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Best of the Web: Arts & Humanities » Language & Linguistics

  • Akkadian Language

    Introduction to the script, grammar, and nature of the Akkadian language, including examples of cuneiform writing.

  • Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar

    A revision of the edition of 1888.

  • American Dialect Society

    "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."

  • American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

    Fourth edition, published in 2000. Includes definitions, etymologies, and sound clips demonstrating proper pronunciation.

  • American Rhetoric

    "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."

  • American-British, British-American Dictionary

    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."

  • Ancient Scripts

    Provides an overview of ancient writing systems.

  • AskOxford.com

    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.

  • ASL Spelling Study: The Alphabet

    This site provides resources for learning the one-handed manual alphabet used in American Sign Language.

  • BBC - Languages

    Brush up language skills, learn holiday phrases, sign up for weekly e-mails with tips and encouragement.

  • BBC Languages

    Free multimedia language courses online. Lessons and supporting materials for various European and Asian languages are available.

  • Bibliography for Rhetoric, Composition, and Professional Communication

    Citations for articles and books dealing with rhetoric, composition, professional communication, and associated topics such as linguistics, psychology, and philosophy.

  • BL Online: The Bibliographical Database of Linguistics

    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."

  • Center for Applied Linguistics: What is Linguistics?

    Introductory essay and brief bibliography.

  • Cogprints: Linguistics

    An electronic archive of self-archive papers.

  • Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative

    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."

  • Currents in Electronic Literacy

    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. We are especially interested in work that takes advantage of the hypertext possibilitiesafforded by our World Wide Web publication format, as well as in articles concerning the use ofemergent electronic technologies."

  • Dead Sea Scrolls and Qumran

    Collection of links covering many aspects of these ancient writings and the ancillary artifacts from Qumran, including archeological, historical, and religious infomration.

  • Dictionary of Old English

    "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."

  • Dictionary of Slang

    Slang and colloquialisms used in the United Kingdom.

  • English Handwriting, 1500-1700: An Online Course

    Provides a series of illustrated essays.

  • EServer: Languages and Linguistics

    Directory of resources on works on language, linguistic theory and structural linguistics.

  • Frequently Asked Questions About Linguistics

    Contains questions (and answers)posted to the sci.lang newsgroup.

  • Germanic Lexicon Project

    The goal of this project is to create comprehensive online coverage of the lexicons of the early Germanic languages.

  • Glossarist: A Searchable Glossary Directory

    A compendium of glossaries on various subjects, searchable by keyword or browsed in over 130 categories.

  • Grammar Hotline Directory

    "The grammar hotline is a list of phone numbers or E-Mail addresses or Websites which you can contact for answers to short questions about writing. Tidewater Community College founded one of the first grammar hotlines in the country and publishes an annual compilation of grammar hotlines in theUnited States and Canada."

  • Guide to Grammar and Style

    Miscellany of grammatical rules and explanations, comments on style, and suggestions on usage.

  • Handbook of Rhetorical Devices

    This database "contains definitions and examples of more than sixty traditional rhetorical devices."

  • iLoveLanguages.com

    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."

  • International Bibliography of Sign Language

    "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."

  • James Crawford's Language Policy Website and Emporium

    "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. . ."

  • Kairos

    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. At the same time, we hope that our balance between the cutting edge of the Web and thetraditional academic need for juried publications will help electronic scholarship earn a stronger and more valued place in our field."

  • King's English

    This website provides the full text of the classic 1908 reference work by H. W. Fowler.

  • Language Futures Europe

    "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."

  • Language Teaching and Technology

    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. Each article is preceded by an abstract. The issues are browseable by author, title, topic and issue while reviews are browseable by author, title and software.

  • Language Varieties

    "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."

  • Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech

    Presents the full text of this classic 1921 work by the noted linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir.

  • Latin Language and Literature

    List of online resources providing links to Latin-English and multilingual dictionaries, study guides, and literature resources.

  • LexicalFreeNet

    Search for relationships between words, concepts, and people in this combination thesaurus, rhyming dictionary, pun generator, and concept navigator.

  • lexicool.com

    Directory of bilingual and multilingual dictionaries. Currently has links to over 100 translation dictionaries and glossaries. Searchable by language, subject, or keyword.

  • Linquist List

    " 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. LINGUIST also hosts searchable archives of over 100 other linguistic mailing lists and runs research projects which develop tools for the field, e.g., a peer-reviewed database of language and language-family information, and recommendations of best practice for digitizing endangered languages data."

  • Merriam-Websters Collegiate Thesaurus

    Searchable online thesaurus.

  • MLA Language Map

    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."

  • National Archives Paleography Tutorial: Reading Old Handwriting

    "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."

  • Native American Sign Languages

    Directory of resources.

  • Native Languages of the Americas

    This site provides "a compendium of online materials about more than 800 indigenous languages of the Western Hemisphere and the people that speak them."

  • North American Association for the History of the Language Sciences

    "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."

  • Online Etymology Dictionary

    "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.' "

  • Oxford Etymological Dictionary

    Searchable dictionary of English-language word origins.

  • Papyri Pages

    "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."

  • Project on Annotated Bibliography of Contemporary Research in Tense, Grammatical Aspect, Aktionsart, and Related Areas

    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)."

  • Rhetoric and Composition

    Lists a variety of resources useful to rhetoricians.

  • Rhetorica

    "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."

  • Roots of English Dictionary

    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."

  • Rosetta Project: Building a Near Permanent Archive of 1,000 Languages

    "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.

  • Silva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric

    "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. This site is intended to help beginners, as well as experts, make sense of rhetoric, both on the small scale (definitions and examples of specific terms)and on the large scale (the purposes of rhetoric, the patterns into which it has fallen historically as it has been taught and practiced for 2000+ years)."

  • Web of Online Grammars

    Links to online grammar pages and language lessons in many languages.

  • Word2Word

    Provides links to free online language courses and dictionaries.

  • yourDictionary

    All about language.

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