Languages
You could say that a culture is defined by their language (but then, how else can you define except in terms of language?). Tolkien's great work of fiction found its genesis in language -- as he invented his new languages, he had to invent the peoples who spoke them and the history that changed them.
| General Resources | Early Languages | Northern European |
| Fictional Languages | Create Your Own | Slang |
| General Language Resources | ||
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Ethnologue: Languages of the world. |
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| Languages of the World | ||
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The Rosetta Project is dedicated to cataloging and preserving some 1,000 languages. They predict that 50-90% of these will be extinct in the next century. |
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| The International Phonetic Association, including the international phonetic alphabet. And here are the appropriate fonts. | ||
| A huge list of links to language pages from ABCentral. | ||
| Omniglot's massive links page. | ||
| Numbers in over 4500 languages. | ||
| List of bilingual dictionaries: "Any Language, Anywhere." From The Language Hub | ||
| Lisa Mitten's page of native language links. | ||
| Babelfish Translator | ||
| FreeLang: Free language resources. | ||
| An explanation of Grimm's Law, which shows how closely languages are related to each other. | ||
| Just for fun: Essentialist Explanations of Language. | ||
| American Dialect Survey | ||
| Early Languages and Writing | ||
| Omniglot: a guide to writing systems. | ||
| AncientScripts.com: guide to linguistics and writing systems , with a sweet Links page. | ||
| Indo-European Language Resources, featuring scanned-in texts. | ||
| Indo-European Database | ||
| Indo-European Language Tree | ||
| Sumerian and Related Tongues | ||
| Sumerian Language Page | ||
| Sumerian Grammar from the Perspective of its Proto-Language of Origin | ||
| Northern European | ||
| Bibliography of poetic meter in early Germanic languages. | ||
| Saxon/Old English | ||
| Old English overview from the Cunnan/wiki site. Includes a comparison of the Lord's Prayer in early NE, ME, and OE. | ||
Old English links from the ORB. |
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| Another, slightly more detailed Old English overview, from Absolute Astronomy. | ||
| Old English Made Easy | ||
| Electronic Introduction to Old English | ||
| First Steps in Old English. | ||
| Cathy Ball's Old English Pages. | ||
| Hwæt! Old English in Context, from the above author. | ||
| Learning Old English, Tony Jebson's way. | ||
| Conversational Old English. | ||
Modern English to Old English. And Another English to Old English site. |
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| Carl Berkhout's web page of Anglo-Saxon scholarship. | ||
| Bright's Old English Glossary to An Anglo-Saxon Reader | ||
| Old English/English and vice versa. | ||
| Scanned images of the pages of Clark Hall's A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Second Edition (1916). | ||
| Free downloadable Anglo Saxon dictionary, from FreeLang. | ||
| Bosworth and Toller Anglo Saxon Dictionary. | ||
| Site for an online Old English course from the University of Calgary, including Norse and Saxon links. Includes pronunciation sound files. | ||
| A page on the Futhark script, including the Anglo Saxon Futhorc and other derivatives. From Ancient Scripts.com | ||
| Words of the Week: Dryhten, gedryht, þegn, etc, an essay from the Beowulf Hall. | ||
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Want all the structure with none of the rhyme? Look at Readings of old English Poetry, Building Blocks of Old English Poetry and Anglo-Saxon Accentual Meter |
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| Complete corpus of Anglo Saxon Poetry | ||
| Middangeard: Anthology of Old English texts in translations into Modern English. . . a Slovakian website! | ||
| Sites dealing with the Battle of Maldon: One with background historical information, one with commentary and a translation, and in Saxon. | ||
| Here is a very close translation of Beowulf. From the Beowulf on Steorarume . | ||
| Syd Allan's impressive Beowulf site. Compares nearly a hundred translations, plus numerous other books on related topics. | ||
| A study of kennings in Beowulf from Syd Allan's site. | ||
| Old English in Middle-Earth: Tolkien as a gateway to the Anglo Saxons. And Part 2: Old English Words and Influences. From the Tolkien Society. | ||
| Yes, I know it's from the movie The Two Towers.
But the Eowyn's lament (heard in the Extended Edition) is in Rohirric,
which is some brand of Old English. You can hear it here,
and see it here (both
transcribed and translated). If that translation doesn't work, here
is another one: Bealocwealm hafað fréone frecan forth onsended giedd sculon singan gléomenn sorgiende
on Meduselde Þæt he ma nowere is, þurh niedig rest. And mægen deorost
Bealo...
In Modern English: 'An evil death has set forth the noble warrior A song shall sing sorrowing minstrels in Meduseld That he is nowhere anymore, for his necessary rest. And [that he is] the dearest kinsman. Killing [took him]...' |
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| Verbal Dueling: Comparing Unferth's sparing and rap. Hwaet, yo. | ||
| Dana Gioia discusses alliterative verse in Saxon and modern poetry. | ||
| Gothic links (no vampires need apply). | ||
| Norse/Scandinavian | ||
| Old Norse Language | ||
| The Old Norse Language Institute | ||
| The Prose Edda, written around 1200 is a good source of lore for the aspiring skald of the time. | ||
| A page about constructing Nordic poetry, and an overview of Skaldic poetry. | ||
| Here's a list of free fonts of the Nordic/runic/Saxon variety. | ||
| Irish | ||
| Irish language, alphabet and pronunciation from Omniglot; includes many links for fonts and courses. | ||
| Beginners Guide to Irish Gaelic Pronunciation | ||
| Online Irish/English dictionary program. | ||
| Old Irish spelling and pronunciation. | ||
| Fictional Languages | ||
| Adelic Language Page, a language developed by S. A. MacLagan. | ||
| Klingon Language Institute deals with a fictional language that was actually developed by a linguist. | ||
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Ardalambion, a page exploring the languages Tolkien created. |
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Fellowship of the Word-Smiths is another site dedicated to the languages Tolkien invented. |
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| Sperethiel Dictionary: deals with the elven language of the Shadowrun RPG. | ||
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Langmaker.com; also includes links to many fictional languages. |
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| The Language Construction Kit. And the Sound Change Applier to create plausible descendant languages. | ||
| More constructed language links. | ||
| Chris Pound's Language Machines. | ||
| Miscellaneous | ||
| Words make language, but writing makes us literate. Here then is a Brief History of Paper , a briefer Origins of Paper, a FAQ on Paper (from Institute of Paper Science and Technology), and an Introduction to the Book | ||
| Slang | ||