Processing natural language

[eluser]bapobap[/eluser]
Does anyone know of any good resources, books, tips, ideas even code on how to handle natural language?

I was hoping to make my search code a lot better by making it more human friendly and able to recognise (as best as a computer can) certain key words.

A 10-minute google hasn't come up with much other than research papers which are way too complicated.

Any ideas?

Thanks!