The British Library knows that the English language is far from a static entity, and in their exhibition "Evolving English" they have gathered a number of guests to talk about the world of English and its contemporary usage. There are five podcasts available and they present a cornucopia of material on the evolution of the English language, including: "How do jokes work?", "English: the World's...

Created by the Maryland Language Science Center, Langscape is a resource designed to help students and members of the general public explore the geographic prevalence of a number of different languages around the world. The interactive map allows visitors to explore what languages are most predominantly spoken in different regions around the world. Visitors can zoom in on a country to examine...

Are you looking to learn a new language, or to brush up your skills on a language you are studying? If so, Memrise offers online learning opportunities that may be of interest. Memrise offers courses in numerous languages, including Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and American Sign Language. The team behind Memrise designed these courses to center on elaborate encoding, a strategy that places...

News in Levels is designed for English Language Learners (ELLs) and ELL instructors. Created by a Czech company with the same name, the philosophy behind News in Levels is simple: each day, the website features a news story or two in three different "levels." Level 1 news stories use the 1,000 most common English words; Level 2 news stories use the 2,000 most common words; and Level 3 stories use...

Coined "the online encyclopedia of writing systems and languages," Omniglot has a variety of resources for learning new languages and understanding language systems. The sheer volume of materials may overwhelm readers at first (with information on more than 1,000 languages and nearly 300 writing systems), but the categories on the Home page make the content more manageable. These areas (Writing...

Frequently when one hears about the Native American experience in the United States, the focus is on the loss of traditions, folkways, and language. In contrast, this website was created to highlight a recent documentary by Anne Makepeace that focuses on the ways in which Native American languages have recovered and thrived in recent times. On the site, visitors should start by clicking on the...

While the phrase "never say never" may make some think of a certain suave British spy of the silver screen, to wordsmiths this is a thoroughly noxious example of an oxymoron. Strictly speaking, an oxymoron is a literary figure of speech in which opposite or contradictory words, terms, phrases or ideas are combined to create a rhetorical effect by paradoxical means. For those with a budding love of...

Linguists use the term "ideophone" to describe words that are difficult to define or translate because they are best expressed through gesture or voice. Quechua Real Words is an "anti-dictionary" dedicated to ideophones in Quechua, a language family spoken by Quechua people in the Andes Mountain region. This resource was created by Janis B. Nuckolls, a linguistics professor at Brigham Young...

The Allusionist is a delightful podcast dedicated to "small adventures in language." Hosted by British broadcaster and podcaster Helen Zaltzman, the Allusionist covers a single issue related to the English language in each twenty minute podcast. Zaltzman is especially interested in issues of how language and society inform one another. One recent episode features an interview with Isaac Siemens on...

Offered as part of the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections, the Wisconsin Oneida Language Preservation Project brings together original stories and curriculum with accompanying audio that teaches the Wisconsin Oneida language. Visitors can start by clicking on the About area to learn more about these unique items. The materials here are divided into curriculum levels (grades kindergarten...