Native American Languages - Yupik

What I find really interesting about the Native Alaskan language of Yupik is that it is written in Cyrillic. Here's an interesting site where you can see some examples:

http://www.asna.ca/alaska/

Unfortunately it is all religious related stuff since it was missionaries who did a lot of the documentation but it is interesting to at least get a sense of how it sounds etc. There are also examples of Aleut, Alutiiq and Tlingit.

Native American Languages

I am fascinated with American Indian languages and have found some interesting resources for the language of present day Saskatchewan (includes Cree, Dakota, Nakawe and Dene)

http://www.sicc.sk.ca/heritage/sils/ourlanguages/index.html

Learning Hausa

I ran across something pretty neat:

http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/aflang/hausarbaka/

If you are interested in learning Hausa (spoken in Nigeria predomiantely). You can order a set of 5 CDs for $15 or just download all the mp3s and booklets right there on the site for FREE. They also have videos you can buy but they're pretty pricey.

Learn Occitan

Never heard of it right?? Neither had I. It's a language still spoken in rural areas of southern France and a bit of Spain. It looks fairly close to French with twists and turns here and there. What's really neat about it is it was the language of the troubador's who were 11th century bards of sorts who sang and recited lyric poetry about love and battles etc. You know the kind of stuff us gals just swoon over. Geez why don't guys write love poems anymore anyway? I think the most lavish thing I ever got on a date was a 50 cent carnation. Even that died in a day. Come to think of it the guy didn't last much longer than that either. Ha, ha - ok I digress......

To check out the language here is a link:

http://occitanet.free.fr/

A pretty good site to get you going in the language. It even has a small introductory course with sound files. All FREE. Enjoy!

Learn Maltese

I must admit I have a curiosity about Malta. I've started to have a look at their language and it seems really interesting. There isn't much on the internet about it but here's what I did find:

http://www.aboutmalta.com/LANGUAGE_and_LITERATURE/

A pretty good introduction to the language. The only down side is there is no audio. I'd love to see them make a podcast out of the site.

Biblical Aramaic Texts

I found an interesting site:

http://www.peshitta.org/

It has the Bible's Gospels in the original biblical aramaic along with english translation. I thought this site would be of interest to budding ancient language linguists.

Site For Practicing Russian

This site looks promising:

http://www.practicerussian.com/Home.aspx

A bunch of free stuff like crosswords, hangman and lots of grammar quizes to help you improve your Russian.

Albanian Literature

I found this link:

http://www.albanianliterature.com/

Which seemed pretty interesting. It is Albanian literature translated into English. Check it out.

Free Dictionaries

If you're like me you have a ton of dictionaries laying around the house in every conceivable language. Here's a great solution:

http://www.freelang.net/dictionary/index.html

They have FREE dictionaries in just about any language you could ask for. It's a windows program you download and install (it doesn't take up much room). I downloaded the one for Breton and am very pleased with it. It appears to be reasonably comprehensive.

Georgian Grammar Resource

I use this FREE Georgian language grammar resource all the time:

http://www.armazi.com/georgian/

It's the most comprehensive site on the Internet that I have seen for trying to explain Georgian grammar. Highly recommended - it's easy to follow and takes some of the "mystery" out of this very complex language.

SOAS Endangered Languages Podcast

Many thanks to SOAS/University of London for writing me about their recent endangered languages project. Such as shame I didn't know about the Endangered Languages Week recently held in London it sounded really interesting. Here is a link to some of the podcasts they have done regarding endangered languages:

http://openair.fm/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=149&Itemid=1

Check out SOAS's programs as well. They have a Master's degree in Language Documentation that I think sounds really interesting:

http://www.soas.ac.uk/

Guernesiais and Cornish Word Game

I ran across this the other day:



http://wordgleaw.wordpress.com/



It's an interesting concept in that it is a card game that you play like rummy but it helps you learn languages like Cornish (spoken in Cornwall) and Guernesiais (spoken on the island of Jersey). It stinks that you have to pay for it - but oh well considering how few resources there are on the web for these languages I suppose it isn't a bad investment if you're interested. Looks like the total including shipping etc. would be around $10-$15 US.

African Language Resource

Sorry for the multiple postings the past few days it seems there has been a bit of a computer glitch. Here is an interesting link for African languages:

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/africa/cuvl/langs.html

It has a number of links to various Internet resoruces.