Radioclare's 2022 log (Russian, Croatian)

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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2022 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Sun Sep 25, 2022 5:41 pm

25 September
I didn't have any plans today either so it was a good day for languages :)

Russian
Inspired by yesterday's progress, I spent another half an hour reading 'Тайна голландских изразцов' and I found myself enjoying the story a bit more. I've blocked all my social media again in an attempt to help my focus and it felt like this was perhaps starting to pay off.

I've been debating all week what I should do next textbook-wise and eventually I decided to go back to the New Penguin Russian Course. Slightly controversial decision as my copy is so battered it's at risk of falling apart :lol: But I do feel like this is the best course I've done in Russian and I still feel like I need some more reinforcement of grammar. I'm hoping that I'll get more out of the course second time around because I won't be overwhelmed by trying to learn all the long vocabulary lists - theoretically I already know all the words because I have them in a Memrise course - so hopefully I can just concentrate on the grammar and exercises. Having half the Internet blocked may help with this too!

I made some more progress with the Kalinka video course this morning; I've finished the seventh lesson, which was mainly about the past tense. I'm aiming to work through this fairly swiftly now I'm back from holiday because it's a monthly subscription.

Croatian
I started a new chapter in 'Hrvatska na drugi pogled' this morning. This one is about the media in Croatia and I found it quite interesting, especially given the bits about newspapers given that I'm currently in the middle of watching 'Novine'. I watched another episode on the treadmill this morning and I'm getting back into it now.

German
I finished reading 'Der Unterhändler' this afternoon. Really good thriller. I feel like it's taken me ages to read but it was 528 pages, so a decent length. Before bed last night I also watched a German film called 'Ballon'. This was a Christmas present, I think actually a present for the Christmas before last, and it's been weighing on my conscience that I haven't watched it yet. I'm not a big film fan but this turned out to be better than I expected; an exciting story about a couple of families trying to flee East Germany in a hot air balloon. I have to confess that I ended up turning on subtitles because I felt like I was missing bits. I think my Croatian listening skills are now much better than my German listening skills. On the one hand, this shocks me :shock: On the other hand, this is perfectly logical because it is years since I systematically watched TV or listened to podcasts in German and I have devoted huge amounts of time to Croatian listening in recent times.

Total - Russian: 148 mins, Croatian: 80 mins, German: 102 mins (not including the film, which would be an extra 120 mins for yesterday)
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Re: Radioclare's 2022 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby DaveAgain » Sun Sep 25, 2022 9:17 pm

Radioclare wrote:German
I finished reading 'Der Unterhändler' this afternoon. Really good thriller. I feel like it's taken me ages to read but it was 528 pages, so a decent length. Before bed last night I also watched a German film called 'Ballon'. This was a Christmas present, I think actually a present for the Christmas before last, and it's been weighing on my conscience that I haven't watched it yet. I'm not a big film fan but this turned out to be better than I expected; an exciting story about a couple of families trying to flee East Germany in a hot air balloon. I have to confess that I ended up turning on subtitles because I felt like I was missing bits. I think my Croatian listening skills are now much better than my German listening skills. On the one hand, this shocks me :shock: On the other hand, this is perfectly logical because it is years since I systematically watched TV or listened to podcasts in German and I have devoted huge amounts of time to Croatian listening in recent times.
I think Ballon is a true story too.
2 x

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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2022 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Mon Sep 26, 2022 7:46 pm

DaveAgain wrote:I think Ballon is a true story too.

Yes, it is! I didn't realise that before I watched it either.

26 September
A fairly quiet start to the week, working from home. Today is the first day I've noticed it starting to feel cold. And I got rained on when I went for a walk at lunch.

Russian
But I did at least bring my headphones on the walk and take the opportunity to listen to two Russian with Max podcasts. The first was about a potential law which would enable the internet in Russia to be censored/restricted (this was a podcast from 2019, so nothing recent) and the second was about Russian literature. I have to admit that I have never read any of the Russian classics in English and I'm not actually sure whether I want to because they all sound quite depressing :lol: This evening I completed the next chapter of the NPRC, which was just a gentle introduction to verbs and the prepositional case.

After I updated my log yesterday I started watching another DVD which I got as a Christmas present and have failed to watch so far this year. This was a crime series called 'Zasada przyjemności' which is simultaneously set in Poland, Ukraine and the Czech Republic. I've only watched one episode so far and it seems to be about some rather gory murders which happen in those three countries and are all somehow linked. It has English subtitles, thankfully, because I can't understand any of the Polish in particular. But what surprised me when I started watching it last night is that all the dialogue set in Ukraine is actually in Russian. I don't know why but for some reason I'd just convinced myself it was going to be in Ukrainian, to the point where I listened to the first few sentences and thought "Oh, I'm getting better at understanding Ukrainian!"... and then realised it was Russian :lol: Not going to count any of the time spent watching this towards my Russian figures here because it would be too hard to estimate how much dialogue is in which language. But if I'd realised that part of the series was in Russian, I'd probably have motivated myself to watch it earlier this year!

Total - Russian: 76 mins
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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2022 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Tue Sep 27, 2022 6:33 pm

27 September
My other half got back from his Esperanto trip abroad last night. So today we went out for breakfast to celebrate :)

Russian
I did a little bit of Memrise during the day. Then this evening I needed to go on the treadmill to get some extra steps so I decided to watch another episode of 'Обручальное кольцо'. I'm five episodes in now and I think it's going to be quite similar to 'Татьянин день' in the sense that it's about a naive young girl who comes to Moscow from a small place (without any money or anywhere to stay, of course) and then gets taken advantage of and deceived by lots of bad people. Probably all while wearing a skirt, because it seems to be an unwritten rule of these types of telenovelas that women can't wear trousers :lol:

Total - Russian: 49 mins
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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2022 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Wed Sep 28, 2022 6:15 pm

28 September
Reasonably productive day at work today. I'm not enjoying this cold weather though!

Russian
I didn't have time to go out for a walk at lunchtime, so I went on my treadmill for 25 minutes or so and watched a Russian with Max video on YouTube. This one was about 34 common Russian phrases worth learning... and I'm sure it was a very good video... but it wasn't the most exciting to watch while on the treadmill. It would probably have been better to watch while sitting down with pen and paper to take notes. Otherwise I just did a bit of Memrise this evening.

Total - Russian: 34 mins, Croatian: 56 mins
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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2022 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Thu Sep 29, 2022 8:19 pm

29 September
My other half has tested positive for Covid so I'm just waiting to see whether I catch it too. My throat feels a bit weird but my throat often feels a bit weird so I'm still holding out hope I'll be okay.

Russian
I've done a little bit of Memrise and then after work I went on the treadmill and watched another episode of 'Обручальное кольцо'. I'm six episodes in now and I felt like my comprehension today was a little bit better than it has been. One thing I really like about the series is that the first few minutes of each episode before the credits roll is a narrator summarising the story so far and particularly what happened in the last episode. That's really useful because the narrating voice is really clear, so it means that if I've had horrific comprehension of one episode - or maybe just lost focus partway through it and missed something critical - I've got a second chance to understand what happened :)

Total - Russian: 46 mins, Croatian; 53 mins
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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2022 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Fri Sep 30, 2022 6:17 pm

30 September
I was in denial yesterday - I've now tested positive for Covid :lol: But I haven't felt too ill for most of the day. Definitely not so ill that I wouldn't have gone to the office in pre-pandemic times.

Russian
After work I went on the treadmill rather slowly and started to watch the 7th episode of 'Обручальное кольцо'. I only watched about 20 minutes of it then, stopping when I hit 10 000 steps, but I watched the rest of the episode later this evening. Today we had another popular telenovela scene; the female lead character meets a gypsy who reads her palm and tells her she is going to have a difficult life. I remember this happening at the start of 'Larin izbor' as well!

Croatian
I watched the penultimate episode of season 2 of 'Novine' on the treadmill this morning and it's getting really exciting. I'm hoping I feel well enough to go on the treadmill and watch the final episode tomorrow!

Total - Russian: 54 mins, Croatian: 53 mins
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Re: Radioclare's 2022 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Caromarlyse » Sat Oct 01, 2022 9:49 am

I also have a DVD of Ballon that I haven't yet watched... Along with a handful of other "Wende" films. I was not intending to watch them on my own, but the versions I have don't have subtitles, so watching them will have to be a solitary activity - hence the procrastination/delay.

Hope you don't get too ill!
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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2022 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Sat Oct 01, 2022 2:30 pm

Thank you! Yes, my procrastination was similar - I knew it wasn't something my other half would be overly enthusiastic about watching - and I kept putting off finding time to watch it myself. But I did enjoy it when I eventually got round to it :)

1 October
Wow, we're in the final quarter of the year! I feel a bit rubbish today; not necessarily worse than with a standard cold, but I think today will be the day I lose my streak of 10 000 steps. So far I've only managed 757 :lol:

Russian
I haven't lost my Russian streak, though! I did a little bit of Memrise, then spent about 45 mins reading 'Тайна голландских изразцов'. Progress with this continues to be slow, as I think this is the first time I've opened it since last week.

After that I revised chapter 5 of the NPRC. Pretty basic stuff about the prepositional case but refreshing my memory on these basics is never wasted. I'm actually not very strong on prepositional pronouns - often get confused with the dative ones - so it was useful to recap those. I was recently doing something where I forgot that it should be "на почте" rather than "в почте" so it's good to get reminded of things like that too.

Croatian
I did watch the final episode of season 2 of 'Novine' this morning, though sitting down rather than on the treadmill. Quite a depressing ending! The bad guy wins, which is depressing in and of itself, but more depressing is that if the bad guy had lost, the good guy turned out to be pretty bad too. So it doesn't really paint a very cheerful picture of Croatian politics. But given the week we've just had in UK politics, who am I to judge?! :lol: I think I'll probably persevere and watch the third season before going back to my telenovela so that I don't forget all the characters' names again.

Otherwise I spent a bit more time reading my Croatian-language textbook, 'Hrvatska na drugi pogled'. I finished the chapter I started last week, which was about the media in Croatia. Some of it was quite dry but there were a few interesting bits of information that made it feel more worth reading than the previous chapter on cultural institutions :)

Total - Russian: 77 mins, Croatian: 84 mins
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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2022 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Sun Oct 02, 2022 2:18 pm

2 October
Felt a bit rubbish again this morning, but think I'm starting to feel a bit better this afternoon. I have lost my streak for the 10 000 steps though.

Russian
I did a bit of Memrise first thing, though I think I made more errors than usual. I was struggling to focus a bit, so I did spend 20 minutes or so reading 'Тайна голландских изразцов', I don't think I made it through 10 pages. Never mind. I read chapter 6 of the NPRC, which was mainly about the accusative. Like yesterday, it was good revision.

Total - Russian: 45 mins, Croatian: 34 mins
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