Elements of Style by Strunk and White is overrated.
Wordorigins.org is devoted to the origins of words and phrases, or as a linguist would put it, to etymology. Etymology is the study of word origins. (It is not the study of insects; that is entomology.) Where words come from is a fascinating subject, full of folklore and historical lessons. Often, popular tales of a word’s origin arise. Sometimes these are true; more often they are not. While it can be disappointing when a neat little tale turns out to be untrue, almost invariably the true origin is just as interesting.
Modern political discourse consists of little more than the Tinkertoy assembly of cant phrases into speeches: Fix the schools! Out of the shadows! Our brave men and women in uniform!
A team of researchers has come up with a list of two dozen “ultraconserved words” that have survived 150 centuries. It includes some predictable entries: “mother,” “not,” “what,” “to hear” and “man.” It also contains surprises: “to flow,” “ashes” and “worm.”
The existence of the long-lived words suggests there was a “proto-Eurasiatic” language that was the common ancestor to about 700 contemporary languages that are the native tongues of more than half the world’s people.
This suggests that there are, at the very least, a quarter of a million distinct English words, excluding inflections, and words from technical and regional vocabulary not covered by the OED, or words not yet added to the published dictionary, of which perhaps 20 per cent are no longer in current use. If distinct senses were counted, the total would probably approach three quarters of a million.
The languages descended from proto-Indo-European
Demonstrates the fraud that is contemporary literary criticism.
This is a nice summary of unfair/illogical debate tactics. The author is somewhat unwarranted in limiting his discussion to liberals and neoconservatives, but his characterization of dirty argument techniques is excellent.
This page has several maps and graphs about the distribution of languages and language family trees. Excellent.
Find the meaning of names or names by meaning.
One would think that the best way to teach reading, or at least a good way, has long since been found.