Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

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

Postby Radioclare » Tue Feb 28, 2017 9:27 pm

February is over, and that means it's time for another goals update...

Goal 1 - Read 10 books in German
No progress this month - I haven't read anything in German at all. But I read two novels in German during January, so this goal is still on track.

Goal 2 - Try not to forget any more Esperanto
Let's just not even talk about Esperanto. For reasons I can't go into, my voluntary work for the Esperanto association has been dominating my year so far and causing unbelievable amounts of stress. If I could forget about Esperanto, I would be very happy indeed.

Goal 3 - Increase my Croatian vocabulary
I've been more successful at using Memrise every day, thanks to the motivation of the 6WC. I've 'learned' several hundred words on Memrise but not all them would qualify as 'new'. I need to find a good way to learn some more challenging vocabulary.

Goal 4 - Read at least 4,200 pages in Croatian
In January I read 696 pages and in February I topped that with a whopping 1,077 pages, so I've read 1,773 pages so far this year and am safely ahead of schedule. I've read three physical books (1.5 of them in February) but all three have been translations, so I still haven't made progress towards the goal of reading more original fiction.

Goal 5 - Listen to/watch at least 9,990 minutes of Croatian TV/films/audiobooks.
This goal was a complete failure in January, so I've tried to do better in February. This month I've watched 798 minutes of 'Larin izbor' this month, which combined with my 85 minutes from last month gives me a total of 883 minutes for the year so far. That's still behind schedule, but it is a significant improvement.

Goal 6 - Do better than last year at Croatian output
Well, this is awkward. I appear to have 1,179 words, which means I've only written 151 words this month :oops: I guess that means I'm doing worse than last year.

Goal 7 - Learn enough Russian to feel confident enough to take my Mom to St Petersburg.
I've got to the end of the Michel Thomas Foundation course this month, which feels like an achievement and I think I'm now about 80% of the way through Duolingo. I still haven't managed to do much 'proper' studying, but my 6WC stats show 25 hours of Russian this month which I'm okay with :)
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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Wed Mar 01, 2017 11:21 pm

Just a quick update tonight - I've finally made it to 100 films and finished the Super Challenge :D
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Sun Mar 05, 2017 10:14 pm

German
As I hadn't read a German novel during February, I decided I'd better read one in March. I chose 'Blinde Vögel', which is the second in a crime series by one of my favourite authors at the moment, Ursula Poznanski. I started it on Friday evening, mainly because I'd been working at home but had a really stressful day, and so I felt like I needed to do something completely different in the evening to switch off. It worked, because I was instantly hooked and finished the 476 pages this afternoon. Belatedly, I remembered that Tadoku starts later this month and I should probably have saved the novel for that.

I enjoy reading in German but sometimes this weekend the lack of effort which it requires has actually frustrated me. I put so little effort into learning German compared to the effort I have put into learning Croatian, and still German is so much easier. I don't know whether this is just because I've been learned German so much longer (I started when I was 18, and now I'm 33) or because German is just inherently so much easier for English speakers. Perhaps a mixture.

Croatian
I decided to have a break from reading in Croatian this month. I've already got 150 books for the Super Challenge, so I'm not going to really have to exert myself to complete a double challenge in reading by the end of the year. I thought what rdearman wrote the other day about the SC was interesting, because while I have made hugely noticeable progress with listening, I'm not sure how much I'm actually learning from all the SC reading I do. I feel like I've reached a level of reading in Croatian where I don't understand all the words on the page, but I understand enough of them to follow the story, therefore I'm too lazy to look up the ones I don't know and I learn nothing. There's a risk I could stagnate at this mediocre level of Croatian for ever and the only way I can think of preventing that is to be less lazy and look words up :lol:

I'm continuing to watch 'Larin izbor' and have got through several more episodes this week. I think there are about 40 more episodes to go. Although I love this series, there's a part of me which is looking forward to starting something new. I've watched 305 episodes now and sometimes I worry that all I have developed is an extreme proficiency at understanding 'Larin izbor' and nothing else :lol: I haven't chosen my next series yet but I'm tempted by 'Zora dubrovačka', which is a series set in Dubrovnik during the war.

Otherwise all I've done in Croatian this week is to try to develop a love for the Serbian band Atheist Rap. So far I have to say I'm not a massive fan, but I feel like perhaps I haven't given them enough of a chance yet. If anyone wants to recommend their greatest hits, I will give them a go :)

Russian
The slow and painful Duolingo progress continues. I've only got 10 new lessons left to learn now. Memrise has fallen by the wayside a bit; somehow I wasn't very disciplined last week.

I have made some progress with Pimsleur and got through the first six lessons now. By my standards of success with Pimsleur, that's actually pretty impressive :)

General
I've got most of my travels for the year planned now :) The first bank holiday in May I'm going to Montpellier, then the second bank holiday in May I'm going to Amsterdam. In June I'm going to Croatia/Montenegro with my parents for 10 days, then in July I'm going to France with my boyfriend for a week (we're flying to Lyon, but planning to go to places like Grenoble and Annecy). For August bank holiday I'm going to Lecco in Italy, then I've got 10 days off work in September for which we've just booked a flight to Portugal. I've then got one more week to take off in October, but I don't know where that will be yet.... hopefully somewhere warm :)
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Allison » Sun Mar 05, 2017 11:16 pm

Radioclare wrote:Croatian
I decided to have a break from reading in Croatian this month. I've already got 150 books for the Super Challenge, so I'm not going to really have to exert myself to complete a double challenge in reading by the end of the year. I thought what rdearman wrote the other day about the SC was interesting, because while I have made hugely noticeable progress with listening, I'm not sure how much I'm actually learning from all the SC reading I do. I feel like I've reached a level of reading in Croatian where I don't understand all the words on the page, but I understand enough of them to follow the story, therefore I'm too lazy to look up the ones I don't know and I learn nothing. There's a risk I could stagnate at this mediocre level of Croatian for ever and the only way I can think of preventing that is to be less lazy and look words up :lol:

I feel like I'm at this stage with Spanish, but I've very recently (like, yesterday) started to feel motivated again to look up unknown words. It's kind of annoying, actually, because I'm reading a hard copy book so looking up words is a bigger pain than it would be on my kindle, but it was nice to look up words today. Here's hoping your break is helpful!
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby blaurebell » Mon Mar 06, 2017 12:06 pm

Same here with reading in Spanish. I'm ashamed to say that my Spanish reading comprehension is still far behind my French reading comprehension, although I started French only half a year ago and Spanish 7 years ago. I've actually done my first French SC as intensive reading with Learning with texts, so now I can listen to audiobooks in French without issue, but I miss way too much in Spanish audiobooks where I've only done a couple hundred pages of intensive reading. 3000 pages extensive reading in Spanish, are definitely not enough! I've never done any intensive reading in English, but I've actually read about 10,000-20,000 pages a year for 10 years up to the most difficult philosophy books. I guess it depends how quickly you want to get to a high level of comprehension, I'm sure 10-20,000 pages of intensive reading equal 100,000+ pages of extensive reading. And on some twisted level 15,000 pages intensive reading might actually be the lazy approach ;)
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby NIKOLIĆ » Mon Mar 06, 2017 1:41 pm

Radioclare wrote:Otherwise all I've done in Croatian this week is to try to develop a love for the Serbian band Atheist Rap. So far I have to say I'm not a massive fan, but I feel like perhaps I haven't given them enough of a chance yet. If anyone wants to recommend their greatest hits, I will give them a go :)




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

Postby Radioclare » Sun Mar 12, 2017 7:00 pm

Thank you for the song, NIKOLIĆ - I've been listening to it all week and really like it :)

Russian
Minimal progress this week. I've got to the end of the 8th lesson of Pimsleur, I think, or possibly the 9th. I keep forgetting to write down where I am and because it's all so repetitive anyway, sometimes I get halfway through a lesson before I realise I'm repeating it :D I did one lesson on the train during the week and I managed to keep myself awake by writing the sentences down on my phone. That worked well, at least at this stage of the course when I already know how to spell the words :)

Duolingo is feeling so, soooooo boring now. There are only six topics to go now, but one of them has nine lessons in it so there's still quite a way to go. I think when I get to the end I'm going to have a large glass of wine to celebrate :D

In a general attempt to try and organise my life last night, I realised that there are only about 13 weeks until I go to Croatia. This made me panic a bit about my Croatian, so I think I've decided to put Russian on the back burner until June. I need to accept how limited my free time is, despite my best efforts to have a better work-life balance this year, and I think I only have scope to focus on one goal at a time. After I've been to Croatia in June, I'm going to spend the rest of the year focusing on Russian.

Croatian
See above :lol:

I still haven't finished watching 'Larin izbor' but I decided to branch out a bit with my TV-viewing this week and have watched a few documentaries. I remember when I started the previous Super Challenge I wanted to try and watch documentaries in Croatian, but I couldn't find any. Now I just seem to have stumbled across a lot of HRT documentaries on Youtube when I wasn't looking for them. I've watched a two-part documentary about the Trans Siberian Railway, which I really enjoyed; there was lots of interesting info, both about the railway and about some of the towns it passes through. It was also quite cool listening to some Russians being interviewed with Croatian subtitles :) Last night I also watched a documentary about Lithuania. This one wasn't quite so educational, as most of the Lithuanians being interviewed spoke in English with Croatian subtitles, but I still counted it for the SC (as far as I understand, we can count TL subtitles). The narration was obviously in Croatian and it was a bit of a intro to Lithuanian history, in particular Lithuanian independence, and then a discussion of ethnic tensions and Lithuania's relationship with Russia post-independence. You probably had to be quite interested in Lithuania to enjoy this one, but luckily I am :)

My resolution to not read in Croatian lasted for about a week :lol: I felt like reading this morning and so I picked up one of the books I bought in Dubrovnik last summer; 'Beara' by Ivica Đikić. This is about Srebrenica, so it is the polar opposite of a light read, but it seems like it's going to be a very intelligent and well-written account of the tragedy there. As ever when reading a book about Balkan history, you have to ask yourself whether the author has any particular bias or nationalistic viewpoint which he is trying to get across, but so far it seems very objective. The author is a journalist but I read one of his novels - 'Sanjao sam slonove' - a while ago and really enjoyed that.

I've started doing Serbian Glossika again. I think for the next 13 weeks I'm going to dedicate my walking commuting time to that rather than to Russian audio.
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby IronMike » Mon Mar 13, 2017 5:35 pm

Don't know if you're interested, but there's a great book called "As Long As Sarajevo Exists" that I read years ago (in English). It is by Kursparich or smthg like that. Anyway, he was (still is?) the editor of the newspaper Oslobodjenije (I can't remember the spelling). Bottom line: he decided as long as Sarajevo exists, he'll continue publishing the newspaper. IT was an incredible read from a man who loved nothing more than freedom.

You can probably find it in Bosnian next time you're in the region. If you find two copies, and they're not expensive, I'll pay you for one (plus shipping).
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Wed Mar 15, 2017 10:11 pm

IronMike wrote:Don't know if you're interested, but there's a great book called "As Long As Sarajevo Exists" that I read years ago (in English). It is by Kursparich or smthg like that. Anyway, he was (still is?) the editor of the newspaper Oslobodjenije (I can't remember the spelling). Bottom line: he decided as long as Sarajevo exists, he'll continue publishing the newspaper. IT was an incredible read from a man who loved nothing more than freedom.

You can probably find it in Bosnian next time you're in the region. If you find two copies, and they're not expensive, I'll pay you for one (plus shipping).


Thanks for the recommendation, IronMike - that sounds really interesting :) I have made a note and will keep a look out for it when I'm in bookshops in Dubrovnik in June.
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Sun Mar 19, 2017 6:20 pm

Croatian
It's been quite a positive week. I've got through 13 lessons of Glossika already, mostly in the mornings and evenings when walking between the station and my office. I really do find Glossika much more enjoyable than any other audio course I've tried, and I think it's really valuable for trying to imitate pronunciation, especially the correct intonation. I'm hoping to keep this progress up and get further through the files than I have previously :)

I finished reading 'Beara' by Ivica Đikić. It was an interesting read, but I guess the subject matter is something I shouldn't really go into here.

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:

I've watched two episodes of 'Larin izbor', so not a lot to report on that front. And I still haven't done any writing.

Russian
The real success of the week is that I have finally finished Duolingo :D :D :D

Image

At the point at which I finished everything was beautifully gold too :) I may never log into Duolingo ever again, to avoid feeling like I need to keep it that way :lol:
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