{"id":1424,"date":"2019-02-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-27T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwordmuseum.org\/why-make-a-museum-of-language\/"},"modified":"2023-04-05T12:14:57","modified_gmt":"2023-04-05T16:14:57","slug":"why-make-a-museum-of-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwordmuseum.org\/why-make-a-museum-of-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Make a Museum of Language?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"white-space: pre-wrap;\"><em>Curious about Planet Word\u2019s origins? Below is an excerpt from Ann Friedman\u2019s keynote speech at Language Advocacy Day 2019. Here, she talks about what inspired her to undertake this incredible project to bring words and language to life!<\/em><\/p>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/planetwordmuseum.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/image-asset-3.png\" alt=\"\" \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"white-space: pre-wrap;\">Let me take you back about 5 years. It\u2019s September 2013, and a relative asks me what I\u2019ve been working on since retiring from teaching first grade reading in a public school a couple years earlier.<\/p>\n<p style=\"white-space: pre-wrap;\">\u201cWell, I have this idea to create a museum of words,\u201d I confided, a little bit embarrassed to have such a grandiose ambition. \u201cHave you ever been to the Museum of Mathematics in New York City?\u201d I asked him. \u201cIt was started by a hedge fund guy who loved math so much he quit his job to start a math museum. And using a lot of high-tech, hands-on interactives, he made math fun \u2014 like showing you how you could ride a trike with square wheels.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"white-space: pre-wrap;\">\u201cI think a museum like that could work for literacy, too,\u201d I said, \u201cand besides,\u201d I argued, \u201cit\u2019s so much more important. If we don\u2019t have a literate society, if people can\u2019t read with understanding or think critically about issues, if they don\u2019t have the vocabulary they need or can\u2019t engage in civil dialogue, how can they help our country navigate the complex issues of the day? How can they cast educated votes? Democracy depends on literate citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"white-space: pre-wrap;\">\u201cAnd we know, from a study the NEA did a few years ago, that readers are more likely to be volunteers, to be active in their communities, and to vote. So we have to find a way to engage people of all ages with words and language and books and reading \u2014 and I think a museum is the way to go. Informal education. Exciting experiences. Make words awesome!\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"block-animation-none\">\n<blockquote><p>\u201cDemocracy depends on literate citizens.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<p style=\"white-space: pre-wrap;\">And that\u2019s how Planet Word was born.<\/p>\n<p style=\"white-space: pre-wrap;\">I couldn\u2019t find any evidence, despite the central importance of words in telling our stories and informing who we are and who we become, that there\u2019s ever been a museum dedicated to them, to their fun, beauty, and power. There are museums dedicated to individual languages, and there\u2019s the wonderfully charming <a href=\"https:\/\/www.planetwordmuseum.org\/blog\/2017\/9\/19\/mundolingua\">Mundolingua<\/a>, a tiny linguistics museum in Paris, but a major museum taking a high-tech approach to bringing language to life didn\u2019t seem to exist anywhere.<\/p>\n<p style=\"white-space: pre-wrap;\">As Michael Whitmore, the Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, once remarked to me, \u201cWe are all curators of our words from the day we\u2019re born.\u201d We are all born collectors of this one thing: Words. But those words, I would argue, have been the overlooked, disregarded, under-appreciated artifacts of our lives.<\/p>\n<p style=\"white-space: pre-wrap;\">But no longer. Planet Word is about to change all that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Curious about how Planet Word came to be? Here, Ann talks about what inspired her to bring language to life with this one-of-a-kind museum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":1429,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[44],"class_list":["post-1424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-planet-word","tag-our-story"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Why Make a Museum of Language? &#8212; Planet Word Museum<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/planetwordmuseum.org\/why-make-a-museum-of-language\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Make a Museum of Language? &#8212; Planet Word Museum\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Curious about how Planet Word came to be? 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