Ogrim's Krambu - a plethora of languages, mostly European, both old and new

[tastyonions]

Ha, accosted by rappers, that’s a new one on me. Sounds like a good trip.

[Ogrim]

Ha, accosted by rappers, that’s a new one on me. Sounds like a good trip.

I hadn't experienced street rappers either until I came to Cartagena. At least it is an original way of asking for money!

I am back at the treadmill, I have had lot of work to catch up on after two weeks away, but I do find time to study languages again, only this time I am not going to push myself to another burnout. I take it easy, but I have more or less managed to get back to the level of Croatian I had reached last autumn (which to be honest was not that impressive) and now I am very motivated to continue as we are going back there this summer.

I am also enjoying Latin a lot, and in addition to the material available on Legentibus I am reading text in an old book from my university years which I found in our flat in Spain last Christmas. It is called Medieval Latin, edited by K.P. Harrington, for The University of Chicago Press, first published in 1925. My edition is from 1962 and it is a compilation of texts written between 380 and 1645, so it covers a vast time period and writers as diverse as St Beda, pope Gregory the Great, Erasmus Roterodamus, Sir Thomas More and John Milton. It is a great source of medieval prose and poetry, and I really enjoy it. The book has almost 700 pages so I have a lot of great material to work with.Right now I am reading the story of Abelard and Heloïse from the 10th century.

I do want to get back to Classical Greek, but I am also tempted to take up modern Greek again, which I studied for a short period many years ago (when I was active on HTLAL). Until I make up my mind I just do a little bit of Classical Greek whenever I feel like it, without a clear study plan.

I also try to keep up Dutch by reading and listening to news on the radio or watching some short TV programmes.

Finally I realise that I have neglected Romansh for too long. Although I still subscribe to the digital version of the only Romansh newspaper, La Quotidiana, I have not read any books for a long time and I've hardly watched any Romansh TV lately. I am therefore trying to find time for that as well.

[Ogrim]

The last two weeks have been quite good. I am advancing with Croatian, and I am more or less back to the level I was when I stopped studying last autumn. As we are certainly going to Croatia this summer, the motivation is high again to get beyond basic beginner level.

I keep on reading some pages of Latin every day, and I've decided to "read" my Latin school grammar again, just to refresh the morphology and syntax of the language.

On the other hand, I have decided to take it easy with Classical Greek, and I allow myself to dabble a bit more in other languages, both old and new, giving in to wanderlust. So I've spent a few days learning Hebrew script and getting a general feel for the language and I've picked out my Langenscheidt course in modern Greek from my bookshelf. I've also started a book in Catalan, a language I haven't touched for a couple of years, and I've been reading some Romansh and watched some Romansh TV programmes.

I have some inclination to return to Arabic at some point, but that will probably not happen this side of the summer. Maybe after my vacation in Croatia. Time will tell...

My next trip won't be so exciting as Colombia (or Croatia for that matter), as I am going to Norway for a week at the end of April to meet family and friends. But at least it will give me an opportunity to practise my Norwegian again , I hardly ever speak it, except when I am on the phone with my sisters,

[tastyonions]

But at least it will give me an opportunity to practise my Norwegian again :D , I hardly ever speak it, except when I am on the phone with my sisters,

Use it or lose it!

[Ogrim]

But at least it will give me an opportunity to practise my Norwegian again , I hardly ever speak it, except when I am on the phone with my sisters,

Use it or lose it!

I don't think I will ever lose my native tongue, but I may not be totally "up to date" with all current vocabulary and expressions used by youngish people. I probably would find it hard to go back to using Norwegian in a professional setting. I am not sure, but I suspect I would find it easier to pass a C2 exam in English than in Norwegian now. After all, English has been my main working language for the last 28 years, I basically stopped working in Norwegian in 1995. Also, the last 15 years I work about 50/50 in English and French. At home I speak Spanish, and with all my other language ambitions there is little time for Norwegian.

I am continuing with Croatian at a leisurely pace, I do some Latin every day, and I keep switching between reading books in English, Catalan, French, German and Italian hight now. I also have a Spanish novel waiting for me. It was a birthday gift and the plot is set in the city of Salamanca in the 17th century. It seems to be a bit in the "genre" of the Da Vinci Code, i.e. a mystery about a lost manuscript that tells some important secret. It is a genre that started to bore me a few years ago, but I will give it a try and see how it goes.

I've spent a few hours on Classical Greek as well, just so I don't totally forget what I have learnt, but it's mostly been revisiting texts I already worked on last year.

Although I always hope to profit from short holidays to do more language study, I know from experience that it is not always easy, especially when I'm visiting family and need to find time for old friends. I am going to take my Croatian courses with me to Norway, and I always have Legentibus on my smartphone and a lot of books on my Kindle so I should be able to do something during my stay there.

[Ogrim]

This is my post number 1000 on this forum, hooray! It's taken me a while to get here, as I joined the forum in July 2015, so at this rate I will get to 2000 in 2031. But that's not something I really think about.

I'm back from my visit to Norway, and it was really good to see the family there again, as it had been a year since last time. I especially appreciated seeing my father. Since my mother passed away last year, he's in a care home, at 92 he cannot look after himself anymore, and his memory is not what it used to be, but at least he remembered my name when he saw me, so that was a good thing. I spent great times with my brothers and sisters and met up with friends as well. Although I will never move back to Norway, it always feels good to visit. It won't be too long before next time, as we will spend Christmas with my sister this year.

I did manage to study some Croatian while I was there, and I read some Latin, but that was about it. Now that I'm back I'm also returning to a more serious study routine and hope to get in some serious work on Croatian over the next two months as we will be flying to Split mid-July. I know I won't be at a level where I can converse in Croatian at that point, but at least I should be able to understand more and possibly have simple conversations.

The other day I overheard a short conversation between some Russians in a shop, and I realised that I have forgotten quite a lot of vocabulary. They said words that I know I knew, but I just couldn't remember their meaning. It made me want to refresh my Russian again, but I've decided to wait until I feel more confident with Croatian. At least I want to finish the Assimil Croatian course before returning to Russian.

If only I had many more hours in the day (and the energy to make efficient use of those hours)!

[Ogrim]

Another longish absence, I know. I have been terribly busy at work lately, there are a lot of changes in management and an ever-increasing workload, but I have been continuing with Croatian. Our trip is coming up very soon, and I would have liked to be more advanced than I am, but at least I know more this year than I did last year when we went. It is interesting to see the similarities and differences between Russian and Croatian. The case system is quite similar, probably a bit easier and regular in Croatian than Russian. The verb system on the other hand I find a bit more complicated in Croatian. Russian past tense is very simple, really just one past tense form than "declines" in masculine, feminine, neuter singular and plural rather than conjugates, while Croatian uses a past perfect form with the "to be" verb as auxiliary, but also has an imperfect and an aorist. And this comes in addition to the usual perfective and imperfective aspect in Slavic languages. I've also discovered a few "false friends" so I need to watch out for them.

Speaking of Russian, in May my wife and I spent a few days in Málaga, and there we visited the Russian museum. The St. Petersburg museum has a "branch" in Málaga of all places and every year they select a number of artworks to exhibit in this museum in Spain. All the information is in Spanish and Russian, and as I haven't really practised my Russian since I started with Croatian, I enjoyed reading first the Russian texts and then checking the Spanish version when there was something I didn't understand. Russian is still on hold though, I don't want too much interference with Croatian at this stage.

For the rest I've managed to read a bit of Latin, I've read and listened to some Romansh lately, and I am reading books in Italian and German. There has however been no time for Greek the last couple of months, and I'll see after the summer if I go back to Classical Greek or switch to the modern version of the language.

[Ogrim]

I am back from 10 days in Croatia. While it was a great holiday, I do have mixed feelings about the way Croatia is developing as a destination.

This year we did a route from Split to Dubrovnik via the two islands Brać and Hvar, so basically some of the most visited places in the country. Our stay in Split coincided with a techno festival, so the city was packed and prices for accommodation even higher than usual. We had rented an apartment some 15 minutes by car from the old town, the apartment was nice, and the lady who received us did not speak English very well, so I had an opportunity to speak my basic Croatian with her. We really just stayed for a day in Split, then we took the ferry to Brać, where we had rented an apartment in Bol. I liked Bol, it is a small, quiet village/town within walking distance from the famous Golden Horn Beach (Zlatni Rat).

I did not however like the town of Hvar very much. It was very crowded, everything was really expensive and almost all beaches around the town are privatised. A famous beach bar offers sunbeds for 40 euros a day! I found Stari Grad to be much nicer, less crowded, more laidback and with some interesting cultural sites, like the Dominican convent and the house of Petar Hektorović, an important poet and Renaissance figure, passionate about fish, who wrote in both Croatian, Latin and Italian.



Driving from the island of Hvar to Dubrovnik, we made a quick stop in the small town of Neum in Bosnia and Herzegovina for lunch. Nowadays you can avoid crossing the border thanks to a bridge Croatia has built in order to connect the southern part of the country with the north, but my son and daughter thought it would be fun to add another country to the list of places they've been to. Apart from a border control post on each side, the only real difference you notice is that road signs are in both Latin and Cyrillic alphabet, that they use a different currency and that (if you come from the EU), roaming is no longer included in your mobile data.

Dubrovnik, known as the Pearl of the Adriatic, was a disappointment in my eyes. Although its medieval walls and narrow streets are impressive, it is again far too crowded and very expensive. You hardly hear any Croatian spoken in the streets, but just about all Western European languages. There were large "Game of Thrones"-groups on guided tours as a lot of scenes from that series were filmed in Dubrovnik. (I must admit I haven't seen one single episode of this show.)

I fully understand that tourism provides an important contribution to the country's finances, but I think the most popular places in Croatia are starting to lose their charm because of it. I sort of enjoyed last year's holiday on the small island of Rab more than this year's trip. Sure, there were tourists in Rab, but it was more low-key and local, now it seems everybody wants to go to Split, Hvar and Dubrovnik, and with ever increasing demand, prices are hiked and the local population becomes invisible.

But I don't want to debate the pros and cons of modern tourism, so I'll talk about the Croatian language instead. I continued my studies of it during my trip (I always get a lot of studying done on the beach), and it certainly is my intention to continue studying Croatian for the time being. Firstly because it would be a pity to give up now that I am approaching a solid A2 level, secondly because I do intend to return to Croatia in the future. I want to visit Istria at some point, and I would also like to go to some less touristy places inland, including the capital Zagreb, which I visited may years ago on a business trip. Not to mention that Croatian is useful if ever I go to neighbouring countries like Serbia.

Still I want to get back to some other languages as well. I have not read any Latin for two weeks, and I am debating myself whether to return to Ancient Greek or (re)start Modern Greek instead. Now that I have got a taste for more Slavic languages, at some point I would also like to explore Czech or Polish. Romanian is still lurking in the background. And then there is maintenance and development to be done with Dutch, Romansh, Catalan...

[Ogrim]

Hello Forum! Long time no see.

So it is getting close to a year since last time I came here. The explanation for that is a bit long and complicated, so I will only say that a lot of things happened last autumn: there were some important changes at my workplace which had an impact on my time and energy, and then my father passed away in October. He was 93 and it was not unexpected, but he was an important person in my life so it did affect me a lot.

In short, with this and some other personal issues I lost motivation for studying, and it has only been in the last few weeks that I have regained an interest in actively developing my languages and learning a new one. So currently my language activities are as follows:

- I have gone back to Modern Greek (which means Classical Greek is on hold again), working with Langenscheidt's Griechisch mit System as well as Assimil.

- I am actively working on improving my Dutch. I've spent quite a lot of time watching the videos on the YouTube channel Easy Dutch, they are sometimes entertaining and you get subtitles in both Dutch and English if you want. I've also bought "Dutch. A Comprehensive Grammar", by Bruce Donaldson, which is a good reference book for a more systematic approach to grammar, and I am reading the novel Onder professoren by Willem Frederik Hermans.

-I'm continuning with Latin, mainly using the Legentibus app on my phone and tablet to read and listen in parallel.

-And finally, I have decided to brush up on Russian again. I've put it aside for too long and when accidentally (over)hearing a Russian conversation a couple of months ago I realised that I had forgotten a lot. As I spent a lot of time and effort to get to a decent B1/B2 level it would be a pity not to pursue it to some degree.

I've seen a couple of interviews with Steve Kaufmann where he promotes his language learning programme LingQ. I am tempted to sign up for Greek or Russian, but I need to do some more research to see if it is worth it.

And now that I am back I have to catch up on 10 months of activities on this Forum .

[jeff_lindqvist]

It's good to see you again!

Sometimes life gets in the way. It's perfectly natural to lose motivation, to take long breaks, to quit entirely, to start again ...

Good luck!