Dravidian Languages of India

I found a really interesting site:

http://www.ukindia.com/index.html

All free - scroll down to where it says "Learn to Read." They have a number of languages there - mainly from India - but also Greek, Russian, Hebrew and Arabic. They teach you the alphabets essentially so you can get started reading in these languages.

I'm halfway through the Hindi one and I've got to tell you it really works. Great methodology - it's easy to do because each lesson is quite short. It's rather hard to find a lot of materials on the writing systems of India aside from Hindi so this site is a real treasure to find.

Kashmiri Courses

I ran across this link today with lots of interesting and free links with sound files etc. for learning Kashmiri:

http://iils.org/ (look to the right side to see the Kashmiri links)

Check it out - looks pretty neat.

Elvish Languages

OK I know what you're thinking - come on Kim - Tolkien/Lord of the Rings is for kids. But seriously he did some really fascinating things with language. He actually invented a series of languages for the characters in his books. Often referred to as "Middle Earth Languages" or "Elvish Languages" there are several of them with the 2 most popular being Quenya and Sindarin (which is said to have a lot in common with Welsh).

http://www.jrrvf.com/~glaemscrafu/texts/index-a.htm - Listen to texts read in the languages
http://www.starchamber.com/paracelsus/elvish/elvish-in-ten-minutes.html - How to write your name in Elvish
http://www.councilofelrond.com/ - Lots of great workbooks/textbooks for free, translations and a help forum when you get stuck on the grammar.

The scripts are really gorgeous that's what attracted me to the languages. Should be a good bit of fun.

My new photo gallery

I got myself a brand new snazzy website for you all to check out:

web.mac.com/picinapod

showcasing all of my photography galeries. You can order prints of anything from me. Most everything are nature images - mountains, seashores, trees etc. with a few touristy pics as well.

CD Review - Hooshere "Provenance"

Check out singer Hooshere's CD "Provenance" on iTunes. She's an Armenian-American singer. Most tracks are in Armenian with a few in English. She really has a lovely voice I think - very relaxing. I particularly love her almost acapella duets. Eem Anoush Davigh and Yeraz were my favs.

Russian Site for Grammar and Basics

I just ran across this site:

http://russian.speak7.com/index.htm

All free and a really concise look at Russian grammar. Also some phrases and a great section on writing a letter in Russian. Check it out - looks pretty good.

Pushkin - Yevgeny Onegin

I have always wanted to read Pushkin's Evgeny Onegin in the original Russian. What I find extremely difficult about it is it seems that when you compare a literal word by word translation (ala the dictionary) with the various english translations out there it isn't even remotely close and in fact makes very little sense all together.

So I was curious if we had any Pushkin scholars out there in Internet land that could possibly recommend any academic materials etc. that would be helpful for those of us interested in studying the poem???