Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

[Radioclare]

Russian
Thanks to IronMike I am now making much better progress with Michel Thomas I've finished the first two disks and I nearly finished the third one too, but I think I need to repeat it. I was listening to it on the train home the other day and must have accidentally zoned out at some point because suddenly I zoned back in and found them using a word I didn't know. Hopefully I can re-do it tomorrow.

My Duolingo streak is still just about in tact, though there have been some technical problems recently which have made it a bit difficult to keep it up. I'm making slow but steady progress through a Memrise course of the Duolingo vocabulary and also through my own course from the vocabulary in TY Russian Grammar. All the work I'm doing on Memrise is helping my Cyrillic typing speed. I tried a race on Typeracer and hit a new personal best of 31 wpm.

I tried watching an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine in Russian on Youtube This was a very successful technique for improving my Croatian listening comprehension when I was a beginner and I definitely intend to watch a lot of children's TV in Russian too. At the moment I clearly don't have a big enough vocabulary to understand much but I thought I'd watch the odd episode every now and then to get used to the flow of the spoken language. I just kind of let it all wash over me and got excessively excited every time I recognised a word.

Croatian
I'm trying to be virtuous and get off to a good start with writing. I've set up a Word doc, into which I'm going to copy everything I write in Croatian during 2017. There will be a new page for each day I write something, however few words I've written on the previous day, so that it doesn't get too confusing. I won't copy and paste everything into my log but if you want to check up on how well I'm doing with this, you can see the Word doc here. I can't decide whether to sign up for the Output Challenge, because I've already failed it twice and found it quite demotivating at times. Plus my personal goal is effectively only half an Output Challenge. But if it turns out there will be a bot, I will definitely join; I'm a sucker for anything with a bot I've got 769 words so far, so not quite on track, but also not too bad.

[Brun Ugle]

I'm a sucker for anything with a bot too. However, I did join the challenge this year in spite of the lack of a bot. So far, the writing part is going well. I haven't started recording myself speaking yet though. That's going to be scary.

[Daniel N.]

You are fluent, no doubt. There are few small errors, but I want to correct only one, that is, two things...

Poslije toga sam pročitala roman Kena Folletta koja se zove "Opasno bogatstvo". Knjiga je prevedena s engleskog na hrvatskom. Nisam je uspjela pročitati dok sam putovala kući u srijedu pa sam imala namjeru dočitati knjigu ovaj vikend.

Well, it's translated from (origin) to (destination). So you have to use s + G and na + A, that is na hrvatski. It's a destination. We see translation as "moving things".

And you invented a new verb, dočitati

[Radioclare]

Well, it's translated from (origin) to (destination). So you have to use s + G and na + A, that is na hrvatski. It's a destination. We see translation as "moving things".

Thank you Daniel, that is really helpful. I always get confused about how to say something is translated from one language to another and it had totally escaped my notice that it should be accusative after na. But now you have explained it, it makes sense

And you invented a new verb, dočitati

Not sure where that came from I guess I meant pročitati..... although I just checked and Hrvatski jezični portal does acknowledge it as an existing word!!

[Radioclare]

I've had a weekend at home, so managed to devote quite a bit of time to Russian.

I accidentally found out there is an official Memrise course for Russian (see here) and it's absolutely amazing. Not only is there audio for all the words but video of Russians speaking some of the key phrases too. I guess this is the advantage of learning a mainstream language; so many more resources than something like Croatian But Russian pronunciation feels about a million zillion times harder than Croatian, so the audio is very necessary.

Otherwise I'm slowly working my way through TY Russian and TY Russian Grammar side by side. Only learning very basic stuff at the moment. I am starting to regret that I am not an engineer, because the word seems to feature in the first lesson of every course I pick up. I am becoming almost as proficient at saying I am an engineer as I am at saying I'm an American man; it's sad that I am neither.

I have a question which anyone who has got beyond the second chapter of a Russian course can probably answer for me: what is the correct/most normal Russian word for a car? I think two courses I've looked at have taught me the word автомобиль and another two have taught me машина. I just wanted to double-check really whether автомобиль is really an acceptable word in the 21st century, because I remember about 15 years ago when I starting learning Esperanto, the first chapter of TY Esperanto taught aŭtomobilo for car and aŭtomobilejo for garage and I dedicated a vast amount of energy to mastering these, only to find out many years later when I actually learned Esperanto properly that no one has said anything except aŭto since 1950. Or something like that So I don't want to make the same mistake in Russian.

Otherwise I've mainly been reading in German ('Die Vernichteten', the third in the Ursula Poznanski series I'm addicted to). I've got 1,250 pages for Tadoku now, so even if I don't read anything for the rest of the month, it's probably still my best ever score

[Brun Ugle]

Everyone keeps tempting me with Russian. It's everywhere!

I don't know about the Russians, but in Norway we leave off the "automo" part and shorten it to "bil." I think that's kind of fun because so many other places shorten automobile to auto. We can even use it as a verb, though it isn't all that common.

[Elenia]

Everyone keeps tempting me with Russian. It's everywhere!

I don't know about the Russians, but in Norway we leave off the "automo" part and shorten it to "bil." I think that's kind of fun because so many other places shorten automobile to auto. We can even use it as a verb, though it isn't all that common.

I've never even thought about the etymology of 'bil' before! It can't be used as a verb in Swedish, as far as I know.

Sorry, Clare, I have nothing but my astonishment at Brun's comment to add.

[neofight78]

I have a question which anyone who has got beyond the second chapter of a Russian course can probably answer for me: what is the correct/most normal Russian word for a car? I think two courses I've looked at have taught me the word автомобиль and another two have taught me машина. I just wanted to double-check really whether автомобиль is really an acceptable word in the 21st century, because I remember about 15 years ago when I starting learning Esperanto, the first chapter of TY Esperanto taught aŭtomobilo for car and aŭtomobilejo for garage and I dedicated a vast amount of energy to mastering these, only to find out many years later when I actually learned Esperanto properly that no one has said anything except aŭto since 1950. Or something like that So I don't want to make the same mistake in Russian.

Non-native speaker here, so take my answer with a pinch of salt. Both variants are acceptable modern Russian with машина being the more everyday word.

[neofight78]

Everyone keeps tempting me with Russian. It's everywhere!

That's because it's an awesome language and you need to learn it

[Serpent]

It's also cute how it's auto in Finnish and bil in Swedish

I have a question which anyone who has got beyond the second chapter of a Russian course can probably answer for me: what is the correct/most normal Russian word for a car? I think two courses I've looked at have taught me the word автомобиль and another two have taught me машина. I just wanted to double-check really whether автомобиль is really an acceptable word in the 21st century, because I remember about 15 years ago when I starting learning Esperanto, the first chapter of TY Esperanto taught aŭtomobilo for car and aŭtomobilejo for garage and I dedicated a vast amount of energy to mastering these, only to find out many years later when I actually learned Esperanto properly that no one has said anything except aŭto since 1950. Or something like that So I don't want to make the same mistake in Russian.

Non-native speaker here, so take my answer with a pinch of salt. Both variants are acceptable modern Russian with машина being the more everyday word.

Correct. Автомобиль is perfectly normal but more formal. Depending on the context, машина may be ambiguous because it means any machine too (although a stand like a vending/gambling machine is автомат, which in turn can also mean a Kalashnikov or another machine gun bank machine is банкомат and is also a type of автомат). I thiiink in an informal context автомобиль sounds fine just like that but strange when you add inflections (including nom plural). If you speak in abstract terms, for example "in the USA it's impossible to get anywhere without a car", then автомобиль sounds fine. But if it's more specific, in expressions like "by car" or "two cars", or "problems with her car", it sounds painfully formal for an ordinary conversation with friends or family. In a business context автомобиль sounds good and is often preferred.

speaking of bankomat, it's bankamatik in Turkish and it sounds like a cute diminutive to Russians. There's a pic by me there too

btw I keep meaning to say that I found it completely mindblowing that hour is saat in Turkish