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Oxford, 2022.

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Planet Word is a new linguistics museum that’s planning to open in Washington, D.C. in winter 2019. It’ll be free to the public. 

More details from the Washington Post: 

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser and her economic development team have been looking for someone with a fresh vision and a robust balance sheet to restore the deteriorating but historic Franklin School building downtown.

When they encountered Ann Friedman, a philanthropist and former reading instructor, they decided their search was over.

Bowser has selected a team led by Friedman, a former elementary school reading instructor who is married to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, to turn the historic former school overlooking Franklin Square into a $50 million museum dedicated to language and linguistics, dubbed Planet Word.

And from CityLab (although I take issue with linguistics only being a thing for kids!):

So what does one do at a linguistics museum? It’s not entirely clear yet. On the Planet Word site, founder Friedman invites future visitors to “[i]dentify accents, tell us how you say soda and hoagie, learn tips from professional dialect coaches, and climb a Tower of Babel or tunnel through a prepositional playground.” The museum could potentially occupy the space once claimed by the now-defunct Children’s Museum as the D.C. institution with the kid-friendliest programming.

One thing is clear: Planet World will definitely be unlike anything else in D.C.—or really anywhere.

The About page lists quite a few linguists you may have heard of on the advisory board, including Erin McKean, David Crystal, John McWhorter, and Deborah Tannen. I’m excited to see how this keeps developing further.