AroAro's log (languages, books, certificates)

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AroAro
Green Belt
Posts: 355
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 12:57 pm
Languages: • Native - Polish
• Certified - C1: French, Italian, Romanian; B2: English, German
• Estimate - B2: Russian; B1: Bulgarian
• Learning - Czech, Hebrew
• Dabbled in - eo, la, uk, sw, lt, oc
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... d80b60a5e9
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Re: Russian/Bulgarian/Hebrew + EN,FR,IT,DE,RO

Postby AroAro » Fri Feb 18, 2022 9:23 am

cjareck wrote:Well, it's a pity that you've dropped Hebrew, but Bulgarian is also extremely interesting. Good luck with this new project!


Thank you! I will get back to Hebrew one day, that's for sure!

WEEKLY UPDATE

Russian - did 2 lessons out of 19 from "Mówimy po rosyjsku", listening to Russian radio

Bulgarian - I did 2 lessons from Assimil and 2 lessons from "Говорите ли български?". So far so good, I need to pay special attention to Bulgarian letter "ъ" that corresponds to schwa sound - Romanian has the same sound rendered as "ă" but the problem is that in Bulgarian I'm hearing rather the sound "â" (or Russian "ы") though a very short one. I guess I need to get more exposure to really pin down this sound. The other thing that can be a little bit troublesome for someone used to Russian Cyrillic alphabet is that in Bulgarian the vowels in non-accentuated position are not reduced and they don't change their pronunciation. So when I read something in Bulgarian, I need to remember that "o" is always pronounced as "o" and not as "a" like in Russian.

Hebrew - I finished the Memrise course, so now I'm reviewing the words and ignoring those I'm sure I learned well

Reading - I'm reading another book in French, fortunately it's so much better - "La vie sans fards" by Maryse Condé. It's an autobiography, she is quite honest in this book and reveals a lot of details from her private life but it's far from being sensationalist. And it's simply a good book, very engaging and a real page turner.
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User avatar
AroAro
Green Belt
Posts: 355
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 12:57 pm
Languages: • Native - Polish
• Certified - C1: French, Italian, Romanian; B2: English, German
• Estimate - B2: Russian; B1: Bulgarian
• Learning - Czech, Hebrew
• Dabbled in - eo, la, uk, sw, lt, oc
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... d80b60a5e9
x 1792

Re: Russian/Bulgarian/Hebrew + EN,FR,IT,DE,RO

Postby AroAro » Wed Mar 02, 2022 10:26 am

UPDATE

I am still devastated by the war in Ukraine. I didn't do any language learning for a few days that followed the invasion, watched news all the time instead - but there is a limit of news reports that my brain could absorb, so I got back to my languages. It's good to have some activity that can keep my thoughts busy with other things. On top of that, I have a lot of free time these days so I had to do something else (though in the end, I just switched the language of the news from Polish to Russian...).

Russian - I did all the 19 lessons from "Mówimy po rosyjsku". There is an accompanying set of exercises to this book which I own but there are around 1000 exercises in it and that's too much even for a grammar nerd like me. I will work with the second instalment of the graded reader - the topics are a little bit more advanced and revolve around emotions, culture, cuisine, nature and science.

I don't have any problems separating the language from geopolitics but the current situation led me to explore YT in search of interesting (read: unbiased) content, that's how I discovered the following channels: TV Dozhd (was shut down yesterday along with Radio Echo of Moscow but still streams on YT), varlamov, Максим Кац. I've been listening to Russian a lot these past days and can see a significant improvement in my listening skills. That's probably an illusion, I think I just got used to the way the creators of these channels speak.

Bulgarian - lesson 12 in both Assimil and "Говорите ли български?". I know now why I'm hearing the letter "ъ" as "ы" sometimes - as Assimil explains, in non-accentuated positions "ъ" is a schwa sound but in accentuated positions it's pronounced as "eu" in French, so that makes sense for my untrained ear. In fact, all Bulgarian vowels change slightly their pronunciation if under accent.

Hebrew - still reviewing the Memrise course

Reading - finished the non-fiction book on Moldova. Now, I'm reading another non-fiction book - about the children from North Korea that were sent to Poland in 50' but were suddenly sent back to their homeland a few years later.

Ukrainian - two days ago, a TV station broadcasting in Ukrainian was opened here, so I tried to watch it a little bit. I was somewhat aware of what Ukrainian sounds like (there were already around 1.5 mln Ukrainian immigrants in Poland) but listening to it for a longer time, I can say it sounds nothing like Russian or Polish. I am glad when some of the guests start speaking Russian, because I can understand what they're saying. If I were put to a "blind test", I would probably mistake Ukrainian for Serbo-Croatian (which probably makes sense because White Croatia is believed to have been located in South-Western Ukraine). Though I'm aware the TV hosts speak super clear Ukrainian with no trace of Russian influence on prosody and vocabulary. Reading in Ukrainian is much easier only thanks to knowing Polish, because knowledge of Russian is of no help here. We also have a TV channel since 2007 that broadcasts in Belarussian and Russian, and Belarussian sounds indeed like mix of Polish with Russian.
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User avatar
AroAro
Green Belt
Posts: 355
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 12:57 pm
Languages: • Native - Polish
• Certified - C1: French, Italian, Romanian; B2: English, German
• Estimate - B2: Russian; B1: Bulgarian
• Learning - Czech, Hebrew
• Dabbled in - eo, la, uk, sw, lt, oc
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... d80b60a5e9
x 1792

Re: Russian/Bulgarian/Hebrew + EN,FR,IT,DE,RO

Postby AroAro » Mon Mar 14, 2022 2:25 pm

UPDATE

I wanted to post weekly updates in 2022 but it seems not possible at this moment. There are many things going on now (work, new house, geopolitics, 502 Bad Gateway errors) but I’m progressing with my languages at a steady pace.

Russian – I’m halfway though my graded reader. I finally finished a chapter on culinary traditions and I’m glad because cooking/cuisine/recipes are one of the things I don’t like when learning a language. Doing a lot of listening in that language too.

Bulgarian – I’m at the lesson 17 in Assimil and "Говорите ли български?". The lessons in the latter have become quite long and packed with new material so I need at least 2-3 days to do just one lesson.

Hebrew – I randomly chose an article from walla.co.il, got it translated in Google into English and printed it. Each day, I read one section (which is usually only 2-3 phrases long). I underline unknown words that I find interesting or think I’ll meet them sometime in the future. Some phrases are simple enough for me to grasp the meaning but in most cases, I need to rely on English translation. My Hebrew is rudimentary but at least I can match the English translation with Hebrew text and easily identify the new Hebrew words and can allocate to them the meaning in English. That’s not that bad after only one year and a half of study.

Reading – finished reading that non-fiction book about North-Korean children in Poland, and now I’m reading Primo Levi’s “Se questo e un uomo”. I had it for a very long time on my reading list but couldn’t really decide to read it but based on the recommendation by Kanewai I gave it a go and yes, it’s a very good book. Other than that, last week I bought around 20 books in Russian on litres.ru and sent them to my Kindle and mailbox. The thing with payments to/from Russia convinced me not to wait any longer.
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Eafonte
Orange Belt
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Joined: Fri Sep 29, 2017 11:28 am
Location: Brazil
Languages: Portuguese (N), english (B2-ish), german (B1), russian (intermediate), spanish (reading and listening).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17202
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Re: Russian/Bulgarian/Hebrew + EN,FR,IT,DE,RO

Postby Eafonte » Mon Mar 14, 2022 8:31 pm

AroAro wrote: Other than that, last week I bought around 20 books in Russian on litres.ru and sent them to my Kindle and mailbox. The thing with payments to/from Russia convinced me not to wait any longer.


I did the same! The two last weeks before the credit card Companies' self inflicted ban/embargo I made many purchases on litres.ru (Hamsterkäufe, as the germans would say), although I already had a sizable stockpile of russian books for months (perhaps years) to come!
1 x

User avatar
AroAro
Green Belt
Posts: 355
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 12:57 pm
Languages: • Native - Polish
• Certified - C1: French, Italian, Romanian; B2: English, German
• Estimate - B2: Russian; B1: Bulgarian
• Learning - Czech, Hebrew
• Dabbled in - eo, la, uk, sw, lt, oc
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... d80b60a5e9
x 1792

Re: Russian/Bulgarian/Hebrew + EN,FR,IT,DE,RO

Postby AroAro » Wed Mar 23, 2022 8:57 am

UPDATE

Russian - finished my graded reader. I will now go through the textbook published in 50’ in Poland “Вы говорите по-русски?”, I’m simply curious to see how it is structured. There are rumors that YT might be blocked in Russia, and most of my listening input comes from YT… The channels I can recommend are Осторожно: Собчак and Екатерина Шульман.

I also finished reading “Ostanovka: Rossiya!” and underlined 113 new words. One of my goals for 2022 was to go back to reading magazines in foreign languages and in fact, I decided to read now “Time”. The new English words/expressions I’ve met so far are:

To run afoul of – popaść w konflikt z
Flouting – lekceważenie
To be at loggerheads – drzeć koty (in Polish “drzeć koty” means literally “to tear cats into pieces”, lol, but “cats” here are not those cute animals but a game of dice called “koty”)


Bulgarian – lessons 21 in Assimil and "Говорите ли български?”. I learned one of the 5 future tenses in Bulgarian and its formation is very similar to one of the future tenses in Romanian – one just needs to put the particle (“щe” in Bulgarian, “o să” in Romanian) before present tense in Bulgarian or conjunctive in Romanian (which looks like present tense except for 3rd persons singular and plural).

Hebrew – still reading the article from last week about money transfers from Russia to Israel and a possible new wave of migration due to the war.

Reading – finished reading “Se questo e un uomo”, the book was shorter than I thought because one third of the text are actually answers to readers’ questions that Levi wrote for 1976 edition (and that was also interesting to read) and additional comments from the publisher (much less interesting). I have read a lot of “Holocaust literature” but this book was exceptional in that Levi stayed in Auschwitz till the liberation by Russian troops and described how the prisoners’ existence looked like in that limbo between German flee and Russian liberation, something I didn’t read about till now.

Now, I’m going to read “Das Achte Leben”, I still have some 34% to read, that one is really long!

Eurovision – I got back to watching the contest in 2015, the quality of the songs is really superior to what it used to be in the first decade of the century. I listened to all the 40 songs revealed for this year's edition and my top 3 happens to be entirely non-English – Serbian song in Serbian and Latin, Dutch song in Dutch and French song in… Breton! I’m not going to learn any of these languages any time soon but I must confess I’m seriously tempted by Dutch from time to time. I invested a lot of time and effort to learn German a few years back and gained respectable passive skills in this language, so it would make sense to build on that experience and learn a related language. Learning Dutch after German should be easy, I guess? I’m also interested in Afrikaans because (a remote and small) part of my family lives in Cape Town (however they never cared to learn Afrikaans and are going to relocate to US anyway according to the latest news). Of course, it’s obvious that I’ve collected the resources for Dutch, including Assimil’s “Pratique du Neerlandais” with audio which is out of print, so that would be really a pity not to give a try sometime in the future...
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User avatar
AroAro
Green Belt
Posts: 355
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 12:57 pm
Languages: • Native - Polish
• Certified - C1: French, Italian, Romanian; B2: English, German
• Estimate - B2: Russian; B1: Bulgarian
• Learning - Czech, Hebrew
• Dabbled in - eo, la, uk, sw, lt, oc
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... d80b60a5e9
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Re: Russian/Bulgarian/Hebrew + EN,FR,IT,DE,RO

Postby AroAro » Fri Apr 01, 2022 9:21 am

Last week, I worked from the office on one day and met my colleagues in real life for the first time since March 2020. That was, hmm, awkward! I don’t have to say it was not the most productive day as we spent most of the time in the kitchen area drinking coffee and talking :) My company has lifted its strict Covid policy and we are now allowed to work from the office (if we want to) so we are going to meet in the office once a month. It’s beneficial for one’s mental health.

Russian – I’m at the lesson 7 of “Вы говорите по-русски?”, each lesson consists of 4-5 dialogues, in total it’s 8-10 minutes of listening material (I have the accompanying audio recordings from 60 years ago in mp3 format). I discovered another YT channel “Скажи Гордеевой” – these are interviews with Russian important/famous people I guess – I’m not familiar with most of them but I watched the interviews with two names that rang a bell - actress Chulpan Khamatova (very heartbreaking one, she stood against the war and decided to leave her homeland, fled to Latvia) and writer Ludmila Ulitskaya (fascinating interview, she also left Russia for Berlin). Interestingly, I found it easier to understand Ulitskaya than Khamatova, I thought it would be the other way round.

Bulgarian - lessons 24 in Assimil and "Говорите ли български?”. I listen to short news reports in Bulgarian and the language still remains impenetrable at this point, I can barely recognize some standard words and expressions, such as “good morning”.

Hebrew – I read that article about money transfers from Russia till the end and printed another one but this time it’s a total failure and disaster. First, the topic is not very engaging (tensions in the government) and besides, it’s much more complicated linguistically. I think it’s time to put Hebrew definitely on hold, I will get back to this language in the future. There is just so much one can do in a day.

English – I’ve read almost half of the “Time” issue (then, I’m going to read something in French), new words:

To canvass opinion – zbierać opinie
To hobble – spętać
To scuttle – zniweczyć


Reading – so far, I read 82% of “Das Achte Leben”, the book got more interesting than in the middle sections, so that’s some good news.
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User avatar
AroAro
Green Belt
Posts: 355
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 12:57 pm
Languages: • Native - Polish
• Certified - C1: French, Italian, Romanian; B2: English, German
• Estimate - B2: Russian; B1: Bulgarian
• Learning - Czech, Hebrew
• Dabbled in - eo, la, uk, sw, lt, oc
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... d80b60a5e9
x 1792

Re: Russian/Bulgarian/Hebrew + EN,FR,IT,DE,RO

Postby AroAro » Mon Apr 11, 2022 8:25 am

Russian – almost finished listening to the dialogues from “Вы говорите по-русски?”, then I’m going to read once again the graded reader that I already read in September last year, we’ll see what progress I have achieved in between.

Bulgarian - lessons 29 in Assimil and "Говорите ли български?”. I started reading online articles in Bulgarian and these are easier to understand than audio material. The thing that surprised me however is that all Bulgarian media use a specific cursive font, very different from Russian standard, and it takes time to get used to the shapes of the letters. But it looks beautiful :)

French – I’m now reading the magazine “L’Histoire” that I bought in March last year but stopped reading then at the page 32. I’m now at the page 60 and I’m going to read it till the end. This issue is centered around the fall of Rome which is a fascinating topic. New words:

Ballotter – wstrząsać
Louvoyer – kluczyć
Dilatoire – opóźniony


Reading – almost, almost finished reading “Das Achte Leben”, still 4% left to be read which amounts to 50-60 pages because the whole book is 1300 pages long. Next, I’ll read two books in Polish, still hasn’t decided which ones.
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User avatar
AroAro
Green Belt
Posts: 355
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 12:57 pm
Languages: • Native - Polish
• Certified - C1: French, Italian, Romanian; B2: English, German
• Estimate - B2: Russian; B1: Bulgarian
• Learning - Czech, Hebrew
• Dabbled in - eo, la, uk, sw, lt, oc
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... d80b60a5e9
x 1792

Re: Russian/Bulgarian/Hebrew + EN,FR,IT,DE,RO

Postby AroAro » Wed Apr 20, 2022 7:39 am

Russian – I’m at the page 56 out of 107 of the graded reader that I’m rereading. I feel more at ease now than 6 months ago so that’s a good sign. When I finish reading it, I’m going to work on Russian grammar with two books – “Praktyczna gramatyka języka rosyjskiego”, or “Practical Russian grammar” even though there are no exercices there! Fortunately, I have a set of exercices, it contains about 200 exercices so I think I can really do all of them, it’s less daunting than some of the books that have 1000 exercises which feels simply overwhelming. And that’s going to be the last time I will be practicing Russian grammar or reading about grammar in my learning process because next I will focus on vocabulary practice and expansion.

Bulgarian – lessons 32 in Assimil and "Говорите ли български?”. The aorist tense is really puzzling – it was already introduced in "Говорите ли български?” but the explanations are quite superficial, it seems to me that its forms look like present tense for second and third persons singular and like imperfect past tense for all other persons. I really need to review it and figure it out but I’m taking things easy so no pressure here.

French – page 77 of “L’Histoire”, not many new words except for:

Impéritie - nieudolność

Reading – so I finally finished reading “Das Achte Leben”, it felt like a never-ending story... I’m now reading “Mitologia słowiańska” which is a collection of fictionized stories that are supposed to familiarize the reader with Slavic mythology. The thing is that we don’t know much about the Slavic myths (well, definitely not as much as about Greek and Roman ones), but there are some books that try to treat this subject but purely from a scientifical point of view (I tried to read such a book, it was a failure, I’m not endowed with necessary tools to read such books/papers for pleasure). The authors (one of them is a linguist at Polish Academy of Sciences) based the stories on such books but gave them an attractive, literary form and I can say it works. The only objection I have is that most of this book revolves around “demonology” and "Slavic demons" and not the “pantheon of Slavic gods” but I shouldn’t probably complain and be just happy with what I get.
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User avatar
AroAro
Green Belt
Posts: 355
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 12:57 pm
Languages: • Native - Polish
• Certified - C1: French, Italian, Romanian; B2: English, German
• Estimate - B2: Russian; B1: Bulgarian
• Learning - Czech, Hebrew
• Dabbled in - eo, la, uk, sw, lt, oc
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... d80b60a5e9
x 1792

Re: Russian/Bulgarian/Hebrew + EN,FR,IT,DE,RO

Postby AroAro » Fri Apr 29, 2022 8:34 am

Russian – reading “Praktyczna gramatyka języka rosyjskiego”, its main focus is on syntax and the differences between Russian and Polish. They start with simple sentences and with each chapter, more complex structures are introduced. That’s an interesting format and I must say I like it a lot.

Bulgarian - lessons 35 in Assimil and "Говорите ли български?”. Most of the tenses in Bulgarian have been covered by "Говорите ли български?” at this point, and although I definitely need more practice, I can at least recognize them in a text and that helps a lot when reading current news in Bulgarian. To my surprise, I understand quite a lot even though I’m still only dabbling in the language, maybe thanks to Russian words that were borrowed from Bulgarian and being familiar with the current topics through my other languages is of immense help as well.

French – page 94 of “L’Histoire”, so almost finished, then it’s time for an Italian magazine. New words:

vilipender - szargać
conspuer - znieważać
tomber dans l'escarcelle - chodzić na czyimś pasku
un rivet - nit


Reading – finished reading “Mitologia słowiańska”, that one was not so long, only 150 pages or so. The authors used some archaic features of Polish to make it look more “ancient”, and one of these features is the past perfect tense that disappeared in Polish sometime in the 18th/19th century. I really wish we had kept it, alas the only instance when you can use it is to say “I should have done” = “powinienem był zrobić”. Now, I’m reading a non-fiction book about contemporary Hungary and the rise of the so called “non-liberal democracies” in Central Europe but I’m not so fond of this book, it was published by my favorite publishing house so I expected something better and multifaceted.
6 x
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User avatar
AroAro
Green Belt
Posts: 355
Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2020 12:57 pm
Languages: • Native - Polish
• Certified - C1: French, Italian, Romanian; B2: English, German
• Estimate - B2: Russian; B1: Bulgarian
• Learning - Czech, Hebrew
• Dabbled in - eo, la, uk, sw, lt, oc
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... d80b60a5e9
x 1792

Re: Russian/Bulgarian/Hebrew + EN,FR,IT,DE,RO

Postby AroAro » Mon May 09, 2022 9:18 am

Russian – still reading “Praktyczna gramatyka języka rosyjskiego”, I’m at the page 160 out of 280. I watch a lot of Russian videos on YT but I’m feeling overwhelmed with the whole geopolitical situation, so I’m now exploring old videos by Varlamov and others, trying to get away from all that.

Bulgarian – lessons 38 in Assimil and "Говорите ли български?”, I’m not doing much but I’m systematic at least.

Italian – I’m reading now “Panorama”, actually it’s the issue from last year that I didn’t manage to finish. New words:

Ottuso – ograniczony
Un barlume – płomyk
Foltocoso – zamożny


Reading – still reading on Kindle that book about Hungary, not much to report here apart from the fact that I didn’t know it’s almost 500 pages long.
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