If you consider yourself a "logophile" (that is, a lover of words), these websites are for you. Crisscrossing the fields of linguistics, journalism, and lexicography, these sites offer insights into the English language from a variety of perspectives--all of them (we think) fascinating.

1. British Library: Learning Language & Literature

"Explore literary treasures, everyday ephemera, and the complex history of the English language, with unique texts from the British Library collection." All readers should be interested in the Language Timeline (which provides an overview of the history of the English language) and Dictionaries & Meanings (which traces the history of English dictionaries from the 1500s to the present day). British readers, in particular, should enjoy Sounds Familiar--a new interactive site that showcases the varied accents and dialects heard throughout the United Kingdom.More »

2. Merriam-Webster Online

In addition to hosting a free online dictionary and thesaurus, Merriam-Webster provides word games, a word of the day, a spelling-bee scavenger hunt, a daily podcast, and other English language resources. This site is especially recommended for students in middle grades and high school.More »

3. A National Map of the Regional Dialects of American English

This is the home page of William Labov's Telsur Project, housed at the Linguistics Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2005, Labov and his team published the "Atlas of North American English: Phonetics, Phonology and Sound Change" (Mouton de Gruyter), a study providing "the first overall view of the pronunciation and vowel systems of the dialects of the U.S. and Canada." The maps and analyses on this website include studies that served as the background of the atlas.More »

4. Dictionary.com

Similar in many ways to the Merriam-Webster site (though with a wider variety of reference works available), Dictionary.com also contains a number of well-written feature articles and a particularly helpful section on Word FAQs. More »

5. Style & Substance

The stylebook editor at "The Wall Street Journal," Paul R. Martin, has compiled this monthly bulletin since 1987. It's obvious that Martin truly enjoys catching--and correcting--flubs that have appeared in his own paper (and elsewhere).More »

6. World Wide Words

For the past 12 years, Michael Quinion has kept track of new words, topical words, and weird words (that is, "words that refer to obscure or outlandish subjects, are in themselves rare, or which look odd"). In addition this British site contains some insightful book reviews and numerous articles on various aspects of language. More »

7. The Word Nerds: A Podcast About Language

Recommended by one of our readers: "An excellent podcast that has proven itself in popularity and longevity." In addition to the biweekly podcast ("Three language teachers, Dave Shepherd, Howard Shepherd, and Howard Chang, talk about nearly any topic you could imagine having to do with language"), this site hosts an active forum. More »

8. British National Corpus

Designed by linguist Mark Davies, this site enables users to sort, search, count, and compare the 100 million words in the British National Corpus. "The site is sufficiently sophisticated for us egghead academics, but also easy enough for language learners and others who just think language is fun," Davies explains.More »