A Couple of Resources

[Baker, John]

        The surviving papers of the U.S. War Department from the 1784 -
1800 period, many of which were destroyed by fire in 1800, have been
assembled and put online in searchable digital form at
http://wardepartmentpapers.org/index.php, with page images for many but
not all of them.  I didn't immediately come up with any antedatings, but
there must be some to be found.

        Also, the Forvo website has words pronounced by native speakers
in many of the world's languages, at http://www.forvo.com/.  The site
allows requests for native pronunciations of particular words.  Someone
mentioned Forvo in a post last month, but it didn't seem to get much
attention.  It seems like a potentially powerful resource.


John Baker

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org