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: AroAro's log Pусский and עברית

Postby AroAro » Fri Nov 19, 2021 9:16 am

WEEKLY UPDATE

Russian - I did 7 lessons from "Perfectionnement Russe". When I used "Russe Sans Peine" last year, I listened to the dialogues multiple times and I read them afterwards at least 5-6 times, and as a result I knew them almost by heart but now, I don't feel like doing the same thing over again - I listen to each lesson twice, read the comments and read the dialogues twice-three times.

Hebrew - did 9 lessons from "40 leçons pour parler hébreu" and learned 119/623 words from Memrise

Other - still reading Lavinia Braniște's "Interior Zero" (read 3/4). I was pleasantly surprised with my reading speed given the fact that it's only the second book in Romanian I'm reading. Amazon does not have a Romanian dictionary for Kindle so I had to download manually a monolignual Romanian dictionary. On each page, I need to check at least 2-3 words but overall it's not that bad, I can definitely understand the plot and appreciate some sections of the book from a literary point of view. I was just slightly surprised by the number of instances where the conjunction "că" is merged into "c-", it took me a little bit of time to get used to this convention. Regarding the book itself, it's about a woman living in Bucharest, each chapter proves how bad her life is, what a terrible job and a tyrant boss she has, hopeless relationships and even health problems because why not! I think there are too many unfortunate coincidences for one book and one character but maybe it leads to something in the end, I still have some 60 pages to read.
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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: AroAro's log Pусский and עברית

Postby AroAro » Fri Nov 26, 2021 9:36 am

WEEKLY UPDATE

Russian - I'm at the lesson 17 of "Perfectionnement Russe". I decided to conduct a small experiment and read a book in Russian. I just wanted to check if, after one year of studying Russian, I can follow the storyline and can read more or less fast. It had to be an "easy" book (not some highbrow literature - that will come later, heh) so I opted for Tatyana Ustinova's "Пояс Ориона" because I was hooked by the premise. So far so good, this is exactly the type of book I wanted to read - the phrases are short, there are a lot of dialogues and the plot keeps me interested so I'm having fun. Ustinova's style reminds me that of Polish author Joanna Chmielewska but I read her many years ago so I may be wrong.

Hebrew - I'm at the lesson 16 of "40 leçons pour parler hébreu" and learned 175 words from Memrise

Romanian - so I finished reading "Interior Zero" - did I mention last time that the main character had her share of hardship? Let's say it was just a beginning, lol, and no - all those tragedies didn't lead to anything, no "catharsis" or whatever. I think I understand the author's intent to describe the passiveness of today's generation and I want to read more of her in the future because there was something intriguing in this book that kept me reading, though my next Romanian book will be by another author. Fortunately, I had more luck with my YT videos in Romanian - I watched an interview with a Russian-ethnic Moldavian lady who learned Romanian as an adult, a funny video on reading Stephen King's "It" and finally Cătălin Moise's video on oneiric cinema. I always need to watch his videos twice or even three times - not because they are hard to follow from the language perspective but they are packed with so many ideas that I need to pay special attention to really grasp all of them. Even if his videos were in my native language, I'd still need to watch them a few times to really let everything sink in.
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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: AroAro's log Pусский and עברית

Postby AroAro » Fri Dec 03, 2021 8:55 am

WEEKLY UPDATE

Russian - I was very busy at work this week (we moved to a new accouting system two months ago but new technical issues pop up every single day and the year-end-closing is already looming on the horizon...) and that meant overtime - and overtime devoured my time and energy for language learning. I progressed somehow to the lesson 21 from "Perfectionnement Russe" and read 38% of "Пояс Ориона". My vocabulary is still limited but I can follow the storyline and I understand most of what is written. There are usually 4-5 unknown words on each page but sometimes it's 4-5 unknown words in one sentence so there is room for improvement in that area. My reading speed is undoubtedly lower compared to other languages - my brain needs 1-2 minutes to adjust to Cyrillic alphabet and to correctly decipher the letters that look the same in both Latin and Cyrillic scripts but are pronounced differently. But well, it's definitely faster than last year.

Hebrew - I'm at the lesson 20 of "40 leçons pour parler hébreu" and learned 225/623 words from Memrise
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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: AroAro's log Pусский and עברית

Postby AroAro » Fri Dec 10, 2021 8:02 am

WEEKLY UPDATE

Russian - another short update, I'm doing lesson 27 from "Perfectionnement Russe". I enjoy this course, it relies heavily on colloquial speech (unlike most courses) - the only thing that it's not to my liking are the audio recordings... I mean, the quality is great but I just don't like the two male voices that were used for this course - both of them sound very similar to my ears, sometimes I struggle to tell them apart when there is a dialogue involving both of them. Regarding "Russe Sans Peine", I absolutely adored the actors (male and female) who recorded the audio, it was a pure joy listening to them and it seemed to me they had a great time recording the dialogues and they were very committed to this task. Whereas in case of "Perfectionnement Russe", one of the male actors sounds as if he were forced into doing it - or maybe it's part of the convention? My theory is that this guy is supposed to show how people from Russia (and Eastern/Central Europe for that matter) sound like - grumpy and unsmiling ;)

Still reading "Пояс Ориона" - 64% read. I also finished going through my second issue of "Ostanovka Rossiya", I added 145 words to my list of vocabulary to learn, and will start reading another issue.

Hebrew - lesson 24 of "40 leçons pour parler hébreu" and learned 281/623 words from Memrise

Other - as usual, I listened to some podcasts/videos in my other languages, I can recommend the one below about the people who inhabited Europe in Stone Age:

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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: AroAro's log Pусский and עברית

Postby AroAro » Fri Dec 17, 2021 10:04 am

WEEKLY UPDATE

Russian - "Perfectionnement Russe" - doing lesson 32, progressing slowly mainly because the dialogues are much longer than in "Le Russe Sans Peine" BUT I finished reading "Пояс Ориона"! My first ever book in Russian:) there are still a lot of words that I have to learn but it turned out that my vocabulary is already relatively rich because I could follow the plot and most of the details just fine. Of course, I checked unknown words in my Kindle dictionary but only when the word seemed particularly intriguing or was necessary for the story to be understood. The words I remembered from the book are бодро, пылко and враньё, Ustinova used them very often. All in all, it was a nice experiment and I think that next time I will read one of the books I actually want to read in Russian and because of which I'm learning the language (if anyone wants to know, the authors I'm thinking about are Людмила Улицкая, Мария Степанова, Гузель Яхина, Евгений Водолaзкин, Людмила Петрушевская).

Hebrew - lesson 27 of "40 leçons pour parler hébreu" and learned 318 words from Memrise

Other - having finished "Пояс Ориона", it's now time to read something in Polish - it's going to be "Mothers" by a Bulgarian writer Teodora Dimova. I read somewhere that it is one of the only two books translated from Bulgarian into Polish after 1989 (the other one is "The Physics of Sorrow" by Georgi Gospodinov that I liked, maybe not passionately but still, so I hope "Mothers" will be good as well).
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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: AroAro's log Pусский and עברית

Postby AroAro » Fri Dec 24, 2021 7:16 am

WEEKLY UPDATE

Russian - I'm at the lesson 36 of "Perfectionnement Russe". Over the last two months, I listened to almost all the episodes of the podcast "Russian with Max" that I wanted to listen (45 episodes done, still 3 left). That amounts to some 25 hours of Russian listening in two months which is not spectacular but ok for me. So now, I have to think about new podcasts - I guess that from now on, I'm going to focus on podcasts aimed at native speakers, I have already some ideas thanks to other forum members but I haven't still settled on anything specific, I'll report on that after Christmas.

Hebrew - lesson 29 of "40 leçons pour parler hébreu" and learned 374/623 words from Memrise

Reading - two days ago, I finished reading Teodora Dimova's "Mothers" and I still cannot really get over the story. The book was only 180 pages long but it gave me so much to think about unlike most of the books I've read this year. In fact, I shouldn't like it because the author uses long phrases spanning on several pages and I usually hate such books because this technique seems to me so artificial but in this case, it worked perfectly. So in the book, we get to know several young people from the same class and most of the book is built around dialogues (disguised in stream of consiousness) - real and imagined - between them and their mothers and fathers (the title is very misleading). We discover their fears, joys, what they have to face and what they and their families went through after the collapse of communism. The story takes place on a single day, during the finals of a football championships, when the students rush for a meeting with their beloved teacher Yavora - the only human being who understands them, supports them, consoles them. The problem is that the teacher announces she is going to leave Bulgaria soon and that announcement leads to a tragic end. The story is very bitter and sad but the author's style elevates it so much above "kitchen-sink drama". Regarding the title, my theory is that Yavora is a substitute of mother for the kids, and each of them sees her differently and loves her for different reasons, therefore the plural form "Mothers" in the title. I was surprised to discover that Dimova is mainly a playwright because this novel was simply astounding in terms of style and structure. The only thing I didn't like is that we know so little about Yavora and how she actually created this special bond with her pupils. It made me want to read more of Dimova's work but to do that, I'll have to learn Bulgarian first... more details on that project will come in due time.

Merry Christmas!
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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: AroAro's log Pусский and עברית

Postby AroAro » Mon Jan 03, 2022 8:04 am

WEEKLY UPDATE

Last Friday on 31th December, I missed my weekly update for the first time in 2021 – luckily, 2021 is now over so I hope to do better in 2022! I feel quite exhausted for a variety of reasons – we went to my in-laws for two weeks, my elder son brought some kind flu from the kindergarten right before Christmas, now I am also feeling dizzy and have running nose, and on 31th December we bought a house on top of that and had to go back to Cracow for 2 days to sign all the papers at the bank and the notary (I’m not even talking about year-end-closing at work). I mentioned last year that I was fed up living in a flat and so me and my wife started to consider seriously moving somewhere else. A few months ago, we signed a preliminary contract for a semi-detached house and the transaction could be finalized right after Christmas. So now, we need to do “finishing works” in the house and that will take at least 4-5 months and we’ll be able to move in sometime in May/June next year. I can’t wait :)

Russian – I’m now at the lesson 42 of “Perfectionnement Russe”. Still didn’t decide on any new podcasts to listen

Hebrew – lesson 33 "40 leçons pour parler hébreu", 404 words learned from Memrise. I really like this Memrise course, I’m finally learning some abstract words and not only words for, let’s say, pieces of furniture or body parts. I know these words are also important but I won’t probably meet them in the texts I’m interested in.

Reading – with all that hustle, I still managed to read a whole book on my Kindle – “Gottland”, a non-fiction in Polish book about 20the century Czechia. Now I’m going to read two books in English – Doris Lessing’s “The Fifth Child” and Graeme Macrae Burnet’s “His Bloody Project”.
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cjareck
Brown Belt
Posts: 1047
Joined: Tue Apr 25, 2017 6:11 pm
Location: Poland
Languages: Polish (N) English, German, Russian(B1?) French (B1?), Hebrew(B1?), Arabic(A2?), Mandarin (HSK 2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=8589
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Re: AroAro's log Pусский and עברית

Postby cjareck » Mon Jan 03, 2022 5:04 pm

Congratulations on your purchase! This surely was a wise decision. I can't imagine returning to a flat now. But prepare that houses are rather cold during winter, so prepare an extra sweater or something like that. I moved tu my house in February so I felt the difference right away :)
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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: AroAro's log Pусский and עברית

Postby AroAro » Tue Jan 04, 2022 11:27 am

cjareck wrote:Congratulations on your purchase! This surely was a wise decision. I can't imagine returning to a flat now. But prepare that houses are rather cold during winter, so prepare an extra sweater or something like that. I moved tu my house in February so I felt the difference right away :)


Thank you! For me it will be some kind of adventure to live in a house on my own. Fortunately, I don't really like high temperatures - inside or outside, so I should quickly get used to :)
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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: AroAro's log Pусский and עברית

Postby AroAro » Wed Jan 05, 2022 8:28 am

GOALS FOR 2022

I guess I should say something about the year 2021 before setting goals for 2022. I don’t really have any stats or numbers so I can share only my overall impression – 2021 was quite good when it comes to language learning... To be more specific, I’m really happy with the progress I did in Russian – I read a book in Russian, it was not a completely smooth reading process but still it went much better than anticipated, so I hope to read more in Russian this year. It’s also the language I’m enjoying the most right now which is a good sign because I still have a lot of resources to go through even though I bought some of them out of sheer curiosity than anything else, such as Russian coursebooks from 50’ and 60’. In 2022, I’d like to listen to Russian podcasts and watch YT videos aimed at native speakers – of course, I won’t understand all but I need to get used to the normal speech people use.

Regarding Hebrew – hmm, things are not so rosy here! Learning Hebrew is fun – at times, because sometimes it feels like a chore! Especially the vocabulary. I decided to treat Hebrew differently, unlike my other languages, and it will be a language that I’ll put on the back burner in 2022 and I plan to go back to it next year. I’m going to continue with the Memrise course in 2022 but I truly believe that a little break from the regular study will be beneficial for my motivation. The thing is that I learn languages mainly for reading/listening purposes and I cannot really do it in Hebrew after so many months. I just can’t bring myself to learn a huge amount of Hebrew words to expand my vocabulary because I forget them quickly anyway and I mess them up. So yes, a little break is all I need at this moment.

And hopefully, I will have some time for a new language :) ok, I know it’s not logical to put Hebrew on hold instead of concentrating all the efforts on it but I do feel it’s the right moment to start Bulgarian. I will finish first one more Hebrew course on my list so I’ll elaborate more on Bulgarian in February/March when I actually start learning it.

Other than that, in 2021 I rediscovered the joy of reading books so I’ll try to read 25 books in 2022. I will also try to go back to reading magazines in foreign languages because it really helped me expand my vocabulary in my “maintenance languages” in the past.

I don’t really use other forums or social media so I thought it would be ok to put here some non-language learning goals related to health/nutrition, and by doing that I will probably be more prone to stick to them. The lockdowns we had in 2020 were detrimental for my weight and health but I got back on track to a more healthy lifestyle. Over the course of the last 12 months, I lost 18% of my initial weight (and I weigh now exactly as much as I weighed before getting married 6 years ago). Intermittent fasting was a real game-changer for me so there is no turning back to “5 meals a day”, and I plan to lose 10% of my body weight by the end of 2022. I’m still addicted to sugar/cakes/candies and whatever sweet is out there, so I will concentrate on eliminating sugar from my diet in 2022. The same applies to red meat but that’ll be much easier as I eat it only 2-3 times a month anyway. I also stopped eating bread, salt and dairy products but giving up on sugar is so much harder! I’ll continue to do my usual bit of exercising every day and when we finally move to our new house, I plan to start jumping rope.

So that’s it, this post is very chaotic and sorry for that bit on health goals but I was inspired by Caromarlyse’s log where she wrote “including some other goals here will make me more likely to keep to them”. Totally agree!
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