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Resources

Spelling Reform

This category contains 25 sites:

• Alan Cooper's Page on Homonyms - Extensive list of homonyms from various sources. Links.
• alt.usage.english FAQ - FAQ file by Mark Israel as of 29 September, 1997.
• An Etymological Dictionary of Classical Mythology - English words with origins in Greek and Roman mythology.
• Bartleby.com - H.L. Mencken - Online publication of H.L. Mencken's "The American Language," written to look at the discrepancies between British and American English and to define the distinguishing characteristics of American English.
• British National Corpus - Searchable database of British English usage.
• Canadian English - Asserts Canadian English emerged independent of American and British dialects. Historical linguistic profile, spelling and grammatical conventions, bibliography.
• CoBuildDirect - An on-line service for accessing a corpus of the modern English language from a sub-component of the Bank of English. Particularly of interest to linguists and lexicographers.
• Coined by Shakespeare - Supplies some words created by the Bard himself and the literary passages from which they came.
• Common Errors in English - Clarifies confusion about homonyms, misspellings, expressions, idioms, grammar and more. Supplies related links.
• English Words Derived from Sanskrit - Etymologies of 250+ English words from Sanskrit. Intermediary languages are included to better explain any word-transitions.
• English Contrasted - This site compares English-language variation and accents throughout English-speaking world and includes sound files so students can hear differences in native-speaker speech patterns.
• Greek as the Basis for 350+ English words - Translated from Greek, helico-pter means "spiral-wing"; epi-taph is "upon-tomb"; rhino-ceros is "nose-horn".
• Guide to Bostonian English - Covers pronunciation, vocabulary and place names of this city's unique dialect.
• History of the English Language - Site maintained at University of Vermont
• New Words in English - Neologisms and novel uses of words in English collected by members of a Linguistics class at Rice University.
• Student Papers on American English - From the Dept. of Translation Studies, Univ. of Tampere, Finland. Topics: Differences Between American and British English; 'Black English' (AAVE, or 'Ebonics'); Yiddish and Ethnic-Jewish Influences; Historical and Loan Word Influence; Regional and Social
• Studies in English grammar, punctuation, and composition. - Studies in English grammar, punctuation, and composition. Includes a discussion of the methodology involving the creative writing process as it relates to fiction and theories of characterization.
• Survey of English Usage - University College (London) researchers focusing on grammar and linguistics, plus world-wide usage.
• Talk Tidy. The Language of South Wales as an Art Form. - An indexed dictionary describing, in humorous fashion, the English dialect used in and around the Valleys of South Wales.
• The Society for the Preservation of English Language and Literature - An organization of people determined to resist the abuse and misuse of English in the news media and elsewhere.
• The Xtag Project - Lexicalized tree adjoining grammar project.
• Triplehoms - Collection of triple homonyms, like "to, too, two."
• Usage Experts Change Their Minds, Too - Anne H. Soukhanov, lexicographer, shows that abstract usage rules are not set in concrete.
• Web Frequency Indexer - Contains a script that shows the frequency of a word in some text that is entered. Allows list to be sorted by the least to most, most to least or alphabetically.
• World Wide Words - History, origins, evolution and idiosyncrasies of English. New words and words in the news regularly featured.