Web Resources for the History of the English Language

Please direct comments to gruenler@hope.edu. Last modified: August 27, 2003

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General Resources

• History of the English Language resources from the Univ. of Toronto
• A compendium of HEL links associated with a site that also hosts an e-mail discussion list about the History of the English Language
• Eric Weaver’s Michigan Accent Pronunciation Guide. Well done and funny.
• OneLook Dictionaries: a gateway to hundreds of online dictionaries
• iLoveLanguages: links to various language and linguistics resources, including an extensive list of online dictionaries
• The Oxford English Dictionary through Hope College's online subscription (must be accessed from a Hope account)
• Word Play: sites that feature fun with words
• The American Dialect Society
• The Telsur Project: a survey of linguistic changes in progress in North American English
• James Crawford's Language Policy Web Site
• Bartleby.com includes the new fourth edition of the American Heritage Dictionary and the American Heritage Book of English Usage among other handy and interesting texts.
• The Plumb Design Visual Thesaurus puts the graphic potential of the Web to indescribably cool use.
• English online by E. L. Easton.
• History of English Prose Style by John F. Tinkler.
• The Mythopoeic Society, “for the study, discussion, and enjoyment of fantasy and mythic literature, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams.” Includes a Beginner's Bibliography of the Inklings.
• The Owen Barfield World Wide Web Site
• A.Word.A.Day
• Wordcount, a graphic representation of the 86,800 most common words in English, in order of frequency.
• The Polyglot Bible by Mark Davies allows you to compare Old, Middle, Early Modern, and Modern translations of the Gospel of Luke, as well as the original Greek and translations into many other languages, both ancient (Latin, Gothic) and modern.
• "What Global Language?" by Barbara Wallraff, author of the The Atlantic’s language columns, argues that “English isn't managing to sweep all else before it -- and if it ever does become the universal language, many of those who speak it won't understand one another.” See also the links to other articles on the English language published in The Atlantic, which has a tradition of published important articles on the language that goes back to Walt Whitman’s "An American Primer" and before.
• Homepage of Geoffrey Nunberg, one of the most insightful commentators on current American English, especially in relation to culture and technology.

You might also want to visit the Department of English Research Web and Van Wylen Library's page of English Web Resources.