Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

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MamaPata
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby MamaPata » Wed Apr 05, 2017 4:38 am

If it helps, I have tried three times and have no idea what I'm doing wrong!
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Brun Ugle » Wed Apr 05, 2017 5:59 am

Radioclare wrote:Inspired by the technological abilities of Brun Ugle, I decided to try and install LWT. I wish I could report that I got stuck on step 9... but I actually got stuck on step 5 when I couldn't find the directory data\localweb :oops: Eventually realised that I'd installed the wrong version of the Easy PHP thing and had to start all over again.

I got it working the second time, except that I just kept getting a nasty error message where the Glosbe dictionary thing was meant to be. If anyone else has an issue with this, I eventually found the solution in this thread (the post about extension=php_openssl.dll, whatever that is).

Now that I've got it working, I'm not entirely sure what to do with it. I guess it's going to take a while to get used to how it works and some time investment up front to mark all the words I already know perfectly well so that I can concentrate on the ones I don't. Ideally I want to use it to read news articles from websites like Deutsche Welle and expand my vocabulary by learning lots of clever words I don't know yet. But I'm not sure how good the Glosbe dictionary is going to be for truly difficult Croatian words so any other recommendations of a good online Croatian-English dictionary are welcomed!


As you can see, I did the same thing the first time I tried to install it.
Brun Ugle wrote:Ah! Silly me. I downloaded the wrong easyphp thingy. :oops: I'll do it right this time and see if it works then.

But, if you got Glosbe working, that's great! I was really disappointed it didn't work, because in some languages, it's hard to find a good dictionary. As you might have noticed from my other thread, I'm having trouble finding the ideal dictionary for languages other than Spanish. Since you managed it, and your computer skills seem not too far advanced over mine, maybe I'll try it too.

I think it takes a bit of time to get used to using LWT and decided how you like to use it. Some people put loads of information into each entry, and some people just put one tiny definition. If you want to use the annotation feature (click print instead of read on the text to see it), then short definitions are better because they appear over each word. I've been clicking on every word, even words I already know to see the definitions and decided if I want to add them or not. And I tend to put in a lot of information, including the base form of the word and all the main definitions. I usually only click well-known without adding a definition if it is a word that I already know and use and I know all the definitions of.

I categorize them like this:
1: I don't know this word at all, maybe I've seen it before, but I don't know the definition
2: The word is vaguely familiar, but I'd have to think pretty hard to come up with the definition
3: I know the definition, but not so well that I'm comfortable using the word, or I know it only passively, but would never come up with it myself.
4: I know the word, but not all it's meanings, or I know it but it doesn't come easily to mind when speaking.
5: I know the word well, but just don't use it, or I know it and use it, but there are alternative definitions I didn't know.
well-known: I already know and use this word without thinking.

Really, it's probably a little more vague and fluid than that, but I find it helps to have some kind of loose rules about how to rate the words.

One of my favorite features is the ability to look up phrases as well. I often add things that look like common collocations, expressions, idioms, or even phrases or sentences that I wouldn't mind hearing coming out of my mouth some day.

My way of using it is extremely slow. I might sit for half-an-hour and only have added 15-20 words sometimes, but it's strangely useful. It's like analyzing the text with a microscope. Even though I only get through a little bit, it seems to be having a good effect on my Spanish, especially the part about very carefully noting how words fit together in order to decide what expressions to add to my collection.

I imagine it will go a lot faster with time. In the beginning, everything is unknown, but a lot of those words will be repeated and soon you will have all the most common words marked.
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Daniel N. » Wed Apr 05, 2017 11:06 am

Radioclare wrote:During some of my train commutes I've been rereading the latest version of Daniel N's Easy Croatian pdf as grammar revision. I was planning to finish it this week, but my Kindle tells me I'm only 68% of the way through at the moment. It's longer than I remembered :lol:

It has a small dictionary at the end :) (and a list of common names and countries & nationalities). It will get a (minor) update soon, since I've discovered new things that aren't described in it :D

Radioclare wrote:I wondered whether anyone could recommend me a good news website from Serbia?

I'd recommend Danas.
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Wed Apr 05, 2017 9:12 pm

Daniel N. wrote:It has a small dictionary at the end :) (and a list of common names and countries & nationalities). It will get a (minor) update soon, since I've discovered new things that aren't described in it :D


I finally finished it today! I had forgotten about the dictionary, so I was actually nearer the end than I thought :D A brilliant read, as ever :)

I'd recommend Danas.


Thank you, that is just the sort of thing I was looking for.

MamaPata wrote:If it helps, I have tried three times and have no idea what I'm doing wrong!


:( I hope you manage to get it to work soon! It is definitely the most complicated language tool I've ever tried to use.

Brun Ugle wrote:But, if you got Glosbe working, that's great! I was really disappointed it didn't work, because in some languages, it's hard to find a good dictionary. As you might have noticed from my other thread, I'm having trouble finding the ideal dictionary for languages other than Spanish. Since you managed it, and your computer skills seem not too far advanced over mine, maybe I'll try it too.


Yes, I was a bit sceptical about it to start with but it actually seems pretty good. It only really seems able to recognise words in their most basic form (eg. nouns in the nominative) which is a bit tedious for a language like Croatian with so many variations possible in different cases, but possibly it works better for some of the more commonly learned languages. It works pretty fast though and I've been impressed by some of the obscure Croatian words it does have definitions of once I search for them in the right format. I think it's definitely worth trying anyway - my computer skills are quite limited :lol:

If you want to use the annotation feature (click print instead of read on the text to see it), then short definitions are better because they appear over each word.


Wow, I hadn't found that feature yet!

I categorize them like this:
1: I don't know this word at all, maybe I've seen it before, but I don't know the definition
2: The word is vaguely familiar, but I'd have to think pretty hard to come up with the definition
3: I know the definition, but not so well that I'm comfortable using the word, or I know it only passively, but would never come up with it myself.
4: I know the word, but not all it's meanings, or I know it but it doesn't come easily to mind when speaking.
5: I know the word well, but just don't use it, or I know it and use it, but there are alternative definitions I didn't know.
well-known: I already know and use this word without thinking.


And thank you, this is really useful too :) I've only been through one article so far (a few hundred words) and I was struggling to decide how to categorise words (and being a bit inconsistent). I think I'll try again this evening using those definitions and see how it goes.

I feel like this first bit with marking all the really common words is going to be a bit tedious, but once that's done I'm quite excited about getting into the hang of using it and being able to focus on the words I genuinely don't know in a text. I'm at an awkward stage in Croatian where I can normally get the gist of what I'm reading even if I couldn't define the individual words and so I'm normally too lazy to look up the unknown words and actually learn them. I'm really hoping this is going to help me combat that laziness :lol:
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Daniel N. » Thu Apr 06, 2017 10:30 am

Radioclare wrote:During some of my train commutes I've been rereading the latest version of Daniel N's Easy Croatian pdf as grammar revision.

BTW were you reading the PDF on your Kindle, or the Kindle version (AZW3)?
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Thu Apr 06, 2017 11:15 am

Daniel N. wrote:BTW were you reading the PDF on your Kindle, or the Kindle version (AZW3)?


I was reading the pdf this time but I have used the Kindle version in the past and it's always worked well. Can't remember why I downloaded the pdf this time instead - may just have been a mistake :lol:
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Sun Apr 09, 2017 8:22 pm

It's been quite a productive week for language-learning, although not a very productive weekend.

I've completed up to lesson 30 of Serbian Glossika and am still really enjoying it, though by the end of this month I think I might substitute it for some Croatian audiobooks during my commutes instead.

I decided that I would try to write 100 words of Croatian every day during April and have succeeded.... sort of. I succeeded every day until yesterday, when I was visiting my sister all day and having so much fun that I completely forgot about writing my words. I remember when I was finally lying in bed, but I had drunk a not inconsiderable amount of wine and when I checked the clock I found it was 00.08, so technically tomorrow already. I wrote 200 words this morning to compensate, although it doesn't really work like that because what I wanted to achieve was the discipline of writing something daily.

Never mind. So far I've written 1342 words during April, which is significant progress. I've put some days' words on Lang-8 for correction, although not all. Getting corrections is useful sometimes, but other times it's probably better just to write without worrying about mistakes.

Installing LWT is the main achievement of the week, of course, so I've been devoting some time to that each evening. The first article I used it to read was this one about whether employees should be available for work emails etc 24 hours a day. I had one weekend this year where I switched off my work computer at 20.00 on Friday evening with inbox zero, logged on again at 08.00 on Monday morning, and found I'd received 22 emails over the course of the weekend, so the subject matter of this one was definitely one I could emphasise with.

I have definitely learned some new words and phrases by going through it intensively as well. For the words I've marked as truly unknown and which I couldn't even guess at, I'm going through and looking them up on the Hrvatski jezični portal (it's like a Croatian-Croatian dictionary). Glosbe gives a good indication of what most words mean, but for the totally unknown words I want to make sure I absolutely learn the correct definitions.

The second article I've started reading is this one, which is about the recent declaration of a common "BCHS" language.

Time spent writing and using LWT, combined with the fact that I've been away from home for the weekend, means I haven't done any reading or watching of Croatian TV. But I'm sure I will have lots of time to catch up over the Easter weekend :)
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Serpent » Mon Apr 10, 2017 2:20 am

Radioclare wrote:Hrvatski jezični portal (it's like a Croatian-Croatian dictionary)
Aww yeah, I was going to mention it but forgot what it's called :lol: (I usually end up there via google). It's definitely more complete than any bilingual online dictionary :)
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Tue Apr 11, 2017 9:24 pm

While I was trying to choose an article to use for LWT yesterday, I found this one about a couple of guys who have started a podcast in German about the Balkans. The motivation behind it is that there are lots of stereotypes and misunderstandings about the region in western media. I've only just started listening to it (and German listening isn't high up on the list of activities I have time for right now!) but it seems like quite a cool idea and they have a good sense of humour. It might be interesting for anyone who is looking for a new German podcast to listen to, although they talk a bit faster than Langsam Gesprochene Nachrichten :lol:
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Daniel N. » Wed Apr 12, 2017 8:15 pm

You can also download a big Cro-Eng dictionary from the internet, just Google:

bujas hrvatsko engleski rječnik pdf
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