Sources

Books

• “The Adventure of English” by Melvin Bragg (Sceptre, 2003)
• “Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language” by David Crystal (Cambridge University Press, 1995)
• “English as a Global Language” by David Crystal (Cambridge University Press, 1997)
• “Mother Tongue” by Bill Bryson (Penguin Books, 1990)

Television Series

• “The Adventure of English" (ITV, 2003)
• “The Story of English” (PBS/BBC, 1986)

Websites - Basic

• A Brief History of the English Language (Anglik.net): http://www.anglik.net/englishlanguagehistory.htm
• A Brief History of the English Language (Study English Today): http://www.studyenglishtoday.net/english-language-history.html
• A History of the English Language (Random History): http://www.randomhistory.com/1-50/023english.html
• A (Very) Brief History of the English Language (Word Origins): http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/comments/a_very_brief_history_of_the_english_language3/
• Borrowed Words In English (Dan Short): http://www.danshort.com/ie/borrowedwords.htm
• Brief History of English (Jeremy Smith): http://members.peak.org/~jeremy/dictionaryclassic/chapters/history.php
• English Language History (English Language Guide): http://www.englishlanguageguide.com/english/facts/history/
• Global English: A Paradigm Shift (Google Knol): http://knol.google.com/k/global-english-a-paradigm-shift
• History of the English Language (English Club): http://www.englishclub.com/english-language-history.htm
• History of the English Language (Soon Magazine): http://soon.org.uk/page18.htm
• Language Timeline (British Library Board): http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/changlang/across/languagetimeline.html
• The Great Vowel Shift (Geoffrey Chaucer Page): http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/vowels.html
• The History of English (Oxford Dictionaries): http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/page/thehistoryofenglish/
• The Origin and History of the English language (KryssTal): http://www.krysstal.com/english.html
• What Are the Origins of the English Language (Merriam Webster): http://www.merriam-webster.com/help/faq/history.htm

Websites - More Detailed

• English History and Its Language Development (English Word Information): http://wordinfo.info/unit/4218?letter=E&spage=4
• History of English (IELanguages): http://www.ielanguages.com/enghist.html
• History of the English Language (Wikipedia) (and other links from there): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_English_language
• History of the English Language (University of Hawaii): http://emedia.leeward.hawaii.edu/hurley/Ling102web/mod6_world/6mod6.2._historyofenglish.htm
• History of the English Language (University of Toronto): http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/hell/
• History of the English Language Links (University of Toronto): http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/helhome.htm
• Studying the History of English (Raymond Hickey): http://www.uni-due.de/SHE/index.html
• Words In English (Rice University): http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Words04/

Just For Fun

• Alan Cooper's Homonym List (an alphabetical listing of homonyms): http://www.cooper.com/alan/homonym_list.html
• Anagram Hall of Fame (some of the best, and longest, anagrams in English): http://wordsmith.org/anagram/hof.html
• Anagram Server (generate anagrams for any word or phrase you like): http://wordsmith.org/anagram/
• Bartleby.com (complete texts of classic works of literature, reference, Bibles, quotations, etc): http://www.bartleby.com/)
• Canadian, British and American Spelling (differences between British and American spelling, and the Canadian hybrid of the two): http://www.lukemastin.com/testing/spelling/
• Common Errors in English Usage (online version of Paul Brian's book on the most common vocabulary errors of native speakers): http://www.wsu.edu/%7Ebrians/errors/errors.html
• Complete "Anguish Languish" Site (Howard L. Chace's homophonic transliteration of popular fairy tales): http://www.justanyone.com/allanguish.html (there is a version of the most popular of these, "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut", with side-by-side translation, at http://www.ccc.commnet.edu/sensen/part2/ten/final_ed_fun_ans.html).
• Concise History of the English Language (a rather jaundiced, humorous look at the development of English by Owen Alun and Brendan O’Corraidhe): http://www.danshort.com/ie/ConciseHistory.htm
• Dictionary of Difficult Words (some of the more obscure entries in the English lexicon): http://www.talktalk.co.uk/reference/dictionaries/difficultwords/
• Foreign Phrases Commonly Used in English (words and phrases of foreign origin which are more or less commonly used in English): http://www.lukemastin.com/testing/phrases/
• Literature Network (complete texts of almost 7,000 classic books, short stories and poems by over 250 authors): http://www.online-literature.com/ (ReadPrint is another similar site: http://www.readprint.com/)
• Lost Beauties of the English Language (dictionary of obsolete and archaic English words): http://www.archive.org/texts/flipbook/flippy.php?id=lostbeautieseng00mackgoog
• Modern English to Old English Vocabulary (dictionary of translations from Modern English to Old English): http://www.mun.ca/Ansaxdat/vocab/wordlist.html
• Phrase Finder (meanings and origins of English phrases, sayings, idioms and expressions): http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/
• RhymeZone (dictionary of rhymes, homophone, synonyms and antonyms): http://www.rhymezone.com/
• SMS Dictionary (dictionary of cellphone shorthand abbreviations): http://www.smsfun.com.au/sms_dictionary.php
• Thesaurus.com (online thesaurus of synonyms and antonyms): http://www.thesaurus.com/
• Urban Dictionary (dictionary of current street slang and neologisms and their usage): http://www.urbandictionary.com/