ZONE #3: Languages & Culture (approx 1,250 sq. ft.) How Language and Culture impact each other.

Visitors will enter into a themed area where backdrops would display a variety of languages. Language and culture provide an important connection, but sometimes they collide.

Visitors will be engrossed in the primary theme of the area, languages. Specifically, the history of languages, the process of translation, and the impact of language on culture throughout history and today.

Exhibits will highlight how the middle Demotic script was the key (as within the Rosetta Stone) to the translation link between the two other scripts – Greek and Hieroglyphics—essentially part of the formula that helped to crack the code to Hieroglyphics—unlocking the secrets of ancient Egypt.

Untranslatable Words: Words from other cultures that are not translatable into English. Just because a word is not translateable doesn’t mean that people don’t experience it here in America. There are certain ways of expressing oneself that make sense in another culture. Does someone have to give up something because it cannot be described in English? Provide a way for people to access that list, with the meanings of each word as best defined in English.

Game: different ways of saying a word. It's kind of like caricatures. Express a mood or word in body language and have another visitor guess what is being communicated.

VIDEO NOTE: Leave a verbal video note about a word from your part of the world that means a lot to you and the next visitor.

URBAN DICTIONARY: How words and culture interact. Urban dictionaries show the history behind the latest words that have now become a part of common usage in our culture.

We have access to some of the top linguist experts at the National Security Agency who are excited to help with this zone. Plus, once this project gets moving, we can approach a language training company about helping to create some interactive games for this zone.