A language learners’ forum

Another mid-week Portuguese update, as I think I've found my Portuguese reading future! I downloaded a sample of Malcolm Gladwell's Talking to Strangers in Portuguese translation yesterday, and it seems to be the perfect level for me: I can read it fluently, with just the occasional look-up. So far (two hours in) it's going much better than my previous attempt with romantic fiction. I like this genre of book but it always feels like a bit of a waste of money to read as I can get through a book in English in a matter of hours (and my local library doesn't stock any decent non-fiction). But if I go through them in Portuguese translation, well, two birds and all that. It will also be an entirely painless way of getting more exposure to the language, which I need - I saw in another thread about how the time requirement for learning languages increases as you advance in your studies of that language, and I think that's so true. In a way it gets easier, as your brain stops hurting so much from the effort, but you do need to up the amount of time you spend, and for that you need to find something you like that you can do in the language in question. I'm continuing with the more intensive activities too, but this should be a fun addition.

French and German: Some German podcasts only.

Portuguese: As mentioned above, I’ve found a book to read, and have made good progress - I’m around a quarter of the way through (and will probably read more later on today). I’ve come across some words that I knew I’d seen during classes, remembered what they meant, and now feel as though I’ve properly memorised them; in this category are dedo-duro (snitch), gorjeta (tip), and alfaiate (tailor). I’ve also watched a three-part documentary on Netflix about the 2005 heist on the Brazilian Central Bank. There were subtitles in English, but I made an effort to follow the Portuguese too. I’ve also worked on chapter 2 in both ClicaBrasil and Português em foco 3, and had a class. I felt amazingly fluent in the class (all the more surprising as I wasn’t feeling very well); I reckon that having the language floating around in my brain all week helped.

Russian: I finished the chapter in Let’s Improve our Russian on participles, and started and finished the next chapter on gerunds. I’m not totally infallible here as sometimes I just don’t know the verb conjugation, but I’m very, very happy with where I’ve come with it. With that confidence, I decided to move onto the chapter on numerals. I’d already done a lot of this chapter last year, but I started again. It did not sink in last time. I’ve been getting irritated with my lack of knowledge in this area. I did end up being called upon to use some of this knowledge in a class, and I think I demonstrated I vaguely know what I should be doing (!). I have since ended up finishing off the chapter. I do not feel as confident as I do with participles and gerunds, but on the review exercises at the end of the chapter I got most of the answers right. I kept wanting to decline all the parts of the number with ordinal numbers, which is wrong, and I’m still a little hazy on the declinations of двести, триста and четыреста. Also, more generally, it still requires a huge amount of brain power to keep in mind exactly how the number in question (and accompanying adjectives and nouns) decline, switching from one set of patterns to another all the time. I think my next step is going to be to do the exercises on numerals from the first chapter of Я люблю русский язык B1.2. Let’s Improve our Russian is usually pretty comprehensive, but the chapter on numerals gives lighter coverage than usual, and I feel a few more drills would be useful.

I’ve also listened to a podcast and followed up by starting to read an article by Tolstoy, “Patriotism, or Peace” (helpfully, both English and Russian versions are freely available). I’ve also had a couple of classes. One required me to summarise an article and then debate the issues, which I found really difficult. Then again, the task was difficult, so I suppose it's not surprising. The other involved working more on the song/poem from last week and the aforementioned grammar (plus some grammar on when что can replace который etc, which is pretty straightforward but I’d never come across). I've got a DDT song to study next. I also need to go through the poems I've already studied - I had memorised one, but have since forgotten bits of it again, and the second I never properly memorised. I'm only doing this for fun - I have quite a few German poems (by Rilke, Heine, and Goethe) memorised from years ago, and I like being able to recite them to myself now and again.

Fitness: I’m completely back on track with the 10k steps daily (if we adjust the parameters slightly and say we’re going for a monthly daily average ). The lack of stretching came back to bite in that I ended up really tight, so I’m resolved to be good again here but we'll see if I manage to convince myself to do it. Finally, workouts have continued as normal.

MARCH REVIEW

Monthly totals
French: 6.47 hours
German: 15.95 hours
Portuguese: 33.65 hours
Russian: 65.47 hours

I took the pressure off myself and aimed for an average of two hours a day of Russian and one hour of Portuguese. I met these goals, and it did feel a lot more doable than trying to cram French and German in on top of my two newer languages. I haven’t felt like listening to my usual German politics podcasts, so that time has disappeared. I also didn’t get back to my German book. I still got some French and German in here and there, though. For French it mainly consisted of watching La Promesse (not amazing but watchable), whereas for German I binged on Zeit Verbrechen podcasts.

In Portuguese, my classes continued (and will continue for the foreseeable). But I also started to develop more of a routine for self-study on top of the classes. I started my first book, which I’m well on my way through, and also started to work through ClicaBrasil and Português em foco 3. The reading definitely feels as though it’s helpful in getting me to “inhabit” the language more. I’ve actually started to believe that I’m not doing all that badly…

In Russian, I’ve been really enjoying my classes, which are both structured and varied. I’ve worked through a lot of grammar on my own (including on participles and gerunds as planned), and done a lot of listening practice. I got praise from one of my teachers for the listening I’m doing - apparently it sounds like a good practice and she’s impressed with the length of the podcasts I’m listening to and how regularly I’m doing it. I’ve noticed recently a big improvement in my reading too - needing to look something up, I went back to my B1.2 book that I last looked at in September, and started reading through a text in the chapter following the last one I worked through. I could read the text with barely any problem - even the words I didn’t know, I could either guess or remember with the context. When I last worked with the book I remember finding the texts pretty hard. Having said that, I’ve not yet got through all of (my abridged version of) Crime and Punishment In my defence, some of the classes with one of my teachers are based on quite long, challenging texts, so I get a fair amount of good practice in going through those. I still think my speaking is pretty shocking, but I’m working hard and being pushed to discuss difficult stuff and use new vocabulary - I need to remember to keep this all in mind. There is also so much I want to do *now*, and need to remember that it’s not a race!

Fitness: the 10k steps a day fell apart a little, though I did just about scrape that as an average daily figure, clawed back with some way-above-average days (average for the month of 10,545/day). My stretching routine also collapsed - it’s one of the first things that goes when I’m stressed, which is not all that helpful, but we are not rational beings. I did get all my workouts in, though. Having people you don’t want to let down is helpful Overall I’ve made huge progress recently - there are obviously still daily/weekly peaks and troughs, but the global trend is very steadily upwards.

For next month I’ll probably just try to do more of the same. I might have some more time if I decide to take some extra days off around Easter, but I’m waiting to see what the weather does - I’m not inclined to use holiday if it’s grey and miserable (and snowy!) out. I plan to continue with the Russian and Portuguese focus. The wish list of tasks (probably too long to complete in a month) is as follows. For Portuguese, I want to finish my book, continue with my classes, and finish another couple of chapters in my courses. For Russian, I want to finish the numbers drills I'm doing (almost done!), then move on to reviewing the work on verbs of motion I did last year (as I've noticed I've forgotten stuff - again!), continue with podcasts, and continue with classes. And possibly get back to Crime and Punishment...

In the first short week of the month, I did the following:

French: Just watched the final episode of La Promesse. I enjoyed it more as I got through more of it.

German: Just a podcast.

Portuguese: Mostly reading but also an hour of work through Português em foco 3. I've almost finished the second chapter.

Russian: I finished all the drills I have on numbers. I discovered a new exception to a rule:

When 2, 3 or 4 modifies an animate noun in the accusative case, the animate accusative rule applies: мы видели двух мальчиков и трёх девочек. The numbers 5 and above do not undergo the animate accusative rule: В зоопарке мы видели пять тигров и шесть львов. This includes compound numbers ending in 2, 3 or 4, where the rule also does not apply: на день рождения мы пригласили двадцать два малыша.

I still need to keep reviewing the forms, but I've got the concepts down now. I can't do any of this quickly though, so I'm not sure how well this will translate into speaking.

I also listened to a podcast, and to a video interview. I'd already listened to one interview on the Скажи Гордеевой channel (with Elena Drapeko) after it was discussed on a Russian with Max podcast. Yesterday I listened to one with Chulpan Khamatova. I see that AroAro has recommended this channel too. I'd second that; I found the interview very compelling. The English subtitles helped too - I wanted to understand properly, rather than just the gist, and the channel seems to be adding English subtitles to its videos now. The first video I watched just with the Russian auto subtitles, but I see that one now has English subtitles too. I picked up another poem from this second interview, by Ocip Mandelstam, which I will learn soon. Last verse:

Уведи меня в ночь, где течёт Енисей
И сосна до звезды достаёт,
Потому что не волк я по крови своей
И меня только равный убьёт.

I also managed to re-learn Pushkin's Свободы сеятель пустынный - I found another YouTube channel whose purpose is to help you memorise Russian poems! It obviously only has a limited selection, but it does have a poem on there by Anna Akhmatova that I translated last year. This is turning into a bit of a rabbit hole...

I've kept up with my goals for Portuguese and Russian, but am struggling to remember what I've been up to!

The exciting news is that I finished my first book in Portuguese! I am around 10% through a new one I've picked up. This one seems to be a bit of a step up in terms of vocabulary, but with Kindle look-ups it's still doable. I haven't done much else, though; I want to get back to ClicaBrasil/Português em foco 3 this week.

Russian has focused around classes, with quite a lot to be done in preparation. This involved a fair amount of reading, some vocabulary development, a lot of preparation before giving oral summaries/arguing pros and cons of a topic. I feel as though I'm getting worse with time rather than better, but that's probably (hopefully!) an illusion. I also did the usual podcast work.

Fitness: Probably the biggest achievement of the week has been getting back into stretching. I've also done my usual workouts (and continued to see linear progress...) and got in my 10k/day steps.

I should really note down what I do as I'm doing it, as I come to the end of the week and I've forgotten...

No French.

German: just some podcasts and a MrWissen2go video.

Portuguese: a lot of grammar (properly transferring ways of expressing past tenses in English into Portuguese), some reading, and a desperate attempt at last-minute homework tonight that has more or less failed. The book is not as good as the last one - really long chapters are making it hard, I think, but I'm getting through it. My homework involves understanding native audio and I think part of the problem is that I'm too tired to concentrate right now; I'll try even more last minute tomorrow, but hopefully with a bit more brain power.

Russian: classes as usual. I think they went ok, by which I mean I got some praise for stuff, but I'm not sure how well deserved it was . Also, amusingly, one of the teacher's praise was completely cut off by a poor connection, meaning I heard an introductory part and then a conclusion, missing all the substance in the middle...

I've also listened to the usual podcast and gone through the transcript, and listened/watched a few bits and pieces here and there.

In addition, I've spent a long time preparing for my next class. The topic is new, so it might be a bit of a stretch. I found the text (that will form the basis of discussion, and in relation to which I've already done some written exercises) quite hard, though I still managed to do all the exercises without looking anything up, before I then went through it more intensively. I'm not sure how much I'm retaining, or indeed improving, but forcing myself to debate a different topic each week has got to lead to improvement at some point!

I also downloaded this week some handwriting exercises for the first (school) class, after being told my handwriting could do with some attention... I'm not counting these exercises as language learning, and I find them significantly less enjoyable now than I might have done when aged between about 4-7, but I am understanding the logic a bit better, and it might help me read others' cursive too.

Having struggled with conjugating two verbs that followed the same pattern a week ago, I've also gone back to my Russian verb drills online course. I've covered the group that comprises all verbs ending in -нуть. They look scary, I think because most of them are perfective and somehow perfective verbs are scary in my head, but actually, the conjugation pattern is ok now I've got it all down on one sheet of paper. I've included on that sheet all verbs from the top 500 verbs that all into this group, divided into whether they follow the крикнуть or the заснуть pattern (the former have the stress in all forms not on the ending; the latter generally have the stress in all forms on the ending, except for the verbs взглянуть, обмануть, and тонуть, where the stress moves). The one fly in the ointment is that the course says that the past tense is regular. However, in many cases, where the verbs follow the крикнуть model, this is not the case! And this is precisely where I had come unstuck. So возникнуть -> возник, достигнуть -> достиг, привыкнуть -> привык etc. I've looked in vain for discussion of this pattern, which is both fairly common among these verbs and common in verbs from this group that are used a lot. Never mind. My own crib sheet is at least now accurate. I was also able to add to my list a couple of verbs that follow the крикнуть model but are not in the 500 most common verbs, as one came up in class this week (покинуть (этот мир)) and one was used in the text I've read today (отвергнуть (irregular past tense отверг, though Wiktionary tells me the regular form is also possible in the masculine)). I then very quickly went through the group covering all verbs that end in -авать, as I've been getting these wrong orally so often recently, even though I *know* the pattern. This is quite an easy group, as the stress (at least for verbs in the top 500) stays on the ending all the time. I'll see if I can get these conjugations right from now on! I'm going to try knocking a group or two off every week or so from now on too. I don't want to go too quickly though, as the memory load will snowball quickly and the aim is long-term retention.

Finally, I've been looking around for a book to read in Russian (with the start of the super challenge in mind). I've got some reading materials already, but I am working with them intensively and they get pushed to one side when I've reached my limit of "proper study" in any given week. Here I have in mind more of a reading in bed option. I've wanted to read Atomic Habits but not got round to it; looking at the Russian edition, the language seems within reach (unlike some other books I also previewed), so I think I'll have a crack at reading that after I've finished my current Portuguese read.

Fitness: My linear progress came to an abrupt end; I completely fluffed an informal online competition. I was a bit annoyed/frustrated at the time, but I'm over it now . I have been working hard and making progress, and that's all I can ask of myself. We push on. I've done quite a bit of stretching, which my body is thanking me for, and I've been getting the steps in too.

Whilst procrastinating yesterday, I came across a couple of placement tests for Russian courses: here, towards the bottom of the page https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ssees/evening-courses/how-to-enrol

I did the "advanced" one, and got 68/100. I won't set much store by it, but it was interesting in reassuring me that I am learning something! I had no problem with the participles and numbers questions, which was especially nice, given the work I've put in there. I was also 100% on getting adjective endings right; I just tripped up a few times with some nouns in some forms. It's also quite a good guide as to what I need to do next, mainly reaffirming what I already knew I needed to revisit, namely verbs of motion, aspect, and verb conjugations more generally. These are big topics. Some lower-lying fruit would be to get the declensions of personal pronouns into my head, because for some reason these aren't sticking and I keep getting them wrong. I could also revisit telling the time and look properly for the first time at conjugating proper names - these are small topics that I don't properly know.

It was also interesting to me to see that that score would place me in a class where they focus on presenting/developing arguments and revising grammar that for the most part has already been covered - this is pretty much what I am doing with my teachers. It took me a while to get a good routine again after finishing the beginner's phase, but I feel as though I'm well set now.

French: Nothing. The topic about being bored by a language resonated with me… But then a friend and I were speaking today about planning a trip to France next year, and she speaks French, so I should really start making a bit of an effort. I appreciated the list of books by Moroccan authors in kanewai’s log, and my plan is to pick up one of those.

German: Just podcasts and videos (and not that many at that…).

Portuguese: I’ve started watching a Brazilian series on Netflix. I’m using the Portuguese subtitles (and writing down anything that is new to me). I need to press on with getting more input, both through reading and watching - it all feels very doable, but I feel I need to step things up in this way to make progress now. It’s more time-consuming, but less demanding, so I hope it’ll be doable. I’ve just got to try to get out of the emotional slump I’ve been in this week that has made concentrating difficult.

Russian: I had one really difficult lesson this week. I kept getting told off for getting things wrong, including handwriting of ел, ал, and ш; formation of active present participles (orally, under pressure!), choice of wrong aspect, pronunciation of the Russian т, etc. I can cope with it (it reminds me of studying at a German university…), but it was a bit exhausting. The teacher did at least say that she was noticing how I was trying to use new words (i.e. words that had been introduced in texts we had studied together), and then some more stuff, which I think was positive, but by that time my brain had well and truly switched off so it could have been more criticism. I did feel really well prepared too. I also realised that I was better able to answer questions on content. I’d read something (quite long) in Russian in advance of the class, and then probably did the best ever at remembering what I’d read and relaying it back in Russian.

I also listened to a podcast and watched a video or two, and looked at another two groups of verbs: all verbs that end in -зти/-зть/-сти/-сть and “many” verbs that end in -ить/-еть. I chose these as a lot of the verbs of motion fall within these two groups, including the pairs вести/водить, везти/возить, and нести/носить, which I wanted to review. It was nice that the review didn’t take very long before I remembered everything again. But the second of the two groups is a bit of a monster, as there are so many consonant change patterns and the stress moves about all over the place. I don’t think I’ll aim to add any new groups of verbs this week, and just focus instead on consolidating my knowledge of the ones I’ve covered so far. When I’m looking at these verb conjugations now, however, at least a lot of the verbs are known to me; when I last went through this course, so many were unknown that there was really too much information to take in. Gradually I’m chipping away at things!

Oh, and I started reading Master and Margarita (in English...).

Fitness: yep

APRIL REVIEW

Monthly totals
French: 0.97 hours
German: 4.62 hours
Portuguese: 29.72 hours
Russian: 56.18 hours

This wasn't the most productive of months, language wise. I had a lot of work in the build-up to, and after, Easter, which didn't help, but I was also feeling a bit lethargic and not very committed. I was still not too far off my aim of averaging two hours a day of Russian and one hour of Portuguese. I am also now starting to feel revitalised and committed, so perhaps the break did me good.

I pretty much ignored French and German. For Portuguese, I did classes and class prep as well as quite a lot of reading, finishing my first book and getting well (circa one third) into a second. I also started watching a series. I didn't get through ClicaBrasil and Português em foco 3 much at all, however.

For Russian, I continued challenging myself, aka my classes were mainly hard! But at the very end of the month I started to read a book (a translation of Atomic Habits by James Clear), and surprised myself at how I was able to read it fluidly, with no look-ups. Now, that is not to say I understand everything, but given I don't have automatic look-ups for this book* and I'm lazy, this is what I'm doing - and it's working ok. I also have more than enough opportunity to read things and look up new words and then try to integrate them into my speaking etc, so I think this is probably a good approach for balance too. Anyway, it feels like quite an achievement to be reading something for pleasure in Russian.

* (I have the book as a mobi file on a Kindle, and I reached my limits just getting the file onto my device, never mind trying to work out if it's possible to link a dictionary to it.)

I found some more verbs ending in -нуть out in the wild.

проникнуться - to be filled with (+ instr) (follows model of крикнуть)
Изначально я проникся идеями, впоследствии изложенными в этой книге, потому что убедился в их правильности на собственном опыте. (From Atomic Habits.)
Он в конце концов проникся страстью любимой жены и подключился к прибыльным прогулкам. (From class materials.)

рухнуть - to collapse, crash (follows model of крикнуть)
И цены поменяются, и покупательская способность, и рынок труда рухнет. (From Russian with Max podcast no 186.)

почерпнуть - to get, draw, derive (follows model of заснуть)
Другими мотивами обосновал свой отказ Александр Солженицын, когда в 1970 году «за нравственную силу, почерпнутую в традиции великой русской литературы», ему присудили Нобелевскую премию по литературе. (From Пульс времени materials used in class.)

столкнуться с - to face (+ instr) (follows model of заснуть) - I knew this one already but it wasn't yet on my list.
Я сама с этим столкнулась. (From Russian with Max podcast no 186.)

Fitness: average daily steps for the month: 10,824.5. This was very peak-y and trough-y . I managed to get back into stretching. My performance in workouts stopped improving linearly, but I still got them done.

PLANS FOR MAY
I was thinking about the Super Challenge, and figured that if I got an hour's worth of listening and an hour's worth of reading done each day, there would be no reason why I couldn't complete it for all four languages. (No guarantee that my maths is right here.) I also think that to do that would be an appropriate challenge, insofar as I am perfectly capable of doing it, and the only reason I don't is that I choose to doom scroll or do other pointless activities instead, justifying it as "relaxation". For the past two months, however, it's not been all that relaxing. I've also really missed German (both reading and listening in particular), and I'm feeling guilty about neglecting French (and do sometimes have a need for it so shouldn't let it rust too much). And I think my break from the news has served its purpose and now I'm ready to get back into current affairs. I'm not going to sign up for the SC officially, as I think the pressure would put me off, but I am going to try to put in this time each day and keep a record for myself. The fact that I can now read for pleasure in all my languages, albeit I have to choose the material carefully depending on my respective level, makes this doable too. The vague plans are:

French: read fiction, by an author from somewhere in the Francophone world. I have some lined up to try already. A friend suggested a France Inter podcast (Rendez-vous avec X), which I will try alongside podcasts from my existing feed.

German: finish the series of books by Andreas Gruber that I'm currently partway through. Podcasts from my existing feed (Der Tag, Die Lage der Nation, Zeit Verbrechen, Easy German, and Halbe Katoffl in particular).

Portuguese: continue reading translated non-fiction and watching 3%.

Russian: finish Atomic Habits and then move on to (carefully selected!) other accessible books. The "film" element will chiefly still be Russian with Max podcasts for the moment, with the occasional Скажи Гордеевой, Екатерина Шульман, DW на русском etc thrown in.

Russian classes + work for them will continue, and I do still want to continue working through my Portuguese courses. But time and reality will likely have a say on all of this...

Starting my personal Super Challenge has gone very well I’ve got back into reading, and French and German have made a comeback. I’m also feeling a lot more positive about language learning again. All helped by a much quieter week at work.

French
* Read 50% of La poule et son cumin by Zineb Mekouar. Thanks to kanewai for the recommendation. Very good (definitely deserves the 5 star reviews based on what I’ve read so far) though it doesn’t deal with the lightest of topics
* Listened to a few podcasts. One by Géopolitique entitled L’Amérique latine et la guerre en Ukraine, which was interesting, and two by Émotions entitled Pourquoi sommes-nous tous à bout de nerfs ?, which promised a lot but didn’t really (for me) answer the question. I also listened to some more episodes of Le téléphone sonne - this was recommended on my C1 test prep course a couple of years ago. I didn’t like them initially, but the format is growing on me - it is a phone-in, but the presenter also has studio guests, so overall you tend to get quite a balanced approach to the given topic.

German
*Read 21% of Todesreigen by Andreas Gruber. I started this book from the beginning again, as I’d left it too long since putting it down last. It’s the fourth book in the series, so there’s more of a story involving the police/detective characters, who remain constant throughout, alongside the new case under investigation, which I think gives it a bit more depth (it is still quite light, but this is not a criticism at all!).
* Listened to various Easy German and Der Tag podcasts. Also a long one by Erklär mir die Welt entitled über Putins Russland.

Portuguese
* Read another 34% of A era dos muros by Tim Marshall (translation) (I’d started this before my unofficial challenge started). I’m getting into it a bit more now - I found it hard at the start because the chapters are so long and most of the information is new to me. It’s quite useful if you want to learn country names - I think I must have come across pretty much all of them by now!
* Listened mainly to episodes of the CNN broadcast E tem mais…
* I also got back to my Português em foco textbook and spent a couple of hours reviewing the first two chapters I’d already covered and starting the third.

Russian
* Read 26% of Атомические привычки by James Clear (translation). I’m generally not looking anything up and reading for general meaning where necessary, but it’s going ok. I’m quite surprised how fluidly I can read when the text is not too hard! The collocation набраться смелости (to summon up courage) was something I had just come across in a class, and then I saw набраться терпения in the book and could understand it.
* Listened mainly to Russian with Max podcasts.
* Did a couple of classes where I was reminded of stuff I’d forgotten (does this ever stop?!). I think I actually understood for the first time about how to use свой, and was reminded that I did know the verb “to chase” (when I was convinced I did not). The word недоумение (bewilderment) came up in both classes (separate teachers), which feels appropriate. I did some (obviously much-needed) revision of verbs of motion on my own, plus preparation for the classes.

Fitness
I got my steps in, did my workouts (though one was replaced by a hike up and down some very steep hills, which really tired me out), and did a fair bit of yoga.