Arnaud's lazy log (Russian & co)

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reineke
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Re: Arnaud's lazy log (Russian & co)

Postby reineke » Tue Sep 05, 2017 11:05 pm

Russian orthography is not perfectly phonemic but the spelling of many words is transparent. I believe that your fuzzy word and sound inventory may also be affecting your reading speed. You may be overthinking the grammar and spelling rules. Good luck.
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Arnaud
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Re: Arnaud's lazy log (Russian & co)

Postby Arnaud » Wed Sep 06, 2017 7:54 am

reineke wrote:I believe that your fuzzy word and sound inventory may also be affecting your reading speed.
Yes, absolutly. Sometimes, it's more deciphering than reading.
reineke wrote:You may be overthinking the grammar and spelling rules.
Perhaps. I'm not immersed in the language, nothing is automatic, I have to consciously think about things to avoid mistakes...
reineke wrote:Russian orthography is not perfectly phonemic but the spelling of many words is transparent.
Are you trying to sell me something ? :lol:
Italian, spanish, german are relatively transparent. You can write relatively easily what you hear.
With russian, it's another story: there is the problem of the words stress. You don't know its place, you don't know how to spell the word.
часы, обьяснить, тепло or чисы, абиснить, типло: 4 ways to write {i}, the russian system is not transparent, you need to learn all by heart. It's worse than the french orthography, imho.

aaleks wrote:Nature + kids stuff reminded me about these two writers: Виталий Бианки and Михаил Пришвин. I read their short stories about nature when I was a kid, but those were mostly about animals as I remember. And then there's a book I read when I was 10 y.o. - Необыкновенные приключения Карика и Вали by Ян Ларри. It's a kind of fantasy or something the like. Two kids and a professor drink some magic liquid, become very small and get lost... well, somewhere in a grass I guess :roll: . I don't remember it well enough, so I just give you a link to an annotation and several reviews https://www.livelib.ru/book/1000245950- ... -yan-larri .
Thanks for the recommandations, I've put a few books on my "to-read" list.
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Re: Arnaud's lazy log (Russian & co)

Postby vonPeterhof » Wed Sep 06, 2017 12:39 pm

Arnaud wrote:With russian, it's another story: there is the problem of the words stress. You don't know its place, you don't know how to spell the word.
часы, обьяснить, тепло or чисы, абиснить, типло: 4 ways to write {i}, the russian system is not transparent, you need to learn all by heart.

To be fair, it's объяснить, which means the pronunciation is more like аб(ъ)йиснить, effectively limiting the possibilities for the vowel in the second syllable just to two, Е and Я (since А can't be pronounced as [ɪ] after a non-palatalized consonant, whereas "йи" would be a highly unlikely letter combination in a native Russian word). But then, it may indeed be hard to hear whether the Б is palatalized or not in this case.
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Re: Arnaud's lazy log (Russian & co)

Postby Arnaud » Sat Sep 09, 2017 4:25 pm

Russian:
I've reached 75% of Голова профессора Доуэля, it's going slowly.
I do one or two dictations a day, I don't know if it's really useful.
I watch vlogs on Youtube or дождь Tv (found a site where you can hear the sound), according to my mood. I don't know if it's really useful.

German and Breton: I'm trying to activate again what I know: It means that I got the books out of the cardboard box and put them on the shelf. Then I watch them... :lol: Perhaps I'll find the energy to open them in the next weeks.
I've read gsbod's log and the german study group thread on this forum: both excellent, I recommand if you want to learn german.
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Arnaud
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Re: Arnaud's lazy log (Russian & co)

Postby Arnaud » Mon Sep 25, 2017 5:05 pm

Short update:
I've finished Голова профессора Доуэля. I didn't read it entirely intensively, some days I was away from my paper stack and could only read on my Kobo: The understanding was good, I was able to guess a lot of things from the context and morphology without the dictionary.
I'm studying one lesson of Assimil L'Allemand sans peine every morning.
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Re: Arnaud's lazy log (Russian & co)

Postby Arnaud » Sat Nov 04, 2017 5:07 pm

More than one month without an update...Well, not much to report, I'm afraid, I feel a little stuck currently even if I feel that I'm still making progresses in my understanding of the russian grammar.
I watched the 3rd season of нюхач and the 4th season of физрук: I can't really recommand them even if физрук made me smile from time to time.
I'm trying to read Обломов: the big slap: I know nothing, nothing, nothing. That's pure decoding with the french translation and the notes of my book. But the book is very good, very funny and witty from what I've read so far. I'm not giving up because the notes are really a "grammar in action" that are very enlightening on a lot of things. Also I'm starting to notice how the present-perfective is often not a future but a real present implying habits or potentiality (like in proverbs). With hindsight, basic textbooks are really misleading on the subject of the verbal aspect, it's really difficult to get rid of all the over-simplifying rules I've learned so far. All the subtleties of the aspect I'm starting to notice are the consequence of the reading of the book "A Grammar of Aspect: Usage and Meaning in the Russian Verb " that I'm reading for the second time. I'll probably have to read it again several times: the more you progress, the more you understand all the subtleties explained in it. Unfortunately all the exemples are taken from the literature and it's sometimes difficult to understand all. Anyway, I can't recommand it enough, it's really a brilliant book for someone who learns on his own, imho.
I've installed Duolingo Japanese and HelloChinese on my phone: the first is awful, I don't understand anything. The second is great.
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Re: Arnaud's lazy log (Russian & co)

Postby reineke » Sat Nov 04, 2017 5:36 pm

You may be overreaching a bit:

"The river burbles merrily and playfully along, widening in spots into a pool and then, narrowing into a swift thread of a current, pauses for reflection and just trickles over the rocks, branching into frisky rivulets whose babbling lulls the surrounding countryside into a sweet slumber."

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/10/obl ... ov-review/
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Re: Arnaud's lazy log (Russian & co)

Postby Arnaud » Sat Nov 18, 2017 4:55 pm

Russian: I've put Обломов on the back burner because it's really difficult. Currently I need easy peasy things to do as the motivation is low.
I've started Ариэль by Беляев. I've already read 2 chapters but always the same problems while listening to the audiobook.
I've the general feeling that I understand less and less russian when I hear it, I hope it's temporary, but I need to be fully concentrated and listen with headphones to understand something. When the radio or Tv is on the background, it's just noise, I don't even hear isolated words...Not happy of that.

I've given up Duolingo Japanese and replaced it by Memrise, but I'm doing nothing.
I'm studying one or two lesson a day on HelloChinese while commuting, I'm doing well and enjoying the process (I just skip the part dedicated to the characters, it's difficult to draw on the screen while walking and I'm afraid that drawing a character once or twice without knowing the keys is a complete loss of time, so I stick to pinyin for the time being.)
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Re: Arnaud's lazy log (Russian & co)

Postby Arnaud » Wed Dec 27, 2017 4:48 pm

Happy new year 2018 and best wishes to you all.

Not a lot to say on the languages front, I'm still slowly reading Ариэль by Беляев, and I'm watching series on YouTube when I'm too tired to read (the last one: морозова that I absolutly don't recommand). It's more and more difficult to find interesting series to watch, perhaps I should watch again what I liked rather than trying to find new things...

On the plus side, I think my listening abilities are still progressing : recently I watched the russian news during several days and was rather pleased to notice that I was understanding a lot without making special efforts.

On the minus side, I've read about 500 pages of russian literature in 2017 and it's still a painfully slow process. Plus the fact that I don't understand audiobooks when I listen to them. In 2018 I'd like to reach a point where I can feel more confortable and read faster (emk said 2500 pages, but I doubt I'll be able to reach that figure), and be able to understand better the audiobooks.
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Re: Arnaud's lazy log (Russian & co)

Postby Arnaud » Sun Jan 28, 2018 9:30 am

I've done the vocabulary test given by Xmmm : https://www.arealme.com/russian-vocabul ... e-test/en/
Result: 5840, Top 48.60% , Your vocabulary size is like that of a 10-year-old child in Russia.

Well, completly desappointed by my result, but at the same time it gives about 1000 words/year, I think it's a normal figure.
I was expecting more, with all the reading I do... It doesn't seem to pay a lot
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