Best of the Web

  • Introduction to the script, grammar, and nature of the Akkadian language, including examples of cuneiform writing.
  • A revision of the edition of 1888.
  • "Founded in 1889, the American Dialect Society is dedicated to the study of the English language in North America, and of other languages, or dialects of other languages, influencing it or influenced by it."
  • Fourth edition, published in 2000. Includes definitions, etymologies, and sound clips demonstrating proper pronunciation.
  • "Index to and growing database of 5000+ full text, audio and video (streaming) versions of public speeches, sermons, legal proceedings, lectures, debates, interviews, other recorded media events, and a declaration or two."
  • This "dictionary has two halves: American to British, where the explanation and definitions of American words are in British, and British to American, where British words are explained in American terminology and spellings."
  • Provides an overview of ancient writing systems.
  • Website from Oxford University Press designed to assist with queries about the English language. Among the many resources included are a jargon buster, language tips, competititions and crosswords, and articles.
  • This site provides resources for learning the one-handed manual alphabet used in American Sign Language.
  • Brush up language skills, learn holiday phrases, sign up for weekly e-mails with tips and encouragement.
  • Free multimedia language courses online. Lessons and supporting materials for various European and Asian languages are available.
  • This database "provides bibliographical references to scholarly publications on all branches of linguistics and all the languages of the world, irrespective of language or place of publication. The database contains all entries of the printed volumes of Bibliographie Linguistique/Linguistic Bibliography for the years 1993-2001 and an increasing number of more recent references."
  • An electronic archive of self-archive papers.
  • This site "represents the efforts of an international group of Assyriologists, museum curators and historians of science to make available through the internet the form and content of cuneiform tablets dating from the beginning of writing, ca. 3350 B.C., until the end of the pre-Christian era."
  • An "electronic journal for the scholarly discussion of issues pertaining to electronic literacy, widely construed. We seek to publish work addressing theuse of electronic texts and technologies in reading, writing, teaching, and learning in fields including but not restricted to: literature (in English and in other languages), rhetoric andcomposition, languages (English, foreign, or ESL), communications, media studies, and education.
  • Collection of links covering many aspects of these ancient writings and the ancillary artifacts from Qumran, including archeological, historical, and religious infomration.
  • "The Dictionary of Old English was conceived by Angus Cameron, its founding editor, as an historical dictionary in the tradition established by Sir James Murray for the Oxford English Dictionary. The Dictionary of Old English is based on records written in English between 600 and 1150 A.D."
  • Slang and colloquialisms used in the United Kingdom.
  • Provides a series of illustrated essays.
  • Directory of resources on works on language, linguistic theory and structural linguistics.
  • Contains questions (and answers)posted to the sci.lang newsgroup.
  • The goal of this project is to create comprehensive online coverage of the lexicons of the early Germanic languages.
  • A compendium of glossaries on various subjects, searchable by keyword or browsed in over 130 categories.
  • Miscellany of grammatical rules and explanations, comments on style, and suggestions on usage.
  • This database "contains definitions and examples of more than sixty traditional rhetorical devices."
  • A "comprehensive catalog of language-related Internet resources. The more than 2000 links at iLoveLanguages have been hand-reviewed to bring you the best language links the Web has to offer. Whether you're looking for online language lessons, translating dictionaries,native literature, translation services, software, language schools, or just a little information on a language you've heard about, iLoveLanguages probably has something to suit your needs."
  • "The bibliography contains 30.100 titles of academic literature and 3.100 abstracts see abstracts of the years 1998-1999.It focuses on modern sign language research. Beyond that, the bibliography records text related to Deaf culture, sign language interpreting as well as education of the deaf. The bibliography does not only refer to monographic books and readers, but also to articles in readers and journals. Being an adequate medium in sign language research, videos as well as digital media are also recorded."
  • "This site is designed to encourage discussion of language policy issues follow current developments, such as Colorado's English-only school initiative report on pending language legislation illuminate the policy debates over bilingual education, by publicizing the latest research findings flush out canards about bilingualism track the continuing struggles against Proposition 227, California's anti-bilingual education initiative (1998) and against Proposition 203, Arizona's anti-bilingual education initiative (2000) highlight links to other sources of information. . ."
  • An "electronic journal designed to serve as a peer-reviewed resource forteachers, researchers, and tutors of writing, including such areas as composition studies, rhetoric, technicaland professional writing, creative writing, and literary studies. Our goal at Kairos is to offer a progressive and innovative online forum for the exploration of writing, learning, andteaching in hypertextual environments like the World-Wide Web.
  • This website provides the full text of the classic 1908 reference work by H. W. Fowler.
  • "This site collects links on the language futures of Europe - on languagepolicy, multilingualism, global language structures, and the dominance of English. It starts with a comment on the structures of languagethen links to texts and essays and then sections on EU policy, national policies, and research sites and finally the 'monolingual movement' in the United States."
  • A refereed journal that began publication in July 1997. The thrice-yearly journal seeks to disseminate research to foreign and second language educators in the U.S. and around the world on issues related to technology and language education. It is also a fully-refereed journal with an editorial board of scholars in the fields of second language acquisition and computer-assisted language learning. The focus of the publication is not technology per se, but rather issues related to language learning and language teaching, and how they are affected or enhanced by the use of technologies.
  • "This site is about varieties of language that differ from the standard variety that is normally used inthe media and taught in the schools. These include pidgins, creoles, regional dialects, minority dialects and indigenized varieties."
  • Presents the full text of this classic 1921 work by the noted linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir.
  • List of online resources providing links to Latin-English and multilingual dictionaries, study guides, and literature resources.
  • Search for relationships between words, concepts, and people in this combination thesaurus, rhyming dictionary, pun generator, and concept navigator.
  • Directory of bilingual and multilingual dictionaries. Currently has links to over 100 translation dictionaries and glossaries. Searchable by language, subject, or keyword.
  • " The LINGUIST List is dedicated to providing information on language and language analysis, and to providing the discipline of linguistics with the infrastructure necessary to function in the digital world. LINGUIST maintains a web-site with over 2000 pages and runs a mailing list with over 17,000 subscribers worldwide.
  • Searchable online thesaurus.
  • The Language map "uses data from the 2000 United States census to display the locations and numbers of speakers of thirty languages and three groups of less commonly spoken languages in the United States."
  • "Palaeography is the study of old handwriting. This web tutorial will help you learn to read the handwriting found in documents written in English between 1500 and 1800. . . . At first glance, many documents written at this time look illegible to the modern reader. By reading the practical tips and working through the documents in the Tutorial in order of difficulty, you will find that it becomes much easier to read old handwriting. You can find more documents on which to practice your skills in the further practice section."
  • Directory of resources.
  • This site provides "a compendium of online materials about more than 800 indigenous languages of the Western Hemisphere and the people that speak them."
  • "The North American Association for the History of the Language Sciences (NAAHoLS) was founded in San Francisco in December 1987 to promote the study of the history of the many disciplines concerned with language. These include linguistics and subfields within anthropology, cognitive science, philosophy, psychology, sociology, etc."
  • "The basic sources of this work are Weekley's 'An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English,' Klein's 'A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language,' 'Oxford English Dictionary' (second edition), 'Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology,' Kluge's 'Etymologisches Worterbuch der Englischen Sprache,' Ayto's '20th Century Words,' and Chapman's 1Dictionary of American Slang.' "
  • Searchable dictionary of English-language word origins.
  • "The Papyri Pages focus on topics relating to ancient Egyptian papyri and the history and archaeology of "books" and writing in general. They include an exhibit, texts, and links to related sites."
  • This bibliography is searchable by topic, language of topic, language of publication, sources, or date. "The data bases are being continually added to, and now include MANY more than 5900 articles (articles, chapters, mss., reports, working papers and conference presentations) and 1100 monographs (monographs, longer reports, and theses)."
  • Lists a variety of resources useful to rhetoricians.
  • "The Rhetorica Network offers analysis and commentary about the rhetoric, propaganda, and spin of journalism andpolitics, including analysis of presidential speeches and election campaigns. This site features the Rhetorica: Press-Politics Journal web log, Presidential Campaign Rhetoric 2004, comprehensive news media links, a rhetoric textbook, a primer of critical techniques, and information for voters. The character of Rhetorica represents the purposes and canonsof classical rhetoric."
  • A free, downloadable software package that "will help you find the Greek and Latin roots of thousands of words in the English language. . .the hypertext links make it fast and easy to use. The Dictionary also contains background on the history of English and details on the sources of individual words."
  • "Fifty to ninety percent of the world's languages are predicted to disappear in the next century, many with little or no significant documentation." This site currently archives more than 1200 language samples, descriptions, texts, analytic materials and audio files and is searchable by language, family tree, or country.
  • "This online rhetoric, provided by Dr. Gideon Burton of Brigham Young University, is a guide to the terms of classical and renaissance rhetoric. Sometimes it is difficult to see the forest (the big picture) of rhetoric because of the trees (the hundreds of Greek and Latin terms naming figures of speech, etc.) within rhetoric.
  • Links to online grammar pages and language lessons in many languages.
  • Provides links to free online language courses and dictionaries.
  • All about language.