'World of language' opens for public to ponder

In a special recording booth, visitors can listen to samples of different languages and imitate them or record their own dialects to contribute to a database that can be used for future academic analysis.

"This is probably the first museum in the country dedicated to the diversity of languages," said Zhao Yao, a graduate student at the university.

Zhao was on a team that wrote the narrative texts in the museum under the guidance of the university's professors. Shanghai International Studies University is one of China's top institutions in terms of language, literature and linguistics.

"We strive for both amusement and accuracy in writing the text and combining interesting facts with knowledge of language. It's like writing popular science," he said.

The museum has recruited and trained more than 40 students as docents; among them is Yang Shaojie, a freshman who majored in Japanese.

Over the weekend, Yang provided tours of the museum for many guests who came for the celebration of the university's 70th anniversary.

"Being a docent is a learning process for me; besides memorizing the facts and commentaries, sometimes foreign guests can teach me something new about their language," she said. "It also lets me see the big picture of my major — Japanese is one tree in the forest of human languages."

The idea of building a language museum was proposed three years ago, and the work was taken on by the university's publicity department last year.

"Building this museum is an exploration of SISU leveraging its academic strength and resources, and we hope it will become a world of language for academic exchanges, teaching and research, as well as public education in the future," Yi Yonggang, head of the department, said.