Radioclare's 2020 log (Russian, Croatian)

[IronMike]

Russian input was not one of my goals this week, but I did end up watching an episode of the travel show 'Орёл и Решка' one evening this week when I felt too tired to do anything else in Russian. This was partly inspired by Ironmike and partly because I'd wanted to try it for a while anyway (some of the Russian travel videos I've been watching on Youtube about Iceland, Slovenia, Switzerland etc have been by Anton Ptushkin, who was a presenter on the show at some point, so it was on my radar as something to watch). I chose an episode about London, because I think that if you're trying to watch something above your level it helps if you at least understand the subject matter to start with. I thought some of the programme was really good; I didn't catch the names of the presenters, but it was the male presenter who ended up with the small budget, and I thought he had some really good tips for saving money. I even learned some things about London that I didn't know I thought the rest of the programme was kinda dreadful because I found the female presenter completely unbearable. I don't know if she was deliberately being unbearable because she won the toss or whether she's like that all the time, but once I'd met my 30 minute Russian target for the day, I actually switched the programme off because I couldn't take her any longer I did return and watch the rest of it the next day, when I was perhaps in a slightly better mood, but I still didn't really enjoy the luxury travel segments; it all just seemed too unrelatable. The good thing about choosing this programme though was that it had Russian subtitles. I don't know whether all the episodes on YouTube have subtitles or whether I just got lucky, but I definitely wouldn't have understood anywhere near as much as I did without them, so that was good I'm wondering whether watching this show would count towards a Russian Super Challenge or whether it's too far away from the concept of a film? I need to hunt down a copy of that diagram that explains what is/isn't within the spirit of the challenge.

I can tell you that the hosts of Орёл и Решка do switch out. Give it more chances! And I think it most definitely should count toward the SC when that comes back up.

[Radioclare]

10 Feb - Russian: 46 mins, Croatian: 96 mins
11 Feb - Russian: 34 mins
12 Feb - Russian: 33 mins, Croatian: 30 mins, German: 47 mins
13 Feb - Russian: 87 mins
14 Feb - Russian: 31 mins
15 Feb - Russian: 37 mins, Croatian: 98 mins
16 Feb - Russian: 31 mins, Croatian: 46 mins, German: 112 mins

I didn't mean to get into the habit of only updating my log on Sundays, but that seems to be what's happening.

What did I do this week? I finished chapter 24 of Penguin Russian, which was mainly about negation. Some bits of it were pretty straight forward, e.g. how the position of "не" in a sentence changes meaning, and other bits were a bit less straight forward, like understanding when to use the genitive and when the accusative after negated verbs. I also learned all the vocabulary from chapter 20 in Memrise. I think I mentioned before that chapter 20 was the motion verbs chapter, and so there were a lot of verbs to practise. I think I'm getting a bit better at remembering which is multi-directional and which is uni-directional out of бегать and бежать but I still can't for the life of me remember the difference between вести and везти. That is to say, I know what the difference is but I can't find a way of remembering which one is which

I have added all the new vocabulary from chapter 24 into Memrise now. And I revised chapters 12 - 15 of the textbook this week as well. There were a couple of days when I didn't really feel like studying in the evenings, so I watched a few videos from the YouTube channel История всего. There was an interesting one "Что будет с Британией после выхода из ЕС?" which I felt like I understood pretty well. Then there was another one about why the Chinese aren't united, but some of that one went totally over my head because I wasn't familiar enough with the subject matter.

I've still been downloading audio from Forvo to add to my Croatian Memrise courses, but it continues to be quite slow progress. I did achieve my goal of getting to the end of Teach Yourself Croatian this week, so I'm planning to start re-reading Easy Croatian this week. I did better with my Croatian series this week too, managing to watch four episodes. It's been a really stormy weekend and it was too wet yesterday for going outside to get 10 000 steps to look like an attractive prospect. So my boyfriend showed me how to connect my laptop to the TV and then I was able to watch a couple of episodes while on the exercise bike. This felt like quite a good solution for killing two birds with one stone

My only other language-related activity this week has been reading in German. I'm reading 'Kluftinger' which is the 10th book in a series about a Bavarian police detective who loves Käsespätzle. I've been following this series for over a decade, so when I got this instalment for Christmas, I knew it was going to be high up on my 'to read' list

[Daniel N.]

I'm planning to start re-reading Easy Croatian this week.

Please read it online. The PDF hasn't been updated for almost a year, and there's a ton of important changes and additions online :/

[Radioclare]

17 Feb - Russian: 49 mins, Croatian: 68 mins
18 Feb - Russian: 78 mins, Croatian: 12 mins
19 Feb - Russian: 48 mins
20 Feb - Russian: 73 mins, Croatian: 6 mins
21 Feb - Russian: 55 mins, Croatian: 45 mins
22 Feb - Russian: 32 mins, Croatian: 90 mins
23 Feb - Russian: 38 mins, Croatian: 27 mins, German: 104 mins

Sunday again so time for another update I feel like I've had some unproductive evenings this week; I think there's a theme that if work has been stressful for some reason, I struggle to make myself study grammar in the evening. Similarly, I don't have any problem studying languages on the way to work, but I very rarely succeed in doing so on the way home because I find it too difficult to switch off from work problems and concentrate on something else straightaway. I guess I just need to accept this and not set myself goals which involve doing things on the train home! I've also found that now that I'm tracking all my language time on a spreadsheet, I find the 6WC less motivational than I used to. Some days I'm barely remembering to log onto Twitter to update my score.

Anyway. I have finished chapter 25 of Penguin Russian this week, which was a bit of a weird chapter. It was mainly about diminutives, which was interesting but only vaguely so. I'm at a stage with Russian where all I can realistically hope to achieve is recognise whether something might be a diminutive; it doesn't feel like there's going to be any benefit to me trying to learn all the different rules for forming diminutives when I can't even reliably remember all the basic case endings at the moment

The good news was that, diminutives aside, there wasn't a lot of new vocabulary in the chapter which felt useful to learn, so I was quite sparing with what I entered into Memrise this week. There was quite a long text to read at the end of the chapter, which was a fairy tale about a fox with a rolling pin, but I think all this really taught me is that reading fairy tales is a bad idea because they're far too difficult. This afternoon I've started chapter 26 of the textbook, which is about words like "someone", "anyone" etc and feels like it's going to have more practical application. On my commutes I've also learned all the vocabulary from chapter 21 in Memrise.

On the evenings when I was procrastinating study, I watched some Russian videos on Youtube instead. The absolute best thing I watched was an hour-long documentary by Антон Птушкин about the Azores. This must be one of the first times that I feel I've watched something in Russian because it was something I actually wanted to watch, as opposed to watching something because I need to practise Russian. I really enjoyed the programme, both because I'd been to one of the islands in 2018, so enjoyed seeing places I recognised, and because I am going again for two weeks in June, with plans to explore more islands this time, so it was really cool to see some of the places I'll hopefully get to visit

Later in the week I also watched another episode of Орёл и Решка. This episode was from a different series, so had different presenters who were way less annoying than in the previous episode I watched, and it was set in Montenegro. So again, it was cool to recognise some places that I'd been, although I thought that the programme was slightly misleading in that it didn't really give you a realistic impression of how far apart some of the Montenegrin attractions which they showed actually are from each other. Montenegro might look small on a map, but sometimes it takes a really long time to get from A to B because of the mountains. I also watched a few more short videos on the История всего channel on Youtube. The most interesting one I watched was called ''Почему Крым не Косово?" but there's probably no part of that which it is a good idea to discuss here

Please read it online. The PDF hasn't been updated for almost a year, and there's a ton of important changes and additions online :/

I was reading it on my Kindle But I will have a look online as well to see what I am missing. I have only read a few chapters at the moment.

[Daniel N.]

The most interesting one I watched was called ''Почему Крым не Косово?" but there's probably no part of that which it is a good idea to discuss here

It's interesting it's actually Krym

But regarding the web-site, it's in overhaul, and it's best to read it online, I mean it can be done on the Kindle as well, as your Kindle connects to the Internet for sure, but it's maybe better on the mobile phone, as the site is adapted to mobile phones and everything works, including syntax highlights

[Radioclare]

24 Feb - Russian: 31 mins
25 Feb - Russian: 54 mins, Croatian: 20 mins, German: 17 mins
26 Feb - Russian: 34 mins
27 Feb - Russian: 41 mins
28 Feb - Russian: 46 mins
29 Feb - Russian: 32 mins, Croatian: 8 mins
1 Mar - Russian: 41 mins, Croatian: 26 mins

This hasn't been a very good week for language learning. I've been quite lucky so far this year that work has been comparatively calm and I haven't needed to work any crazy hours. This week was the week that things started to get more pressured and I had a few late (10pm) finishes. The coming week also has the potential for late nights, although I've also got some travelling to do and I may end up getting more studying done because of that.

I have finished chapter 26 of Penguin Russian now and started chapter 27. The grammar in chapter 26 didn't seem too bad; it was all about how to say someone, somewhere, anyone, anywhere etc. Chapter 27 is about participles, so has the potential to be harder. I don't even really like participles in Esperanto.

I somehow did manage to make reasonable progress with Memrise this week and not only learned all the vocab from chapter 22 of the book, but also from chapter 23. Plus I entered all the vocab from chapter 26 and have added audio to another chapter of my Croatian course. Unfortunately, I haven't got very far with my rereading of 'Easy Croatian' and I also failed to watch a single episode of my Croatian series this week. I guess TV is the first thing that gets cut when I work late.

I finished reading the German novel - 'Kluftinger' - which I started a few weeks ago. As I mentioned before it's the 10th book in a series, so I really enjoyed it because I'm a big fan of the series. There was lots of background information about the past of the main character and his first name - which has been a mystery in the previous nine books - was finally revealed. But if you picked the book up without having read the previous nine, it probably wouldn't have made a whole load of sense!

[Mista]

I'm wondering whether watching this show would count towards a Russian Super Challenge or whether it's too far away from the concept of a film? I need to hunt down a copy of that diagram that explains what is/isn't within the spirit of the challenge.

I can tell you that the hosts of Орёл и Решка do switch out. Give it more chances! And I think it most definitely should count toward the SC when that comes back up.

It's accepted, as long as each program is minimum 10 minutes. I don't watch many actual films for the SC, so I know that diagram pretty well

[Radioclare]

2 Mar - Russian: 31 mins
3 Mar - Russian: 38 mins
4 Mar - Russian: 35 mins
5 Mar - Russian: 30 mins
6 Mar - Russian: 31 mins
7 Mar - Russian: 37 mins
8 Mar - Russian: 72 mins, Croatian: 37 mins

Not very impressive scores this week I'm afraid. I started developing a cold on Monday and it's been a really annoying one that's managed to dominate the entire week. It was also really bad timing because I had a very busy week at work, with lots of meetings and travelling. One day I had a meeting near Heathrow which necessitated a long journey on the tube and I felt like every time I coughed, the entire carriage was judging me. It would have been useful to have a badge saying "It's just a cold, honest!"

Anyway, because I had a cold I felt tired and/or unwell in the evenings and I went to bed ridiculously early some nights, so I didn't get up to anything very exciting. I have struggled my way through chapter 27 of Penguin Russian, which was mainly about the rules for the formation of past passive participles, and input all the new vocabulary from that chapter into Memrise. Honestly, a lot of the detailed rules about stress and formation whooshed straight over my head. I think my Russian is at a stage where all I can hope to do is try and recognise a past passive participle when I see one. But I guess you have to start somewhere. The fact that I had quite a lot of time on trains also meant I did a fair amount of Memrise, so I learned the vocab from both chapter 24 and chapter 25 this week.

On the evenings when I didn't feel like either grammar or vocabulary, I watched some Russian on YouTube. Most notably, another episode of Орёл и Решка. This one was set in the Azores; I deliberately chose another episode in a place I'm familiar with. I don't know how they choose their destinations but I thought this was a strange one because the presenters were dropped on the fairly small island of Faial rather than one of the larger islands. The girl who won the toss was able to hire a boat and get to the neighbouring island of Pico, but the guy who was restricted to $100 was stuck on a pretty small island with no transportation and not a lot of sightseeing opportunities. He spent over half his money on a whale-watching tour, during which he failed to see any whales, and then had to survive the rest of the weekend by camping, eating soup and hitch-hiking. I watched this episode without subtitles; it was okay, but I would definitely have understood a lot more if I'd remembered to turn the subtitles on!

I haven't done much with Croatian this week, but I follow a channel on Youtube that regularly features parody versions of famous songs, usually with a topical theme. I don't always follow Croatian news diligently enough to be able to get the jokes (and sometimes they're about something that there's zero chance of me following, like the progress of the Croatian handball team!) but last week there was a medley of Psihomodo Pop songs on the theme of coronavirus. I love Psihomodo Pop, so it was a welcome bit of light relief



I should also mention that I gave up logging my scores for the 6WC; I just couldn't be bothered to do it one evening when I was feeling ill. I'm recording all my time in a spreadsheet so I could still go back and tweet accurate times to catch up, but it feels a bit pointless. I haven't found the challenge very motivating this time around anyway for some reason and because I've been trying to stay off social media, having to remember to log onto Twitter every day to submit scores has started to feel like a hassle.

[Radioclare]

9 Mar - Russian: 32 mins
10 Mar - Russian: 35 mins
11 Mar - Russian: 33 mins
12 Mar - Russian: 107 mins
13 Mar - Russian: 32 mins
14 Mar - Russian: 37 mins
15 Mar - Russian: 30 mins
16 Mar - Russian: 31 mins

I didn't update my log yesterday because I'd been away to Cornwall for the weekend. It was really lovely to get away, forget about all the depressing news for a bit, and take the opportunity to get some fresh air by the sea before we all get indefinitely confined inside.

I haven't had a terribly inspiring week for studying though; as you can see from my stats, I've completely failed to do any Croatian. My main focus with Russian has been to get through chapter 28 of Penguin Russian, which was quite a tough chapter all about imperfective and perfective verbal adverbs. I'm 100% going to have to go back over these final chapters at some point in the future, but for now I'm just trying to press on and get to the end of the book. I think I've got to the stage where I need the motivational boost which comes from finishing one resource and starting a new one!

What else? I've inputted all the vocab from chapter 28 into Memrise. There were loads of new words, because there was a long comprehension text at the end of the chapter about Peter the Great. Memrise is the one thing I've managed to remain quite diligent with. I've learned all the vocab from chapter 26 now and made inroads into the chapter 27 vocabulary too.

Otherwise I've just been listening to Russian Progress videos when I've felt too lazy to do anything else. There was a new podcast this week - over 30 minutes in length - which I've listened to twice already. Once the transcript has been released I'm planning to listen to it again while reading, because there are some bits that I haven't been able to catch just from listening alone.

I predict that my studying may suffer over the next few weeks because it's been announced this evening that everyone in my company should plan to work from home for the foreseeable future. While the idea of having a lie in every day and saving money on train tickets does feel quite appealing, I do find my morning commute a useful time to study and so to some extent I think I will miss that

[Radioclare]

17 Mar - Russian: 32 mins
18 Mar - Russian: 30 mins
19 Mar - Russian: 31 mins
20 Mar - Russian: 33 mins
21 Mar - Russian: 69 mins

I think I'll remember this as one of life's stranger weeks! I made it into the office on Monday, but since Monday evening my entire company has been working from home and we've been told to be prepared to do so for three months. For me personally, doing my job from home is quite easy, just replacing real life meetings with virtual ones. But for the junior staff who work under me it's a lot more difficult, because they would normally be out and about all over the country, working at client premises. A certain amount of their work can be done remotely, but not necessarily all of it, and managing both them to do the work and clients to give them the information they need to do the work has been quite challenging. I've spent a lot more time on the phone to people than I would ordinarily. So far it hasn't been a complete disaster and everyone has managed to stay productive, but the responsibility to try and keep people busy feels like a big one.

Apart from that, I like working from home and not having to travel to loads of places and interact with people isn't a problem for me. My mainly extrovert colleagues are definitely struggling more, so for once it may be beneficial in life to be an introvert. I'm not really identifying with all the posts about various resources now being free, because so far I haven't noticed having any more spare time. In fact, so far I feel like I have had less spare time and worked longer hours. But I've been told that it's compulsory for me to take the two weeks of holiday I had booked in June, even though it's unlikely I'll actually be able to go anywhere in that period, so I guess I will get a lot of reading and language learning done then. And I am getting more sleep, which is never a bad thing

I also got it confirmed on Monday that I'm being promoted from manager to senior manager at work, so that was a bit of good news. But I think it will be a long time before I can go out anywhere to celebrate the promotion

My main language achievement this week has been finishing chapter 29 of Penguin Russian. This chapter had a bit of a mixture of themes. There was some stuff about active participles, a few pages on the use of short adjectives, and a section on punctuation. I hadn't really given Russian punctuation much thought before, but it seems like commas are a big deal. That's a shame, because I don't feel like I excel at correct usage of commas in any language.

I've definitely found it a bit harder to get quality Memrise time in this week without my commute. Some evenings I've used a few minutes of spare time between finishing work and eating my dinner to get through Memrise reviews on my phone, but I've been doing them without my headphones so I haven't had the benefit of the audio. Nevertheless, I have finished learning all the vocabulary from chapter 27 of my textbook and made a start on the vocab from chapter 28.

I've completely failed at doing Croatian again this week. Once the work situation settles down I'll have to reconsider how to try and incorporate it into my routine!