Intro B: Useful Web Sites for AUE Participants

(I am posting these Intros while Donna Richoux is away. Maria.)

Last Revised 2003-05-23 (23 May 2003)

~~ Contents of Intro B: Useful Web Sites for AUE Participants ~~

- Where to find previous postings - Where to learn about ASCII IPA - Learning English as a Foreign Language - Audio Archives - Word lists - On-line dictionaries: general - On-line dictionaries: Historical and Special Purpose - Acronyms and abbreviations - Sites on words and language - Writing and Grammar Guides On Line - Encyclopedias & Search Engines - British English - Black English (African-American Vernacular English, Ebonics) - Historical English, and English Literature

~~ Where to find previous postings ~~ If you suspect your topic has already been discussed, even though it is not in the FAQ, please check for articles, following the appropriate search guidelines, at the Google Usenet archive, which holds articles since 1995: http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search

~~ Where to learn about ASCII IPA ~~ ASCII IPA is a way of expressing pronunciation on Usenet. It is a version of the International Phonetic Alphabet, using only the ASCII symbols (basic keyboard characters). There's a guide to ASCII IPA, including illustrative sound files, at http://www.alt-usage-english.org/ascii_ipa_choice.html

A detailed specification of the ASCII IPA transcriptions scheme, including tables showing the mapping to and from IPA characters, can be found at http://www.kirshenbaum.net/IPA/ascii-ipa.pdf

~~ Learning English as a Foreign Language ~~ Good entry points to the many resources on the Web are:

English as a Second Language http://www.rong-chang.com/

Dave's ESL Cafe http://www.eslcafe.com/

The Taiwan Teacher http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/1979/links.html

English as 2nd Language &

ELTWEB http://www.eltweb.com/

ESL Resources at Purdue University - covers common grammar issues http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/esl/

1-language.com - The Comprehensive ESL Site http://www.1-language.com

See also "Writing and Grammar Guides On Line," below.

~~ Audio Archives ~~ The a.u.e Audio Archive -- Listen to sound files of speakers from England, Canada, Ireland, and the US saying 'Bother, Father caught hot coffee in the car park' and other examples of differing accents. Reach via .

IDEA, the International Dialects of English Archive -- Large collection of MP3 speech files from around the world. http://www.ukans.edu/~idea/

Fonetiks -- sound clips of 6 kinds of English plus 9 other languages http://www.fonetiks.org/

Pronunciation Voice of America - 3000 soundfiles of placenames & people http://ibb7.ibb.gov/pronunciations/

University of Lausanne Phonetics Course -- pronouncing sounds http://www.unil.ch/ling/english/phonetique/api-eng.html

~~ Word lists ~~ Brian Kelk maintains a Web page with pointers to numerous wordlists on the net - for UK English, US English and a number of other languages. Many are bare lists of words but some have other info. There is also information on word and letter frequency and on phonetic alphabets (Alpha Bravo). The page has recently moved to: http://www.bckelk.uklinux.net/menu.html

The Moby Project has large downloadable lists of words: Hyphenator, 5-Language, Parts-of-Speech, Pronunciator (American), Shakespeare, Thesaurus, and American Words. http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/research/ilash/Moby/

The National Puzzlers' League provides a search engine for words listed in a number of dictionaries (including W2 and SOED): http://www.puzzlers.org/secure/wordlists/grepdict.html

~~ On-line dictionaries: General ~~ Please look up simple questions of meaning and origin in a dictionary before posting to the group. There are now several large, recent dictionaries on-line to choose from.

Merriam-Webster Collegiate, 10th Edition, 1994. With US pronunciations. http://www.m-w.com/netdict.htm

Onelook, which searches over 500 dictionaries at a single stroke. http://www.onelook.com/

Dictionary.com, based on the American Heritage Dictionary http://www.dictionary.com/

Cambridge International Dictionary, also Idioms & Phrasal Verbs /

American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms (select topic "language") http://xrefer.com/search.jsp/

Encarta World English Dictionary http://dictionary.msn.com/

Macquarie Dictionary (Australian) http://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/

Random House Webster's College Dictionary (no etymology) http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopdict.html

The Web of On-line Dictionaries, with links to many bilingual, slang, hobby, science, etc, dictionaries: http://www.yourdictionary.com/

Xrefer.com, with over 30 specialty dictionaries including slang, idioms, placenames, and quotations. Many are Oxford publications. http://www.xrefer.com/search.jsp/

Word Net - includes "X is a kind of..." and "X consists of..." http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/~wn

~~ On-line dictionaries: Historical and Special Purpose ~~

Webster's 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language http://www.christiantech.com/

Webster's 1913 Revised Unabridged Dictionary http://humanities.uchicago.edu/forms_unrest/webster.form.html

The Century Dictionary, 1914 (12 volumes scanned): http://www.global-language.com/century/

The Oxford English Dictionary is available for a subscription fee: http://oed.com

Hobson-Jobson: Anglo-Indian Glossary, 1903 http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/hobsonjobson/

The Jargon Lexicon, the Jargon File or New Hacker's Dictionary - computer and hi-tech terms. Various copies on line including: http://jargon.watson-net.com/lexicon.asp?L=0

~~ Acronyms and abbreviations ~~ Onelook (above) finds many initialisms. Two other searchable databases are:

http://www.ucc.ie/info/net/acronyms/acro.html

http://www.acronymfinder.com/
~~ Sites on words and language ~~

The a.u.e webmaster has arranged to link the indexes of many of these sites. Enter your search word once at the AUE Website and get links to each place the term is discussed. http://www.alt-usage-english.org/

The Maven's Word of the Day (formerly Jesse's) A dictionary editor answers word questions. Large archive. http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/

Common Errors in English -- Tips on hundreds of confusing words and pairs such as affect/effect, adapt/adopt, advice/advise, etc. http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html

Michael Quinion, World Wide Words -- Discusses new words and the reappearance of old ones. Q&A section. http://www.worldwidewords.org/

Evan Morris, The Word Detective -- Answers questions on origins of colorful words and phrases. Large archive. http://www.word-detective.com

John Lawler -- A linguistics professor gives masterful explanations of how language really works http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue.html

sci.lang FAQ -- language and linguistics questions commonly asked http://www.zompist.com/langfaq.html

Take Our Word -- the Weekly Word-origin Webzine http://takeourword.com/

Dave Wilton's Etymology Page http://www.wordorigins.org/

Etymology Online http://www.geocities.com/etymonline/

Sharp Points by Bill Walsh -- real-life copy editing dilemmas http://www.theslot.com/sharp.html

Atlas of North American English -- Maps and articles on regional dialects in the US. Knowledge of basic linguistics advised. http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/

Dialect Survey Maps and Results - Over 100 US regionalisms http://hcs.harvard.edu/~golder/dialect/maps.php

Word2Word -- links to dictionaries, translators, language sites, etc. http://www.word2word.com/dictionary.html

Fun with Words -- unusual words, lists of oddities, etc. http://rinkworks.com/words/

Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics http://www.wordways.com/

~~ Writing and Grammar Guides On Line ~~

Grammar and Style Notes by Jack Lynch http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/

Handbook of Style, by Merriam-Webster, Inc. http://www.mae.ucsd.edu/mw/hanstyle.html

Guide to Grammar and Writing, by Charles Darling http://ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/index2.htm

Tenses in English -- learn "progressive," "continuous," etc. http://ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/tenses/tense_frames.htm

The Online English Grammar, by Anthony Hughes http://www.edufind.com/english/grammar/toc.cfm

Verbix -- conjugate any English verb; other languages, too. http://www.verbix.com/languages/english.shtml

Two style guides for British publications: http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/styleguide/ http://www.economist.com/library/styleGuide/

Basics of diagramming sentences http://www.utexas.edu/courses/langling/e360k/handouts/diagrams/

The New Fowler's Modern English Usage (select topic "language") http://www.xrefer.com/search.jsp/

Bartleby -- two US style guides: American Heritage Book of English Usage, and Strunk's Elements of Style (1916 edition) http://www.bartleby.com/

The Internet Grammar of English: modern grammar (word classes, etc.) http://www.ucl.ac.uk/internet-grammar/

The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University