Passing It On". [1] In 2014, the museum closed its physical facility and became a virtual museum. At present, it is focusing on outreach activities and virtual exhibits. Its outreach includes a speaker series and training modules for classrooms. The museum is mostly run by volunteers.
The idea for a national language museum dates to 1971, when linguists at the National Security Agency put on an exhibition called "Language, Its Infinite Variety." However the idea of a language museum did not gain hold until 1985, when the linguists from the NSA exhibition met again to discuss the possibility. The linguists were unable to establish exhibits at that time, but an organizing committee was formed and a board of directors were elected in 1997. [4] Prior to opening to the public, the museum did have a presence with a newsletter, annual dinner and occasional programs, e.g. "Creole Languages as Misunderstood and Endangered Languages” [5] symposium in 2007.
NML opened officially on May 3, 2008, with an exhibition entitled ‘‘Writing Language: Passing It On,” [1] which traced the roots of early alphabet languages, such as Arabic, Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and featured as well character-based Chinese and Japanese. Another noted exhibit which followed was "Emerging American Language in 1812", which explained influences on the development of American English as a separate entity from British English, and included a display about the contributions of Noah Webster, the "First American Lexicographer." Other smaller exhibits focused on Native American, Amharic, and North American French. In 2011, it displayed Bibles and liturgical manuscripts on loan from the Alphabet Museum in Waxhaw, North Carolina.
The museum housed the Allen Walker Read Library (collection of books from a noted American etymologist and lexicographer) as well as the Ann Kietzman collection of international children's books in foreign languages. [6] The library holdings are available on LibraryThing. [7] The museum also taught classes on occasion. Among its programs were the creation of a speaker's series (renamed the Amelia C. Murdoch Speaker Series after the NML founder), [8] which featured experts in various areas related to language use and history. [8] The Museum also offered grade school programs, and ran a summer language camp. When the museum went virtual, it maintained the speaker series and the summer camp. It still maintains its book collections and displays its flag at museum events.
The National Museum of Language is one of the founding members of the International Network of Language Museums.[ citation needed ]
Among its current online features are a Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) virtual exhibit, [9] and the Greek language Philogelos comic strip. The NML owns the world's only International Flag of Language, [10] the result of a contest sponsored by the museum in 2008. The three shades of green on the flag represent past, present, and future languages.
The NML is mainly operated by volunteer staff. The majority of its funding comes from donations and occasional government grants. There is no membership fee.
A pidgin, or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from several languages. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the country in which they reside. Linguists do not typically consider pidgins as full or complete languages.
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) is a major library and cultural center on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea in Alexandria, Egypt. It is a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria, once one of the largest libraries worldwide, which was lost in antiquity. The idea of reviving the old library dates back to 1974 when a committee set up by Alexandria University selected a plot of land for its new library. Construction work began in 1995, and after some US$220 millions had been spent, the complex was officially inaugurated on 16 October 2002. In 2009, the library received a donation of 500,000 books from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF). The gift makes the Bibliotheca Alexandrina the sixth-largest Francophone library in the world.
The Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH), also known as The Field Museum, is a natural history museum in Chicago, Illinois, and is one of the largest such museums in the world. The museum is popular for the size and quality of its educational and scientific programs, and its extensive scientific specimen and artifact collections. The permanent exhibitions, which attract up to 2 million visitors annually, include fossils, current cultures from around the world, and interactive programming demonstrating today's urgent conservation needs. The museum is named in honor of its first major benefactor, Marshall Field, the department-store magnate. The museum and its collections originated from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and the artifacts displayed at the fair.
World Museum is a large museum in Liverpool, England which has extensive collections covering archaeology, ethnology and the natural and physical sciences. Special attractions include the Natural History Centre and a planetarium. Entry to the museum is free. The museum is part of National Museums Liverpool.
Louisiana Creole is a French-based creole language spoken by fewer than 10,000 people, mostly in the state of Louisiana. Also known as Kouri-Vini, it is spoken today by people who may racially identify as White, Black, mixed, and Native American, as well as Cajun and Creole. It should not be confused with its sister language, Louisiana French, a dialect of the French language. Many Louisiana Creoles do not speak the Louisiana Creole language and may instead use French or English as their everyday languages.
The Museum of Fine Arts is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works of art, making it one of the most comprehensive collections in the Americas. With more than 1.2 million visitors a year, it is the 52nd–most visited art museum in the world as of 2019.
The Sierra Leonean Creole or Krio is an English-based creole language that is lingua franca and de facto national language spoken throughout the West African nation of Sierra Leone. Krio is spoken by 96 percent of the country's population, and it unites the different ethnic groups in the country, especially in their trade and social interaction with each other. Krio is the primary language of communication among Sierra Leoneans at home and abroad, and has also heavily influenced Sierra Leonean English. The language is native to the Sierra Leone Creole people, or Krios, a community of about 104,311 descendants of freed slaves from the West Indies, Canada, United States and the British Empire, and is spoken as a second language by millions of other Sierra Leoneans belonging to the country's indigenous tribes. Krio, along with English, is the official language of Sierra Leone.
The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) Institute of Texan Cultures (ITC) is a museum and library located in the Texas Pavilion at HemisFair Park in Downtown San Antonio, Texas. The building which houses the institute a striking example of Brutalist architecture.
The Salvador Dalí Museum is an art museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States, dedicated to the works of Salvador Dalí. Designed by Yann Weymouth, the museum is located on the downtown St. Petersburg waterfront by 5th Avenue Southeast, Bay Shore Drive, and Dan Wheldon Way.
The Polk Museum of Art at Florida Southern College is a private, non-profit, and nationally accredited art museum in Lakeland, Florida. It is a member of the Florida Association of Museums, is ranked among the top art museums in the state of Florida, and is a Smithsonian Affiliate. Admission to the museum is free to the general public. On June 1, 2017, the Polk Museum of Art, a private community museum, entered an affiliation agreement with Florida Southern College in order to advance the mission of both entities and better serve the community.
A virtual museum is a digital entity that draws on the characteristics of a museum, in order to complement, enhance, or augment the museum experience through personalization, interactivity, and richness of content. Virtual museums can perform as the digital footprint of a physical museum, or can act independently, while maintaining the authoritative status as bestowed by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) in its definition of a museum. In tandem with the ICOM mission of a physical museum, the virtual museum is also committed to public access; to both the knowledge systems embedded in the collections and the systematic, and coherent organization of their display, as well as to their long-term preservation.
The Florida Holocaust Museum is a Holocaust museum located at 55 Fifth Street South in St. Petersburg, Florida. Founded in 1992, it moved to its current location in 1998. Formerly known as the Holocaust Center, the museum officially changed to its current name in 1999. It is one of the largest Holocaust museums in the United States. It was founded by Walter and Edith Lobenberg both of whom were German Jews who escaped persecution in Nazi Germany by immigrating to the United States. Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel served as Honorary Chairman and cut the ribbon at the 1998 opening ceremony. The Florida Holocaust Museum is one of three Holocaust Museums that are accredited by the American Alliance of Museums. The museum works with the local community and survivors of the Holocaust to spread awareness and to educate the public on the history of the Holocaust.
A post-creole continuum is a dialect continuum of varieties of a creole language between those most and least similar to the superstrate language. Due to social, political, and economic factors, a creole language can decreolize towards one of the languages from which it is descended, aligning its morphology, phonology, and syntax to the local standard of the dominant language but to different degrees depending on a speaker's status.
The National Museum of Nuclear Science & History is a national repository of nuclear science information chartered by the 102nd United States Congress under Public Law 102-190, and located in unincorporated Bernalillo County, New Mexico, with an Albuquerque postal address. It is adjacent to both the Albuquerque city limits and Kirtland Air Force Base.
The Karpeles Manuscript Library Museums is one of the largest private collections of historic manuscripts and documents in the world. It was founded in 1983 by California real estate magnates David Karpeles and Marsha Karpeles, with the goal of stimulating interest in learning, especially in children, and to make the collection more accessible, is distributed among many Karpeles museums across the US, each located in a historic building, plus "mini-museums" in schools and office buildings. Items are rotated between museums quarterly, and each of the museums presents a daily general exhibit and one or more special scheduled exhibits throughout the year. In addition, Karpeles is aggressively expanding the content of its website. All of the Karpeles Manuscript Library services are free. The museums are located in small and midsize cities, although the Karpeles family put on an exhibit in Central Park West in New York City in 1991. As of June 2023, there are ten museums.
An exhibition, in the most general sense, is an organized presentation and display of a selection of items. In practice, exhibitions usually occur within a cultural or educational setting such as a museum, art gallery, park, library, exhibition hall, or World's fairs. Exhibitions can include many things such as art in both major museums and smaller galleries, interpretive exhibitions, natural history museums and history museums, and also varieties such as more commercially focused exhibitions and trade fairs.
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