Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

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Daniel N.
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Daniel N. » Sat Jan 28, 2017 9:46 pm

Theodisce wrote: Is the sentence "Hoću da budem doktor" correct in Croatian? Google gives some results but they seem to come from the Bosnian part of the internet. In Polish you cannot use this with the first person.


Some people that claim to speak Croatian definitively use such constructions. It might not be accepted in the Standard Croatian, but that's another story. Use will vary according to region.

To put it in perspective: you'll find in textbooks that Croatian 'polar' questions (a.k.a yes/no) don't start with da li....

Then you turn on TV and a journalist on evening news uses such questions.
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Daniel N. » Sat Jan 28, 2017 10:04 pm

reineke wrote:http://m.srednja.hr/Matura/Vijesti/Gramaticke-greske-koje-cete-vjerojatno-napraviti-na-maturi


This is a very good example of prescriptivism, and a dumb one. You shouldn't use a construction in everyday conversation, because it came from Serbia. We should then stop eating pizza, burek and ćevapi, I guess.

Even better, the first sentence in the chapter explaining that you shouldn't use passives:

U hrvatskom jeziku se većinom koristi aktiv

i.e. 'In Croatian language, the active is mostly used'

is obviously using passive (se-passive, reflexive passive, a.k.a. mediopassive) that's found in all Slavic languages!
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby IronMike » Sun Jan 29, 2017 4:37 pm

Radioclare wrote:I haven't done much in Croatian recently. I'm 146 pages into a book called 'O, Jerzualeme', a translation of a novel by Laurie King which is part of a Sherlock Holmes series I love in English. I mainly read those pages last weekend while travelling to/from Paris.

However I do have some good news - I am going to Croatia/Montenegro for a week in June :) I'm taking my parents (it will be their first time there) so I definitely have some pressure now to be able to speak Croatian well when I get there. This does mean that the potential St Petersburg trip is delayed by another year though, so I have gained some breathing space to learn Russian :)


1) Where do you get your books? e-books?

2) We'll miss each other by a couple montha. We're going to Montenegro in August!
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Sun Jan 29, 2017 6:16 pm

IronMike wrote:1) Where do you get your books? e-books?


I bought about 25 books when I was in Dubrovnik in September, and then a few more when I was in Podgorica, so I have a supply of physical books to keep me going for quite some time :)

I know a really useful forum which hosts links to thousands of book pdfs and audio books though, so if you're ever looking for e-books in Croatian/Serbian let me know. It works on the basis that you promise to delete anything you download from your computer within 24 hours and buy the original if you like it and apparently this makes it not completely illegal, but not sure whether it makes it legal enough for me to post the link here :lol:
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Mon Jan 30, 2017 11:18 pm

I've had some unexpected Croatian practice today!

My parents came to visit at the weekend and we booked our accommodation for our trip in June. We have an early flight back from Dubrovnik on a Saturday morning and so wanted to stay in an apartment relatively near the bus station the night before. I booked it on Saturday and assumed I'd just pay in cash when I arrived, which seems to be standard in that part of the world because most individuals who own apartments etc to rent out aren't in a position to get a credit card machine from the bank. However, it turned out that this apartment is actually being managed by a rental agency on behalf of the owner. The rental agency does have the facility to take card payments, and so they wanted payment in advance.

Okay, no problem... until they sent me an email saying that my card had been declined :shock: There was no reason for this and my bank hadn't notified me of having blocked any payments. They tried a second time, but still no luck. In the end I phoned my bank, who eventually explained that they'd stopped the payment because the agency had indicated on their terminal that I as the customer was present for the transaction, whereas the bank could tell that I actually wasn't. The bank said that I needed to contact the agency and ask them to try the payment again, but this time ticking the box to say that the customer wasn't present.

I then had the joy of explaining all this to the agency in Croatian :lol: After an exchange of four messages, in which it became clear that they had no idea what my bank was talking about, we eventually reached a compromise that I would send an international bank transfer instead.

Phew! It's good to have it resolved now but those were several hundred words of rather difficult Croatian that I wasn't planning on writing today!
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Ani » Tue Jan 31, 2017 2:28 am

Wow, pretty impressive that you were able to resolve that. That situation just makes me nervous to THINK about having to deal with it. Good job :)
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby rdearman » Tue Jan 31, 2017 9:45 am

Yeah, I'd have just given up and gone to Brighton. :|
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby WalkingAlone13 » Tue Jan 31, 2017 2:34 pm

rdearman wrote:Yeah, I'd have just given up and gone to Brighton. :|


Then you could have popped by the Northern lights and got some Finnish/Swedish, Norwegian/Danish practise in ;)
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby IronMike » Wed Feb 01, 2017 6:05 pm

Radioclare wrote:
IronMike wrote:1) Where do you get your books? e-books?


I bought about 25 books when I was in Dubrovnik in September, and then a few more when I was in Podgorica, so I have a supply of physical books to keep me going for quite some time :)

I know a really useful forum which hosts links to thousands of book pdfs and audio books though, so if you're ever looking for e-books in Croatian/Serbian let me know. It works on the basis that you promise to delete anything you download from your computer within 24 hours and buy the original if you like it and apparently this makes it not completely illegal, but not sure whether it makes it legal enough for me to post the link here :lol:


Thanks! I will probably start back on BCS in late April. I'll contact you then. I have a couple Dan Brown's on the shelf, and Harry Potter 1, along with my favorite Na Drini Cuprija. But I need something between beginner and those books!
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Wed Feb 01, 2017 10:15 pm

Wow, it's February already :o I thought now might be a good time to take a look at how I've done against my goals for the year in January.

Goal 1 - Read 10 books in German
This one is definitely on track :) Thanks to Tadoku, I've read two novels in German, which together were just short of 1,000 pages.

Goal 2 - Try not to forget any more Esperanto
Hmm. I don't think I've spoken/written any Esperanto this month and all I've read have been articles on Libera Folio. But for reasons I won't go into, I've spent an insane amount of my free time this month engaged in correspondence about the Esperanto association, so to be honest most days I have just felt like I wish I could forget Esperanto :lol:

Goal 3 - Increase my Croatian vocabulary
Not really. I've learned a grand total of 139 Croatian words on Memrise this month. It's mainly because I'm lacking in motivation to type up all the words from my vocab book. Must try harder.

Goal 4 - Read at least 4,200 pages in Croatian
This is on track. I've read about one and a half novels in Croatian so far, which is 696 pages. I only need 350/month to meet my goal :) Both books have been translations from English though, so I still need to introduce more original fiction.

Goal 5 - Listen to/watch at least 9,990 minutes of Croatian TV/films/audiobooks.
Abject failure. I've watched 85 minutes, also known as two episodes of 'Larin izbor'. Given that this is one of my favourite activities and I've just renewed my Croatian TV-on-demand subscription, this statistic is a bit odd. I think it's because I've been too stressed out in the evenings (see goal 2) to contemplate doing something relaxing. I need to watch more TV if I'm going to complete a Double SC this year, but I think I also need to listen to lots of audiobooks ahead of going to Croatia with my parents in June, because I found that really helped my fluency last year. I've downloaded loads of audiobooks from the website I mentioned to IronMike, but I haven't listened to anything because I've been trying to using my commute for Russian Michel Thomas instead.

Goal 6 - Do better than last year at Croatian output
:oops: I've written 1,028 words so far. Not amazing, but I guess at least I've written something.

Learn enough Russian to feel confident enough to take my Mom to St Petersburg.
I'm trying! My main success in January has been getting through the first six disks of the Michel Thomas course. I feel like I am genuinely learning stuff from the later disks. Duolingo is still going slowly, but in honour of the 6WC I forced myself to get my tree all golden again this evening. I'm really enjoying the first instalment of the official Memrise Russian course and am nearly halfway through 'Russian 1' (have learned 111/237 words).
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