Language

No matter that you have a PhD and have read all of Henry James twice. If you still persist in writing, 'Good food at it's best', you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave."
— Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves

This page:
Language, generally | English Language, generally | English Language: Dictionaries | English Language: Grammar and Usage | Hebrew and Other Jewish Languages | Spanish Language | Ancient Greek and Latin

Language, generally

• Ethnologue: Languages of the World - Reports on the languages spoken in every country. Search by language or country.
• I Love Languages - A great resource for information on many languages (formerly the Human Languages Page)
• FSI Language Courses - Courses originally developed for the U.S. State Dept. (text and audio files)
• ForeignWord - Translation sites, links to dictionaries and software, and other useful sources for language learners
• Index Translationum - Find translations from one language to another (UNESCO)
• Lingua Obscura - Essays on the state of language
• Linguist List - Directory of sites in linguistics
• Ask a Linguist
• MLA Language Map Data Center - Where languages are spoken in the U.S. (Modern Language Association)
• SIL International: Topical Links - Sites for the study of language and linguistics
• TravLang - Dictionaries, translations for major languages; basic words and phrases for many others (includes audio files)

Dictionaries: English and Other Languages:

See also

• English-Language Dictionaries, below
• Dictionary.com - More than a dictionary, also includes thesaurus, usage guides, subject and foreign language dictionaries
• Free Dictionary - English and 14 other languages
• Glossarist - Glossaries and topical dictionaries in many subjects
• Lexicool - Specify two languages and the type of dictionary you want, and Lexicool recommends some online choices
• List of Dictionaries
• OneLook - Search multiple dictionaries at once; get translations into other languages
• WordReference - Translations between English and several other languages
• YourDictionary.com - English-language dictionary, foreign-language dictionaries, subject glossaries, thesauri, etc.

Foreign-Language Dictionaries:

Dictionaries for translating from one language to another.

• Bab.la - Dictionary for translating among 28 languages
• LEO English-German Dictionary - German-English, too
• MDBG Chinese-English Dictionary

Translations:

• Google:
• Google Translate
• Google Language Tools
• BabelFish - Translate a block of text in various langaguages
• Free Translation - Similar to Babel Fish
• Microsoft Translator
• SYSTRANet - "Your free online translator"
• TravLang - Online translations in many languages. (You'll need to look below all the ads.)
• WorldLingo - Guide to human and online translation services

Directories of Translation Services

• Translation resources on the Web: A guide to accurate, free sites, College and Research Libraries News, June 2009
• Please Translate That for Me by Paula J. Hane, ITI News Break, Sept. 3, 2009

Learning Languages:

• Duolingo
• News in Slow ... - Spanish, French, Italian, German (Linguistica 360)

Pronunciation:

• Forvo - "All the words in the world. Pronounced." Recordings of native speakers pronouncing words in many different languages

Usage:

• Google Ngram Viewer - Compare words or phrases used in millions of books over centuries. Search in English, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Russian, Spanish. Based on the Google Books corpus.

Other Scripts:

• Gate2Home: Virtual Keyboard - Lets you type in other languages, especially those that use non-Latin scripts
• KeymanWeb Virtual Online Keyboard - In my experience, this one works better for cutting and pasting Hebrew
• Magictyper - Type in Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, Greek, Urdu, or Persian using any keyboard

Slang:

See also

• English-language slang below
• Alternative Dictionaries - Slang from many languages, but don't take the usage notes too literally
• Maledicta - The journal for the study of "bad words"

 

Word Play:

See also

• Word Games and Puzzles
• Figures of Speech - Definitions and examples of various types
• Forest of Rhetoric: Silva rhetoricae - All kinds of figures of speech, as understood by rhetoricians in the Renaissance
• Literary Cryptograms - Solve ciphers of quotations from literature
• Gigantic List of Palindromes
• Rhymes.net
• Rhymezone

English Language

• Anglistik Guide - Gateway for Anglo-American language and literature
• World Wide Words - "Michael Quinion writes on international English from a British viewpoint"

English Language: Dictionaries:

• Merriam-Webster Online - The original Webster's
• Time Traveler - Find words by first known usage
• Collins English Dictionary
• Dictionary.com - Definitions come from the American Heritage Dictionary and other sources
• General English Dictionaries PolySearch Page - Péter Jacsó's page for searching multiple dictionary sites
• OneLook Dictionary Search - Search a word in multiple dictionaries, or do pattern searches

• Vocabulary.com Dictionary - Includes examples and synonyms
• Webster's 1913 dictionary
• Wordnik - Standard words and new words, with definitions, etc., but also examples drawn from the Web
• Wordsmyth - Dictionary, reverse search, anagram solver, crossword solver, and more
• Your Dictionary - Dictionary, thesaurus, glossaries of specialized fields, foreign language dictionaries

Abbreviations and Acronyms:

• Abbreviations.com
• Acronym Finder
• Acronyma - Acronyms and abbreviations in English and other languages

Dialects:

• Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE)
• Dictionary of the Scots Language
• American English Dialect Recordings (Library of Congress)
• English Accents and Dialects - Audio files of regional dialects (British Library)
• Speech Accent Archive - Recordings of native and non-native English speakers reading a paragraph

Etymology:

• Online Etymology Dictionary - A great resource
• Word and Phrase Origins Pathfinder - Web and print sources (Internet Public Library)

Historical Dictionaries:

• Lexicons of Early Modern English - Searchable version of many early glossaries of "hard words" and bilingual dictionaries. (Ignore the login and go directly to Search; some features require a subscription.) (LEME)
• Middle English Compendium - Dictionary, corpus of texts, etc. (U. of Michigan)
• Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

New Words:

• Word Spy - New words and phrases coming into the language
• Words of the Year - Not necessarily new words, but words that sum up the year (American Dialect Society)

Phrases, Idioms, etc.:

• English Idioms and Phrases (UsingEnglish.com)
• Phrase Finder

Rare Words, Hard Words:

• Dictionary of Difficult Words
• Luciferous Logolepsy - "Dragging obscure words into the light of day"
• The Phrontistery: Obscure Words and Vocabulary Resources - dictionary of rare, cool, and unusual words; rarest words on the Internet, short Scrabble words, topic-specific glossaries, and more

Slang:

• Probert Encyclopaedia: Slang - International English-language slang
• Urban Dictionary - Contemporary slang

Thesauri:

• The Historical Thesaurus of English - "The University of Glasgow Historical Thesaurus of English contains almost 800,000 words from Old English to the present day arranged into detailed hierarchies within broad conceptual categories such as Thought or Music."
• Roget's International Thesaurus - 1922 ed. based on Roget's original categories (Bartleby)
• Thesaurus.com

Visual Dictionary:

• Visual Dictionary Online - Lots of pictures to help identify words (Merriam-Webster)

English Language: Grammar and Usage:

See also

• Bibliography: Citing and Organizing Sources
• alt.usage.english FAQ
• Apostrophe Protection Society - Defending the language against misplaced, omitted, or extraneous apostrophes
• Banished Words - The annual list of "words and phrases banished from the Queen's English for mis-, mal-, or over-use, as well as general uselessness" (Lake Superior State University)
• Common Errors in English Usage - Quick and easy-to-understand tips (Prof. Paul Brians, Washington State University)
• English Grammar Guide
• Fowler's The King's English - 2nd ed., 1908 (Bartleby)
• Mencken's The American Language - 1921, rev. and enl. 2000 (Bartleby)
• Oxford Dictionaries: Your Language Questions
• Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) - Writing advice from getting started, to punctuation and grammar, to citing references
• Sincerely Your's: Ow, Quit It - Sarah D. Bunting has managed to get all my pet peeves on one set of pages. If you are confused about language usage — you know who you are — be sure to click this link and this one
• Strunk's Elements of Style - 1918 predecessor of Strunk and White (Bartleby)
• Another view: 50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice
• Using English
• Irregular Verbs

Style Manuals:

• American Psychological Association Publication Manual
• Chicago Manual of Style - Questions and answers, sample citation styles — not the complete manual
• Guardian and Observer Style Guide - As used by the British newspapers
• U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual

Hebrew and Other Jewish Languages

• Hebrew on the Web - How to use Hebrew letters
• Historical Dictionary Project (Academy of the Hebrew Language)
• Jewish Language Research Website - Hebrew, Yiddish, and many more
• Jewish English Lexicon
• List of Yiddish Words and Expressions

Spanish Language

• Collins Spanish Dictionary
• Diccionarios.com - Spanish dictionary and translations between Spanish and English, French, German, and Catalan

Ancient Greek and Latin

• Textkit - Textbooks and other resources to help you learn ancient Greek or Latin
• Greek Letter Combinations (Internet History Sourcebooks)
• Greek Abbreviations (Internet History Sourcebooks)