SHARE
“Marhaba, I’m Tamer and I’m from Lebanon,” says a voice from one of the many screens placed around a brilliantly coloured globe. “I speak Arabic,” the man says, before going into detail about how words are formed in the language.
You can even interact with Tamer as he takes you through the basics of Arabic.
Nearby, you can interact with another screen and learn about Hebrew.
“Chutzpah has come to mean boldness or self confidence, but in Hebrew, it originally meant cheeky and disrespectful,” a female voice explains.
It makes for a unique experience that gives the visitor an incredible amount of control at Planet Word, one of Washington
Colclough (ee)!
People often tell me that English must be an arduous and intimidating language for foreigners to master. How difficult can it be, I answer, when of the more than 1 billion speakers of English around the globe, only 378 million speak English as a first language while 793 million are non-native speakers. The vast bulk of English speakers worldwide did not hear English as babies and grow up speaking it as children. That’s right. A towering majority of English speakers are second-, third- or fourth-language speakers; and that group is increasing faster than the cluster of first-language speakers.
Advertisement
One of these come-latelies to English, Hungarian-born Stephen Baker, speaks of his love for his adopted language:
Washington City Paper The Year 2020 in Arts What happened in the arts scene in a year where museums, venues, theaters, and stages of all kinds were closed? Success! You re on the list. Whoops! There was an error and we couldn t process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again. Processing…
The week everything stopped feels like a long ago bad dream now.
On Thursday, March 12, 2020,
City Paper’s weekly cover story was slated to be a package previewing the offerings at the annual Environmental Film Festival, which would teach us about plastic in the oceans, stray dogs in India, the last male white rhino in Kenya, and the wind. The first confirmed case of COVID-19 was reported in D.C. on March 7, and the city felt uneasy we were obsessively washing our hands and making sure to not touch our faces but many of us kept commuting, maskless, hoping it would blow over. By Monday, March 9, the staff had filed the
Share
As Washington, DC re-opens cautiously, the phase two of the re-opening allows visitors to explore a bouquet of experiences outdoors. A simple walk around the National Mall, exploring the newly re-opened museums, relaxing in the city’s boutique hotels, the city has a lot to offer.
The DC government has made masks mandatory and has also provided travellers with simple
guidelines to follow while visiting Washington, DC. Entities throughout the city have made sure to implement safety mechanisms like enhanced sanitation efforts and enforcing social distancing protocols. Read here for travel updates.
Among the re-opened sites, there are memorials, monuments, museums and unique exhibits to engage locals and visitors alike. Here are some attractions that are opened for the public.