Radioclare's 2021 log (Russian, Croatian)

[Radioclare]

5 April
Another day off work today I mainly spent it reading in English though.

Russian
The only thing I did in Russian was 30 minutes of grammar after breakfast this morning. I finished verbs of motion yesterday and the next topic in Schaum's is participles. The bit I was studying today was about active present participles. I took a deep breath when I got to the exercise at the end, expecting it to be difficult, but actually it was quite straightforward; rather than having to form the participles themselves, which I would probably have struggled with, it just required rewriting given sentences with participles as sentences without participles. That was much easier

Total - Russian: 30 mins

[Radioclare]

6 April
Back to work today. I missed 48 emails over Easter. Lucky me

Russian
I just did a short topic in Schaum's tonight about past active participles. Again the exercise wasn't very hard, just rewriting a sentence with a participle as a sentence without a participle. I'm actually nearer the end of this textbook than I realised, so it definitely does feel achievable to finish by the end of this month.

After a few days off and eating a lot of chocolate I really didn't feel like going on the treadmill tonight, but I did in the end to watch an episode of 'Татьянин день'. Both Татьяна 1 and 2 are getting on my nerves a bit at the moment. The star of the show is Татьяна 1's 4-year old daughter, who hates Татьяна 1's new love interest and is making his life a misery.

Total - Russian: 62 mins

[Radioclare]

7 April
Today was a day which made me glad I'd handed in my notice Some people are very hard to deal with.

Russian
I finished active participles yesterday, so today's topic in Schaum's was passive participles. Honestly, I don't feel like my Russian is at a level where passive participles even make it onto the list of things I'm worried about not being able to do, so I didn't get too stressed out about trying to master this content

Total - Russian: 34 mins, Croatian: 45 mins

[Radioclare]

8 April
Another pretty frustrating day at work.

Russian
I didn't have a lot of motivation to do Russian this evening, so I didn't get as far as opening Schaum's. I did watch an episode of 'Татьянин день' while on the treadmill. I have been finding this series less than exciting at times, but today's episode actually had quite a lot of action. It ended with Татьяна 1 confronting Татьяна 2 about the fact that she sabotaged her court case, with the result that Татьяна 1 spent 4 years in prison. Татьяна 2 did this on purpose so that she could get with Татьяна 1's former fiancé, Сергей, who Татьяна 2 is now married to. Сергей still doesn't know that Татьяна 1 was in prison, or that Татьяна 2 put her there, or that while Татьяна 1 was in prison she gave birth to his daughter. But there's still at least 150 episodes to go, so plenty of time for him to find out

Total - Russian: 45 mins

[Serpent]

I got my 30 minutes of Russian in before I went out, continuing with verbs of motion in Schaum's. Today was what I regard as the more difficult verbs of motion, including вести and везти. I am still struggling to remember which of these verbs is which; I need to come up with some sort of trick to tell them about, but so far I'm failing to think of anything sufficiently catchy.

spelling-wise, native speakers mix them up as well we have to think consciously of whether it's веду or везу.
везти is also related to везение, luck. as an impersonal verb it means to luck out, ie be carried by luck.
the best pun i've seen on this was in Minsk airport:

IMG_2271.JPG (344.48 KiB) Viewed 139 times

if you know any related words like провести this may also help

I even stopped to look up a couple of words, like "brijest" (elm).

Wiktionary says берест also exists in Russian (and this is where the name of Brest comes from), but most people would associate it with берестяные грамоты, the oldest mundane writings in East Slavic, written on birch bark (берестá/берёста).
They're most commonly associated with the republic of [Veliky] Novgorod. Ok I can't help linking to the page about Onfim the school kid

Elm is вяз in Russian but I only really come across it in translated contexts like Кошмар на улице Вязов (haven't actually seen it) or the wands in HP. Here this tree is definitely less important culturally than oak, birch, maple. (wait is this where the name of Вязьма comes from? Apparently no, but it's very telling that I never thought about this despite passing through the town whenever I went to Belarus)

[Radioclare]

spelling-wise, native speakers mix them up as well we have to think consciously of whether it's веду or везу.
везти is also related to везение, luck. as an impersonal verb it means to luck out, ie be carried by luck.

I'm glad it's not just me who has to think about it

I'm not sure I would even recognise an elm tree to be honest. It's definitely not a word I've learned in any other language.

9 April
Today was another really frustrating day at work. Very glad it's the weekend now.

Russian
It was the sort of day that required wine with dinner, so I haven't done very much this evening. I watched a Russian Progress video about German words in Russian. Some of them were quite obvious, like штраф or бухгалтер, but I unexpectedly ended up learning a new word in German (Schlagbaum), which is used in Russian as шлагбаум. I honestly don't think I've ever seen this word in German before, but as far as I understand it's like one of those barriers that you have at the entrance to a car park and which lifts up to let the cars in. I'm not even sure what the correct word is for this in English

That was only a short video anyway, so I watched a couple of other things, including an episode of Томас и его друзья. I haven't watched one of these for ages, so I was hoping to notice an improvement in my Russian comprehension. I did definitely notice some improvement, but overall I actually still found parts of it quite hard. Listening comprehension in Russian is obviously still something I need to work on a lot.

Total - Russian: 32 mins

[Caromarlyse]

I watched a Russian Progress video about German words in Russian. Some of them were quite obvious, like штраф or бухгалтер, but I unexpectedly ended up learning a new word in German (Schlagbaum), which is used in Russian as шлагбаум. I honestly don't think I've ever seen this word in German before, but as far as I understand it's like one of those barriers that you have at the entrance to a car park and which lifts up to let the cars in. I'm not even sure what the correct word is for this in English

The comments to the video are quite interesting: German speakers saying they'd use Schranke, not Schlagbaum, and noting that both Losung and Lösung exist in German (the former quite archaic, apparently, but being the inspiration for лозунг, despite what is said in the video). The comments + wiktionary + Leo dictionary don't seem to think плацдарм is particularly German, which is reassuring, as I didn't recognise it as being German! But interesting all the same.

[gsbod]

It was the sort of day that required wine with dinner, so I haven't done very much this evening. I watched a Russian Progress video about German words in Russian. Some of them were quite obvious, like штраф or бухгалтер, but I unexpectedly ended up learning a new word in German (Schlagbaum), which is used in Russian as шлагбаум. I honestly don't think I've ever seen this word in German before, but as far as I understand it's like one of those barriers that you have at the entrance to a car park and which lifts up to let the cars in. I'm not even sure what the correct word is for this in English

I believe in English it's the somewhat mundane "arm barrier". The German version is better.

[Nogon]

I watched a Russian Progress video about German words in Russian. Some of them were quite obvious, like штраф or бухгалтер, but I unexpectedly ended up learning a new word in German (Schlagbaum), which is used in Russian as шлагбаум. I honestly don't think I've ever seen this word in German before, but as far as I understand it's like one of those barriers that you have at the entrance to a car park and which lifts up to let the cars in. I'm not even sure what the correct word is for this in English

The comments to the video are quite interesting: German speakers saying they'd use Schranke, not Schlagbaum,

For me (a native German speaker), a Schlagbaum is a special kind of Schranke, a more important, official one. A Schlagbaum would be used at a border, or maybe at the entrance of a military facility, while at the entrance of a car park there is a Schranke.

[Radioclare]

Thanks everyone, that's really interesting

The comments to the video are quite interesting: German speakers saying they'd use Schranke, not Schlagbaum, and noting that both Losung and Lösung exist in German (the former quite archaic, apparently, but being the inspiration for лозунг, despite what is said in the video). The comments + wiktionary + Leo dictionary don't seem to think плацдарм is particularly German, which is reassuring, as I didn't recognise it as being German! But interesting all the same.

I hadn't read the comments but I was totally confused by плацдарм and лозунг, so that's good to know

I believe in English it's the somewhat mundane "arm barrier". The German version is better.

Wikipedia says boom barrier which I'm certain I've never heard in English before Arm barrier makes more sense to me.

For me (a native German speaker), a Schlagbaum is a special kind of Schranke, a more important, official one. A Schlagbaum would be used at a border, or maybe at the entrance of a military facility, while at the entrance of a car park there is a Schranke.

That's interesting! I think I would have understood Schranke. At least, I think I've seen it used in context of the barrier across a road at a level crossing

This conversation has reminded me that I spent over a year watching a Croatian telenovela set at the Croatian/Bosnian border, where a significant amount of the action took place in front of one of these barriers