Radioclare's 2021 log (Russian, Croatian)

[Radioclare]

14 January
I was interviewing for half of the day today and then I had a series of meetings, so it was late by the time I started doing any work. I finished up around 8.30, which meant I didn't have lots of time left for other stuff.

Russian
I started studying a section about adjectives used as nouns in Schaum's. There was quite a bit of new vocab, which was useful, but one new word which really confused me: уборная. The translation given in my book was "half bath". What on earth is a half bath? Surely something either is a bath or it isn't? I googled уборная and as far as I can tell, it just seems to be a toilet.

I also read another chapter of my Agatha Christie. Still no idea who the murderer is!

Croatian
Today should have been an episode of Drugo ime ljubavi on the treadmill. Unfortunately, Microsoft had other ideas and so I spent 45 minutes of walking watching my laptop fail to install a Windows update instead

Total - Russian: 35 mins

[Radioclare]

15 January
I was hoping for a quiet Friday and what I got was the opposite. Never mind, at least it's the weekend now.

Russian
I read another couple of chapters of 'В 4:50 с вокзала Паддингтон'. I'm doing pretty well with reading little and often, I feel like I might finish it within the next few days.

My computer made it through to the other side of its Windows update, so I was able to watch an episode of Татьянин день while on the treadmill. If you ever want to watch this series you just shouldn't read my log, because I'm probably going to spoiler the entire thing. In today's episode, Татьяна 1 was feeling dizzy and fainted in prison. We all know there's only one reason why female characters faint in telenovelas... yep, that's right, Татьяна 1 is pregnant. It was immediately obvious but I expected the series to drag the revelation out for weeks, so I was pretty surprise that the prison arranged a pregnancy test for her straight away. In 'Drugo ime ljubavi' they managed to drag out a fairly obvious pregnancy for at least 40 episodes But the suspense in this series seems to be whether or not Татьяна is going to tell the father, who doesn't know she's in prison and thinks she's gone off to start a new life in Norilsk. I'm guessing she won't tell him, because although it may feel like I've been watching this for ages, there are actually still 190 episodes to go.

German
I have also been reading a novel in German this week, but I've forgotten to log any of my time. It's called 'Splitter' and it's by Sebastian Fitzek, another novel in the 'psychothriller' genre. I hesitate to say what the book is about, because I often find that I think I know what his books are about at the beginning and by the time I get to the end I find it was about something different entirely But I can cautiously say that this one seems to be about a man who has taken part in an experiment to have unpleasant memories wiped from his brain... and that that experiment seems to have gone badly wrong. Very exciting anyway.

Total - Russian: 81 mins, Croatian: 23 mins, German: not sure, but I've read 122 pages

[Nogon]

I also read another chapter of my Agatha Christie. Still no idea who the murderer is!

The gardener, of course!

[Radioclare]

I also read another chapter of my Agatha Christie. Still no idea who the murderer is!

The gardener, of course!

Thanks for the link, that was really funny There is actually a gardener in this book, although I'm not sure he's had a big enough role yet to turn out to be the murderer. We'll see

16 January
Do you think anyone will notice if I edit the goals in the first post of my log to say I'm not doing output any more?

Russian
I spent 2 hours attempting to write in Russian, which resulted in 584 words. It remains to be seen how many of them were wrong. I was only writing about my cats, which I thought was a fairly easy theme, but still... I think I definitely prefer input to output.

I did spend half an hour reading 'В 4:50 с вокзала Паддингтон' earlier, which was more enjoying. And I made a bit more progress with the adjectives chapter in Schaum's, completing a section on neuter adjectives used as nouns.

Croatian
I didn't really feel like going on the treadmill this evening, but I finally got to watch the episode of 'Drugo ime ljubavi' that the Windows update made me miss on Thursday

Total - Russian: 172 mins, Croatian: 46 mins, German: 60 mins

[Radioclare]

17 January
I had nothing which I needed to do today, which was great

Russian
I started the section on comparatives in Schaum's grammar. This is still something I feel like I haven't properly mastered. The bit I was studying today was about the formation and use of the compound comparative, which is the easy bit

Once I'd finished my daily dose of grammar, I allowed myself to read Agatha Christie for an hour and that was enough to finish the book. It wasn't the gardener! But it was someone who I hadn't suspected at all. Towards the end I was almost certain I knew who the murderer was, but that turned out to be a red herring. Anyway, that's my first Russian novel of the year completed and it gives me 352 pages towards my Russian Super Challenge.

Several very kind people corrected my Russian writing on Lang-8, so I then spent some time studying my corrections. I estimate that I wrote 61 sentences, of which only 21 didn't have a mistake. Oh dear! But some of the mistakes were just commas. There seem to be a lot of commas in Russian and I don't feel like commas are my strongest point even in English. There were several sentences in which my only mistake was missing a comma before the conjunction и. I didn't know this one needed a comma, so I guess that's something learned. Otherwise I don't think there was a particular theme to the corrections. There were several sentences where I got the aspect wrong, so that's perhaps something to focus on more next time. In all honesty I didn't give aspect much thought when I was writing yesterday, I was mainly focussing on vocabulary and cases. And I didn't seem to make too many mistakes with cases, so I guess that paid off.

Later in the day I listened to a Russian Progress podcast while on the treadmill. Since I stopped commuting, I normally just listen to these podcasts while sat at my computer. But this one was 38 minutes which was longer than my attention span could deal with without doing something else at the same time, hence the treadmill.

Croatian
I focussed on writing in Croatian today. I wrote about 1000 words about the pandemic and working from home. It was obviously a lot easier than writing in Russian and it also felt slightly easier than I found writing in Croatian last Sunday, so perhaps the practice really does help. I can also probably write about twice as quickly in Croatian as in Russian.

German
I finished reading 'Splitter' this evening. Wow, mind absolutely blown. It's the sort of book where when you get to the end you have to start reading other people's reviews on Goodreads to check whether you have actually understood it properly.

Total - Russian: 150 mins, Croatian: 78 mins, German: 138 mins

[Cèid Donn]

Several very kind people corrected my Russian writing on Lang-8

Lang-8 is still up? I have an account (maybe 2 actually) but I was under the impression that that company that owns it was in the progress of shutting it down several years ago. I never had great luck with getting corrections myself, except with Swahili and Indonesian, and I felt bad about how overwhelming I felt with the number of people asking for English corrections.

There were several sentences in which my only mistake was missing a comma before the conjunction и. I didn't know this one needed a comma, so I guess that's something learned.

A while back I read one site that said Russian punctuation was a lot like English's and then another that said it was very different so I admit I'm very confused myself on this topic and since I'm not that eager to get into writing Russian just yet, it's not something I've researched further. But looking at the text for Metro 2033, it seems comma are used sparingly: it's not used before и if it's a list of items, but is used before it if it's another complete sentence. I think. I'll have to look into this.

[Mista]

Regarding commas in Russian, I've learned that you are always supposed to use a comma between clauses. Or in other words, always use them before and after a subordinate clause, and between main clauses (unless you use a period, of course).

(In my mind, this is "the Danish comma principle", as this usage is one of the most notable differences between written Danish and Norwegian)

[Radioclare]

Lang-8 is still up? I have an account (maybe 2 actually) but I was under the impression that that company that owns it was in the progress of shutting it down several years ago. I never had great luck with getting corrections myself, except with Swahili and Indonesian, and I felt bad about how overwhelming I felt with the number of people asking for English corrections.

Yes, it is still up! I also wasn't sure because I hadn't used it much for a couple of years and I'd heard something about it closing. I think perhaps you can't register for an account if you don't already have one. It seems pretty easy to get corrections for Russian to be honest. Over the past couple of weeks I think I've had several corrections within 24 hours of posting something. When I tried posting in Croatian that probably took 3 or 4 days to get a correction.

I feel bad too - I do try to correct English but looking at my stats I seem to have received twice as many corrections as I've managed to make

A while back I read one site that said Russian punctuation was a lot like English's and then another that said it was very different so I admit I'm very confused myself on this topic and since I'm not that eager to get into writing Russian just yet, it's not something I've researched further. But looking at the text for Metro 2033, it seems comma are used sparingly: it's not used before и if it's a list of items, but is used before it if it's another complete sentence. I think. I'll have to look into this.

Regarding commas in Russian, I've learned that you are always supposed to use a comma between clauses. Or in other words, always use them before and after a subordinate clause, and between main clauses (unless you use a period, of course).

(In my mind, this is "the Danish comma principle", as this usage is one of the most notable differences between written Danish and Norwegian)

Thanks both for the thoughts on commas Examples of the sort of mistakes I made are the following:

Я снова пошла к врачу и в этот раз врач мне сказал, что у меня есть астма.
Врач дал мне ингаляторы и через некоторое время мне стало легче дышать.

Я снова пошла к врачу, и в этот раз врач мне сказал, что у меня есть астма.
Врач дал мне ингаляторы, и через некоторое время мне стало легче дышать.

So essentially I think you're both right and there should be a comma between clauses, including when a new clause is introduced by и.

[Radioclare]

18 January
I got 24 emails over the weekend. It feels like whenever the pubs are closed people just decide they've got nothing better to do at the weekend than work

Russian
After so much language learning over the weekend I had a bit of a rest today and only did the bare minimum. This involved half an hour with Schaum's grammar after dinner. I was studying the formation of the short comparative, which I've probably studied at least 10 times before but never mind.

Croatian
I watched another episode of 'Drugo ime ljubavi'. A character who has gone missing and is in Zagreb turned up in the background of a selfie two other characters took on a trip to Zagreb. Zagreb might not be the world's largest city but it's definitely big enough for this not to be a plausible storyline

Total - Russian: 31 mins, Croatian: 45 mins

[cjareck]

Lang-8 is still up? I have an account (maybe 2 actually) but I was under the impression that that company that owns it was in the progress of shutting it down several years ago. I never had great luck with getting corrections myself, except with Swahili and Indonesian, and I felt bad about how overwhelming I felt with the number of people asking for English corrections.

Yes, it is still up! I also wasn't sure because I hadn't used it much for a couple of years and I'd heard something about it closing. I think perhaps you can't register for an account if you don't already have one. It seems pretty easy to get corrections for Russian to be honest. Over the past couple of weeks I think I've had several corrections within 24 hours of posting something. When I tried posting in Croatian that probably took 3 or 4 days to get a correction.

I feel bad too - I do try to correct English but looking at my stats I seem to have received twice as many corrections as I've managed to make

Hehe, now I understand why I've always had a problem to receive English corrections The problem is that there probably are much more English learners than English native speakers. In the case of Polish, it seems to be the opposite, so you receive plenty of corrections almost instantly. The same rule applies to HiNative.