ESL Web Directory

An extensive list of sites dealing with American dialects

Founded more than a century ago, the American Dialect Society is dedicated to the study of the English language in North America, and of other languages, or dialects of other languages, influencing it or influenced by it.

Welcome to this website on the speech of one of America's most often misunderstood regions - southern and central Appalachia, which stretches from north Georgia to West Virginia. It's been romanticized as the language of Shakespeare, and it's been caricatured, ridiculed, and dismissed as uneducated, bad grammar, or worse. But too rarely has it been appreciated for what it is: the native speech of millions of Americans that has a distinctive history and that makes Appalachia what it is just as sure as the region's music does.

This project is based on a digital edition of An Anglo-Saxon dictionary, based on the manuscript collections of the late Joseph Bosworth (the so called Main Volume, first edition 1898) and its Supplement (first edition 1921), edited by Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller, today the largest complete dictionary of Old English

The Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) is a reference tool unlike any other. Its aim is not to prescribe how Americans should speak, or even to describe the language we use generally, the "standard" language. Instead, it seeks to document the varieties of English that are not found everywhere in the United States--those words, pronunciations, and phrases that vary from one region to another, that we learn at home rather than at school, or that are part of our oral rather than our written culture.

The Dictionary of the Scots Language (DSL) comprises electronic editions of the two major historical dictionaries of the Scots language: the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (DOST) and the Scottish National Dictionary (SND). DOST contains information about Scots words in use from the twelfth to the end of the seventeenth centuries (Older Scots); and SND contains information about Scots words in use from the eighteenth century to the present day (modern Scots).

Online version of Sir Henry Yule's 'Hobson-Jobson: A glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive

The International Dialects of English Archive, IDEA, was created in 1997 as a repository of primary source recordings for actors and other artists in the performing arts. Its home is the Department of Theatre and Film at the University Of Kansas, in Lawrence, KS, USA; while associate editors form a global network. All recordings are in English, are of native speakers, and you will find both English language dialects and English spoken in the accents of other languages. The recordings are downloadable and playable for both PC and Macintosh computers.

(PDF) The Computer Developed Linguistic Atlas of England, volumes 1 (1991) and 2 (1997): Dialectological, computational and interpretative aspects.

The UK is a rich landscape of regional accents and dialects, each evidence of our society’ s continuity and change, our local history and our day-to-day lives. This site, aimed at A-Level English students across the UK, captures and celebrates the diversity of spoken English in the second half of the twentieth century.

The Telsur Project is a survey of linguistic changes in progress in North American English, supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Translate your English phrases, emails and free text messages into Geordie, Brummie, Scottish, Scouse, Irish, Cockney, Yorkshire, Posh and Ali G.

This site relates to the Eastern half of Yorkshire, i.e. the whole of the East Riding and the Eastern half of the North Riding. The dialects for the West Riding and the Western half of the North Riding differ considerably both from each other and the Eastern half of Yorkshire.