Link roundup for 10 November 2012

First an interesting event from yesterday - at the local book store where a section is decked out in Hobbit-related literature and items for the upcoming movie, I found the following:

(Taken with a webcam as can't be bothered to find the real camera in the closet at the moment)

Hobbitus ille - The Hobbit in Latin. After buying it I've read a few reviews that say the translation is lacking in places. I'm not one to judge, though, and I have purchased it more to aid the revival of Latin than anything else, as I have no room to fit Latin into my schedule at the moment. I will skim through it while comparing it to the original English though just to get a feel for it. On that note we get to the next link:

--- Students learning introductory Latin at the University of Western Australia have increased by 150% this year. Want to know more? You can't without a digital pass, which I will not be getting.

--- Crecé interés por el mandarín - an article on the increasing interest in Mandarin in Paraguay. Slightly different from your average "the Confucius Institute is growing" article because this one is about Taiwan's role in teaching the language abroad.

--- Old Papiamentu text on a child's Dutch letter. Mi Alma dousje, Mi Courasson, Mi dousje, Mi bieda, Mi courasson.

--- An article on someone's experience using Memrise to learn about a thousand Lingala words to talk to pygmies in northern Republic of the Congo.

--- An article in French on how to save the Corsican language. Lots of discussion but no conclusion by the end on how to proceed.


And finally a link provided by a reader: a simple search displaying language programs for languages that are offered in North America. Entering Uzbek for example turns up 16 schools that offer it in the United States, Kalmyk is non-existent (no surprise), Kyrgyz gives five results, Cree gives 14 results all in Canada, Estonian gives 9 results.