Museum of the Alphabet
The Museum of the Alphabet is devoted to the history of language and located in Waxhaw, North Carolina. Here are a few interesting facts about this educational museum:
- Admission into the museum is free, and guests are welcome to study a replica of the Rosetta Stone.
- There are a variety of activities available in the museum, including getting one’s name spelled in Klingon and other fictional or non-fictional languages.
- The Museum of Alphabet was created in 1991. Its creation was inspired by the studying of minority languages from various parts of the world.
- William Cameron Townsend founded JAAR (the Jungle Aviation and Radio Services). It is responsible for managing the Museum of the Alphabet, which is another project that was started by Townsend.
- In the 1930s Townsend also started the Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics. This creation facilitated the bible’s translation into a variety of obscure languages.
- The work and data used for translating the bible into obscure languages are all gathered and on display in the Museum of the Alphabet.
- Visitors in the museum can view a chronological history of written languages. This includes galleries devoted to various languages, such as Hebrew, Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, and African Languages – a total of 12 galleries.
- The Museum of the Alphabet’s visitors can learn how to record minority languages with new alphabetical systems.
- The museum is committed to preserving the languages of the world that lack written alphabets.
- Some of the biggest exhibits in the museum are a sculpture of Sequoyah, a Native American who created the Cherokee alphabet. There’s also a sculpture of the Tower of Babel and a working model of the Gutenberg Press
The Museum of the Alphabet is an 8-minute, 5.2-mile drive via Davis Rd from the Well Doctor office in Waxhaw.