Radioclare's 2021 log (Russian, Croatian)

[Caromarlyse]

A treadmill, a bottle of non-alcoholic wine... What's going to be next?! Got to be a guinea pig (or a porpoise)

[Radioclare]

27 February
It was nice and sunny today It finally feels like spring is coming.

Russian
I made a start on second-conjugation verbs in Schaum's this morning before going for a walk. Later in the day I watched a Russian Progress video about Kaliningrad, the conclusion of which seemed to be that there isn't a lot worth seeing in Kaliningrad. I also persevered with my goal of writing 500 words at the weekend, which took around 45 minutes. I'm still not exactly enjoying this writing, but I don't think it's as painful as it was at the start of January.

Croatian
I watched an episode of 'Drugo ime ljubavi' while on the treadmill. I'm up to episode 147 out of 175 so a lot of the storylines are at a pretty exciting point now I also spent quite a lot of time reading in Croatian this afternoon and I finished the novel I was reading, 'Propali kongres'. It was genuinely a really good story

Total - Russian: 89 mins, Croatian: 217 mins

[Radioclare]

28 February
The second sunny day in a row! I went for a walk along the canal with my boyfriend and it was so warm on the way home that I even took my jumper off. It's a big change from a few weeks ago when I was permanently shivering inside the house

Russian
I didn't get around to reading any Twilight yesterday so I made up for that this morning and read two chapters straight after breakfast. I do think that reading so many thousands of words by the same author is helpful, kind of like the reading equivalent of watching a telenovela. I'm now 60% of the way through the fourth book and I do feel like reading Twilight novels in Russian is getting faster and less difficult. I guess it remains to be seen whether this skill is transferable to other books

Today was a day when I was due to watch Russian while on the treadmill but rather than watching "Татьянин день", I decided to watch a new travel video by Антон Птушкин. This one was about Hawaii and if you can stop yourself questioning why he thought it was a good idea to travel to Hawaii unnecessarily during a pandemic, it's a really good video I enjoyed it anyway and learned quite a bit about Hawaii, a place about which I knew absolutely nothing beforehand.

Total - Russian: 130 mins, Croatian: 50 mins

[Radioclare]

1 March
The weather was back to being grey, cold and damp today, so business as usual

Russian
Schaum's went way over my head tonight. I started with a paragraph about verbs with nonsuffixed stems, which are apparently classified according to whether the final consonant of the verb stem has a consonant which is resonant or obstruent. I have no idea what those words mean I took a deep breath and started reading the first subsection, which was about nonsuffixed verbs with the resonant stem "в"... then I turned the page and found that there are only three verbs of this type in the entire Russian language. Three! So honestly, it would be ten times quicker to just memorise the conjugation of those three verbs than to try and understand the explanation. And it turns out one of the three verbs is жить, which I already know how to conjugate perfectly well, and another one is плыть, which I think I could have made a fair attempt at conjugating given all the RT exercises on verbs of motion I did last year.

I had to read two more chapters of 'Breaking Dawn' to recover from all this grammar I'm two thirds of the way through the novel now

Total - Russian: 87 mins, Croatian: 45 mins

[Radioclare]

2 March
Slightly less grey today, but still rather cold.

Russian
Still working my way through lists of different types of verbs in Schaum's. Today I covered verbs with the stem -ой, verbs with the stem -ий and probably some more that I've forgotten. I also read three chapters of 'Рассвет' (72% through now) and watched an episode of 'Татьянин день' on the treadmill. This was quite an exciting one in terms of storyline, but even more exciting was the fact that it's tipped me just over the threshold of having watched 50 'films' for my Russian Super Challenge

This means that I've officially completed half a Super Challenge in both Russian and Croatian now. Stats as follows:

Russian: 74 books, 50 films
Croatian: 54 books, 71 films

So I'm feeling fairly confident that I should reach 100 films for Russian by the end of this year, so long as I can keep up the habit of watching it regularly on the treadmill.

Total - Russian: 132 mins

[Radioclare]

3 March
It was wet at lunchtime, so I didn't get out for a walk. Then something unexpected kicked off at work in the afternoon and I ended up having to work later than expected.

Russian
Because I didn't go out at lunchtime, I did a walk on my treadmill instead. Today was a Croatian day for the treadmill but I didn't have time to get my laptop sufficiently warmed up to play my Croatian soap (my laptop is like me - it takes a while to wake up ) so I was limited to whatever entertainment I could watch on my phone. I ended up watching an Anton Ptushkin video in Russian about Japan. I know very little about Japan, so that was pretty interesting.

I was too tired by the time I finished work in the evening to do any grammar, but I read three more chapters of 'Breaking Dawn' so I'm 79% of the way through the pdf now

Total - Russian: 123 mins, Croatian: 45 mins

[Radioclare]

4 March
I did get out for a walk today, which was good. I then spent the afternoon dealing with a mess of someone else's making, which was less good. I'm feeling a bit fed up at the moment.

Russian
I did do some grammar this evening though and I finally got through all the verbs with resonant/obstruent consonants. Well, I may have skimmed over some verb types. I am a bit tired of verbs now

I read another couple of chapters of Twilight. I reckon I might finish the book this weekend. And I watched an episode of 'Татьянин день' on the treadmill. One of the disconcerting things about the fact that the action has suddenly skipped forward five years is that they've given as many characters as possible really odd hairstyles, to try and make them look sufficiently different to how they did at the start of the series. One of the male characters now looks like Sonic the Hedgehog and it's very difficult to take him seriously

Total - Russian: 119 mins

[Radioclare]

5 March
Friday - yay! I drowned my sorrows with another glass of non-alcoholic wine this evening

Russian
I couldn't face any more verbs this evening, so I didn't open Schaum's. I read in Russian for two hours instead, with the result that I got to the end of 'Рассвет'. That was 635 pages towards my Super Challenge and the fourth book that I've finished in Russian this year. I only managed five Russian books from May - December 2020, so Russian reading is definitely something which is going well for me this year

Total - Russian: 126 mins, Croatian: 45 mins

[Radioclare]

6 March
I had a nice relaxing day at home today and spent quite a lot of time reading in English, so I didn't spend as much time on languages as I sometimes do at weekends.

Russian
After lunch I took a deep breath and opened Schaum's. Actually, I was pleasantly surprised; now that I've got past the interminable list of verb types, the next section was about imperfective vs perfective verbs, which was far more useful and interesting

After spending so much time reading in Russian yesterday, I didn't start a new book today. I did subject myself to my weekly Russian writing challenge and got to 500 words within about half an hour, which is possibly the quickest writing speed I've achieved. It felt a bit pointless, because it feels like I'm just rearranging the same words in slightly different orders, but I guess any kind of writing is better than zero writing.

I was planning to go on the treadmill twice today rather than going outside for a walk, but in the end I decided to do one longer session and get all my steps in one go. As I finished reading the fourth book in the Twilight series yesterday, I decided to try watching the first Twilight film in Russian. I've watched the films once before when I was doing my first Croatian Super Challenge, but on that occasion the audio was in English with Croatian subtitles. The Russian version of the films seem to be dubbed, which I think makes them more useful for the Super Challenge. It took me around 80 minutes to get to 10 000 steps, so I didn't get to the end of the film but I got over halfway through and might finish the rest tomorrow. I found it significantly easier to understand than the Russian series I'm currently watching. Partly that was familiarity with the story, of course. Part of it was also the actors speaking more slowly than in the series and also in general, speaking less. The series is more or less constant conversation, whereas I guess films by nature tend to have more pauses and music and shots of scenery etc, so overall it felt like there was less audio to understand. This was the first film I've watched in this Super Challenge, anyway

Total - Russian: 147 mins

[Radioclare]

7 March
Today was nice and sunny and I went for a walk down the local canal.

Russian
I got plenty of steps in the sunshine and so I didn't end up going on the treadmill later and finishing the Twilight film in Russian. Maybe I'll finish it later this week instead.

I did spend half an hour or so on Schaum's. Continuing with the theme of aspect, the section I was studying today was mainly about the situations in which you use perfective verbs. It all makes so much sense when you read the theory and examples in the textbook, but I still feel like I make far too many mistakes with this when I write (in Croatian too).

German
I've started reading another book in the Game of Thrones series in German. This one is called 'Der Thron der Sieben Königreiche'. It's the third book in German, but because each English book seems to be translated into two German books, it's effectively the first half of the second book in English. I had plenty of time to spend reading today and I'm over 100 pages into it already

Total - Russian: 38 mins, Croatian: 45 mins, German: 99 mins