Attention linguists! Prepare for your tutorial on the History of the English Language as presented by OpenLearn. The ten one-minute video sessions are narrated by Clive Anderson and illustrated by animated line drawings. Get your pencils - and senses of humor - ready.

Dr. James Frankki, of Sam Houston State University, has studied the Kensington Runestone in Minnesota and the Heavener Runestone in Oklahoma. Now he is taking look at a recently-discovered stone in Missouri.

The website Irish Central has posted a list of the 10 most popular Irish last names, including meaning of the name, variations, and the area where the name is most prominent.

Looking for any information on the Picts (who lived in northern Pre-Scottland) aside from Wikipedia. Theories on language are very welcome. :) Thank you.

Actor and author Ben Crystal explores the accents of Shakespearean English in a series of videos based on his book Shakespeare on Toast. Crystal offers examples of Received Pronunciation and Shakespearean Pronunciation. (video)

Open University has created a series of 10 short videos chronicling the history of the English language. The series, found on YouTube, is entitled The History of English in Ten Minutes.

Students at Liberty Common High School in Fort Collins, Colorado, are not totally taking a summer break from their studies. Marques Kem's Latin class will meet over coffee to discuss The Aeneid by Virgil.

For the last five years, a little mouse has been responsible for bringing Latin back to English schoolrooms. Minimus: Starting out in Latin, by Barbara Bell, is the story of a rodent living in the home of a Roman family in Vindolanda.

Researchers have found an isolated community on the coast of Turkey who speak a dialect of Greek very close to ancient Greek. Romeyka, a variety of Pontic Greek, has grammar and vocabulary that are otherwise only found in ancient forms of the language, but it has no alphabet.

"We’ll come to Xavier if you teach us Latin." said the granddaughters of Justin Kramer, who is teaches the language at one of only two schools in the state of Iowa."

Those searching for period names may wish to visit the Rootsweb website, which includes an extensive list of period occupations with descriptions, many of which have become surnames.

The Iris Project wants to bring the classics to British schools. To that end, the charity is sending "Oxford University undergraduates into primary schools in Blackbird Leys, Headington and Kidlington to teach the ancient language to nine and 10-year-olds."

The debate continues among archeologists and linguists over the symbols on over 200 carved stones dating to the time of the Picts in Scotland. Archeologists feel that the carvings are "symbolic markings that communicated information."

In 1066, William the Conqueror invaded England. Since then, Norman names, such as William, Henry and Alice, have dominated Brittish naming preferences, and it is in the language where they may have left their greatest mark.

Archeologists digging at Magdalena de Cao Viejo in Peru have found a letter written in the eary 17th century by a Spanish colonist. On the back of the letter is a list of numbers written in Spanish, Arabic numerals, and an unknown language.

A new website, PASE Domesday, allows users to search William the Conqueror's 1086 Domesday book by person and village. The results can be seen in tabular or map form.

A British anthropologist is going to live for a year with the Inughuit in Greenland in the hopes of studying and documenting their language. The Inughuit are the northernmost tribe of Inuits in Greenland and speak Inuktun, a non-written language that is considered a pure dialect of Inuit.

Latin teacher and blogger Denis Ambrose, Jr. is often asked to justify his existence to people who think "high school is nothing more than preparation for college, and college is nothing more than job training." He has compiled a list of five pragmatic reasons to study classics.

Long thought to be artistic images of hunters and animals, the engravings on the famous Iron Age Pictish Stones are now believed to be the written language of the Pictish people, an ancient language recognized by the Venerable Bede.

In the village of Maaloula, Syria, the ancient language Aramaic is still spoken but endangered.

THL Justinian Clarus, of the Kingdom of Ealdormere, reports that he has created a website for his class Speaking Forsoothly for Newcomers.

A recent Scottish campaign to restore the Scottish language is meeting with some resistance - from the Scottish people.

For his next project, filmmaker Mel Gibson may be returning to a childhood dream. "The very first idea that I ever had about making a film, my first thought ever about being a filmmaker was when I was 16-years-old, and I wanted to make a Viking movie," Gibson told journalists at a press event.

"There was no heating in the Sacred Heart RC church in Bridgeton, a vast 100-year-old building in the bosom of a parish first established in 1873. Perhaps that was because there were only 31 of us in the congregation, but being freezing cold certainly helped focus the mind. After all, they do say austerity is good for the soul," writes reporter Cate Devine of the Herald Scotland after attending a recent Latin mass.

A major multi-year study, five years underway, seeks to provide the first detailed grammar of the 3400-year-old Greek language as it evolved from 1100 to 1700 CE.

Students of the John Carroll School Latin 2 class found themselves dissatisfied with their textbook depiction of ancient Celts and Gauls. Their solution? Create a wiki of online links relating to the subject. (map)

Hebrew? Persian? Pirate Speak? Now Latin is the latest translation to be added to Facebook's Translations application.

Test your knowledge of medieval terms in an online quiz by Melissa Snell, and posted on About.com. The terms were taken from Melissa's Medieval History Blog "Medieval History Glossary."

Why study Latin? Charlotte Higgins, author of Latin Love Lessons and It's All Greek to Me makes the case in her "On Culture" blog for The Guardian.

Those interested in the evolution of languages will want to visit The University of Texas at Austin's Linguistics Research Center's website, where they may view extensive research on the evolution of Indo-European languages. The site includes timelines and maps to help understand the development of a number of languages.