Russian Poetry Site

Well you know I'm a poetry buff and I just ran across something really great:

http://max.mmlc.northwestern.edu/~mdenner/Demo/alphabetical.html

It's a bilingual collection of probably over 100+ of the most famous Russian poems. It also includes several sound files of the actual poets who wrote the poems reading them. This is an incredible resource because these original recordings are typically pretty hard to run across on the web. Everything is FREE so have a look.

Georgian Literature Site

Unfortunately you have to be fluent in Georgian to be able to navigate this site but from the looks of it, it is a nice collection of their poetry, literature etc. all FREE. If you're studying the language and are up to the challenge - go for it!

http://www.literatura.ge/index.php?page=1

Interesting Literary Site

I ran across this today:

http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/

Looks pretty interesting. It is a FREE online magazine devoted to literature in translation. You can search by region or language translated from. They seem to have a lot of interesting pieces.

Italian Opera

I grew up with a father who literally woke us up every Saturday morning with Luciano Pavarotti blasting from the stereo so needless to say I know my opera. I never took up Italian but got a little inspired recently after seeing the chick flick "Under the Tuscan Sun" on TV. Not a great movie but the scenery was beautiful and the guy was really good looking too. Hey I'm not that old yet so no laughing :) So anyway I'm on a bit of a "lets have a look at Italian" kick at the moment.

I found this site today:

http://www.cantarelopera.com/file_e/HOME_E.ASP

It doesn't have a huge selection but everything seems to be FREE. It is Italian arias and some neopolitan songs that are read slowly by native speakers. So instead of trying to play the actual song 100 times to get the words down you can see the texts here and hear them read slowly. So when you do listen to the song then you know what is being said. Sadly no English translations but a pretty good resource nonetheless.

Free French Audio

This site is pretty good for French audio:

http://www.litteratureaudio.com/

It has a nice selection of the most famous French writers - the texts of their works and audio all FREE.

Russian Poetry

I think I might have put this link on the site before but just in case I haven't here it is:

http://www.litera.ru/stixiya/index.html

A very comprehensive site of Russian Poetry all in the original Russian.

French Podcast

I'm really thrilled with a French Poetry Podcast I've discovered on iTunes. It's not for the faint of French if you know what I mean. I've been studying French for several months now and have the basics down but in terms of this podcast it's still slow going for me. However I find it well worth the effort. She basically reads a poem in French slowly, then goes back through it line by line explaining vocabulary and meaning, tells you a bit about the author and then reads it is normal speed French. You would think the explanations would be so hard to understand that a beginner couldn't get it. But I'll tell you she uses fairly simple vocabulary 90% of the time and speaks slowly so even if you don't get every single word you get the general idea. Also her website has printouts of the poems and vocabulary. All FREE. A tremendous value I think. Learning words via rhymes is really fun and I think a lot easier then the old memorize a thousand phrases school.

So the Podcast is called: Easy French Poetry Podcast

I would love, love, love to do something similar in Russian - anyone interested let me know. I'd hate to abuse the general public with my terrible Russian accent. Besides you know I'd get 1,000 hate mails saying get a native speaker!!!!

Check it out.

Russian Audiobooks for Free

I just ran across what appears to be a really good site for FREE Russian audiobooks:

http://abook-club.ru/forum/index.php?

It is all in Russian and you have to register but hey everything is FREE so who can complain? Looks very comprehensive from what I've seen so far.