SOAS
Introduction to Phonetics
Online book covering the basics of the study of phonetics. Describes all the phonemes in the International Phonetic Alphabet, along with audio samples of each, as the difference between consonants and vowels.
Ethnologue: languages of the World
Catalogue of more than 6,8000 languages spoken in 231 countries.
Languages on the web
This site contains a large number of language links, and the left hand side menu is a list of the many languages on offer. However we include this site very reluctantly as it unfortunately promises much more than it delivers, with a frustrating number of dead connections. However it does have the occasional nuggets in the area of rare languages which have a sparse representation on the web.
Language museum
Short passages from 2000 languages in the original script with an English translation, statistics on speakers, and language classification.
SIL electronic survey reports
Sociolinguistic reports on different parts of the world.
UCLA Language materials project
This is a database developed by UCLA on teaching resources for less commonly taught languages. It offers also languages profiles (including links to more specific online resources).
The Speech Accent Archive
The speech accent archive uniformly presents a large set of speech samples from a variety of language backgrounds. Native and non-native speakers of English read the same paragraph and are carefully transcribed. The archive is used by people who wish to compare and analyze the accents of different English speakers. Click on 'native phonetic inventories' on the left hand side menu of the browsing page for access to phonemic charts for a number of languages.
Bisharat! A language, technology and development initiative
Full text documents and links relating to African languages, technology and sustainable development.
Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger of Disappearing
This is an online version of the Atlas developed in the framework of UNESCO's Endangered Languages and Multilingualism in Cyberspace programmes. It comprises a clickable map of the African continent and entries on the 100 endangered African languages mentioned in the print Atlas.
