Language and Religion

A great many language and religion websites exist, but relatively few have direct relevance to our spatial, geographic interests. Many of the language pages have linguistics or instructional orientation; theological, philosophical, or denominational interests dominate the very great number of religion sites. We have found the following WWW sites to be among the more geographically pertinent and good starting points for further web browsing. Your own exploration may well reveal sites of greater value to your individual interests.

Language The Summer Institute of Linguistics, connected to the International Linguistics Center in Dallas, Texas, focuses on the study of languages and cultures around the world. Among its rich menu of resources and links is the "Ethnologue: Languages of the World," a detailed catalog of more than 6700 of the world's languages and an exhaustive index of language names, dialects, multilingualism, and more. The "Language Family Index" and links to related academic and general internet resources are also found at www.sil.org/ethnologue.

The Center for Applied Linguistics, a private nonprofit organization, for many years has been conducting research and applying information about language and culture to areas of academic, cultural, and social concern. Its home page provides descriptions about its research projects and publications, with emphasis on educational and public policy issues: www.cal.org/.

Foreign Language Resources on the Web offers links to web pages with foreign language/culture specific interests. Arranged by language, each citation contains a brief summary of the website contents and emphasis. View it at www.itp.berkeley.edu/~thorne/HumanResources.html. Less useful geographically is Language Links, a listing of multilanguage sites oriented towards language instructors but with significant cultural content: http://polyglot.Lss.wisc.edu/lss/lang/langlink.html.

The American Dialect Society is a scholarly association studying the English language in North America and other languages or dialects related to it. Although primarily of interest to its members, the Society's web site provides an index to past and current volumes of its journal American Speech and links to "Net Resources of Interest to ADS Members," an exhaustive list of language and dialect-related sites: www.americandialect.org/.

Information about some 2 million physical and cultural geographic features of the United States may be accessed through the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) developed by the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names. GNIS is the official repository of domestic toponymic information. The site also offers links to official place name sites of Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom: http://mapping.usgs.gov/www/gnis/. Natural Resources Canada maintains a most interesting website on Origins of Canada's Geographical Names. It is worth exploring at http://geonames.nrcan.gc.ca/english/schoolnet/origin.html.

Religion Facets of Religion, the Internet Virtual Library-Religion, contains links for the world's principal religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, etc.) and to other religious and related resource lists: www.christusrex.org/www1.

For both language (linguistics) and religion Internet leads, remember the Voice of the Shuttle pages at http://vos.ucsb.edu/