Sorely delayed post

I really need to get in the habit of taking the pen and paper notes and getting stuff on-line.

Old Persian is finished and as far as I'm concerned, if I can read the Bisotun inscription, I'm good.

Old Persian has been a remarkable resource in helping with Avestan and Sanskrit. Sanskrit has taken priority over Avestan because it is easier to start with the highly regularized Classical Sanskrit and move backwards to Vedic, rather than start with Avestan and move forward in time.

Chapter 8 of Teach Yourself Sanskrit has been done, as well as chapters 1-2 of the Vedic Reader.

Avestan has been relegated to "during conference calls" reading, but is still on the horizon.

Attic Greek has been done to chapter 3. Wheelock's Latin has been done to chapter 2. Old English to chapter 4.

It's amazing how the languages all converge the farther back in time you go.

I have two volumes of a Middle Persian course, but Pahlavi is a pain in the ass orthographically and the language is similar enough to Modern Persian that I don't want to bother with it right now.

Speaking of Modern Persian, I highly recommend Lambton over Thackston because Lambton has a key. This, despite the fact that the book is pretty damn out of date.

The old 1950's Teach Yourself Greek book is better than the modern one because of its "Adventures with a Lion" comic.

Non-IE languages: Xhosa is on the back burner and Ancient Sumerian is up to chapter 11 (very nice go-to-bed reading). Memorizing the glyphs is hard but the grammar itself is trivially easy.