Radioclare's 2022 log (Russian, Croatian)

[Radioclare]

6 November
Feeling recovered from my jab today. Not the most exciting of weekends though; I seem to have spent most of the day on Esperanto accounting tasks.

Russian
I didn't feel well enough for exercise yesterday so I lost another day of my 10 000 steps thanks to Covid (10 days failed so far this year!). But today I felt better I went out for a walk and listened to two Russian with Max podcasts. The first one was an interview discussing education. The second one didn't have a clear theme but there was some discussion of alcohol in Russia which was interesting. Otherwise I just cleared my Memrise reviews but they've been going a bit crazy over the past week or so, so that was actually quite a lot of activity; nearly half an hour.

Total - Russian: 87 mins, German: 30 mins (reading)

[Radioclare]

7 November
Went out for dinner this evening, which has limited subsequent potential to be productive.

Russian
While I was waiting for my food I managed to clear some Memrise reviews, although not all of them. After getting back down to zero over the weekend, I logged in today and found I had more than 700 words due for review I think my Memrise might be slightly out of control

Once I got home I felt tired so I decided to do another lesson of the Red Kalinka video course. This is quite a good activity for doing when tired and/or drunk, because it just involves watching videos and doing some relatively straightforward grammar exercises. Not sure whether this makes it worth paying for or not But I am making progress with it, even if not quite as quickly as I initially planned. Today's lesson was about the accusative, so not rocket science, but I still quite enjoyed the practice exercises.

Total - Russian: 104 mins, Croatian: 50 mins

[Radioclare]

8 November
Starting to feel seriously cold in the house now. My boyfriend bought me an absolutely amazing hot water bottle though and last night it made me so warm that I ended up on top of the duvet at one point

Russian
I felt like I'd been a bit lazy last night so tonight I decided to be more diligent and read a bit more of 'Игольное ушко'. I'm actually really enjoying the story and I feel like I'm understanding it pretty well. I was actually wondering today whether my Russian comprehension is now better than my BCMS comprehension was back when I first read this book in Serbian. It was a long time ago when I read it in Serbian, way back in 2014 when I was doing my first Super Challenge, so possibly.

Anyway, the words which I looked up today included "коварный" (treacherous) and "дробовик" (shotgun).

I did try to make an effort with my Memrise reviews but I lost the will to live when I spent 10 minutes clearing them and found the overall number of reviews due had actually increased at the end of that time rather than decreased For the first time this month I wished I was doing the 6WC because that does tend to give me a bit more motivation to stick with boring tasks.

Total - Russian: 63 mins, Croatian: 51 mins

[Radioclare]

9 November
Most of my evening has got sucked up by Esperanto work again. The year end is a busy time when you're treasurer.

Russian
Not a very exciting update tonight. I wanted something easy to listen to so I continued with the recorded Russian with Max livestream that I was listening to the other day. The sound quality on it really wasn't very good though so it wasn't the best listening practice ever.

Otherwise I've just been doing some Memrise this evening. I opened Memrise and found I had > 1600 reviews in Russian. I'm not convinced I even know 1600 Russian words so that's a bit ridiculous

Total - Russian: 52 mins, Croatian: 49 mins

[Radioclare]

10 November
Had to go to the office today for a breakfast meeting. That necessitated getting up way earlier than I've got used to post-pandemic. And an awful lot of coffee.

Russian
Feeling tired this evening and had lots more Esperanto-related admin to deal with, so a very boring update today: Memrise, Memrise and more Memrise. But the good news is that I am now back to Memrise zero! Hopefully the crazy wave of reviews is over for another six months or so.

Total - Russian: 51 mins, Croatian: 22 mins

[Radioclare]

11 November
Yay, the weekend again - and unlike last weekend, I don't feel like I've got Covid

Russian
I went out this evening so it's another fairly boring update, I'm afraid. I watched an old Russian with Max video which I figured was going to have a travel theme, but it actually turned out to be more about cars and repairs to cars. My car-related vocabulary is not very good in any language! I learned the word "домкрат" which is a jack. To be honest, I didn't really know what a jack was in English. But it seems like it's a thing you use to raise your car a bit off the ground when you want to change a tyre. Otherwise I've just done some more Memrise. The reviews keep coming!

Total - Russian: 33 mins, Croatian: 52 mins

[Radioclare]

12 November
I thought I was going to get loads of language stuff done today but actually I didn't. I did a bit of cleaning, had some family round to visit and did some more Esperanto-related admin that ended up taking longer than I expected.

Russian
I did make an effort to clear my Memrise reviews this morning. They weren't too bad today, mainly just the words I'd got wrong during my massive review-clearing attempts over the past few weeks.

This evening I spent half an hour reading 'Игольное ушко'. The chapter I was reading today involved a boat and there were some words which I attempted to look up. The first one was "бак", which wiktionary tells me is Russian for "forecastle". Absolutely zero idea what a forecastle is in English - and I wouldn't have looked it up if I was reading in English - so that's not a word I'm going to worry about remembering! The second one was "бакен" which is a buoy. At least I know what a buoy is

Total - Russian: 44 mins, Croatian: 52 mins

[Mista]

This evening I spent half an hour reading 'Игольное ушко'. The chapter I was reading today involved a boat and there were some words which I attempted to look up. The first one was "бак", which wiktionary tells me is Russian for "forecastle". Absolutely zero idea what a forecastle is in English - and I wouldn't have looked it up if I was reading in English - so that's not a word I'm going to worry about remembering! The second one was "бакен" which is a buoy. At least I know what a buoy is

Do you know how to pronounce "forecastle" then?

The Oxford Dictionary of English says:
forecastle /ˈfəʊks(ə)l/ (also fo'c'sle)
noun
the forward part of a ship below the deck, traditionally used as the crew's living quarters

Stor engelsk-norsk ordbok says:
forecastle subst. /ˈfəʊksl/
(sjøfart) bakk, ruff (forut)

Can't say I'm familiar with either of these Norwegian words, but one thing I did notice is that one of them is actually the same word as the Russian one. Unsurprisingly, according to my Norwegian dictionary, the origin of this word is Dutch and Low German. I guess it came to Russia with Peter the Great.

[Radioclare]

Do you know how to pronounce "forecastle" then?

The Oxford Dictionary of English says:
forecastle /ˈfəʊks(ə)l/ (also fo'c'sle)
noun
the forward part of a ship below the deck, traditionally used as the crew's living quarters

Stor engelsk-norsk ordbok says:
forecastle subst. /ˈfəʊksl/
(sjøfart) bakk, ruff (forut)

Can't say I'm familiar with either of these Norwegian words, but one thing I did notice is that one of them is actually the same word as the Russian one. Unsurprisingly, according to my Norwegian dictionary, the origin of this word is Dutch and Low German. I guess it came to Russia with Peter the Great.

Wow No, I had no idea that that's how it's pronounced! You learn something new every day

13 November
Didn't have any obligations today - beyond a bit more Esperanto admin - so it was a better day for languages.

Russian
Rather than watching Croatian TV on the treadmill this morning, I decided to watch some videos from the Red Kalinka course I'm subscribed to. I haven't been progressing very speedily with this lately so it seemed like a good opportunity. I spent 90 minutes on the treadmill in the end (just a slow walk!) and that was enough to get to the end of another lesson. I do feel like being on the treadmill improved my concentration on the content; when I'm sitting down, my mind does have a tendency to wander. I chose to start at the beginning of the course so I'm still at a fairly basic level. Some of the grammar today was about numbers and I was impressed to see that the tutor explicitly explained that the numbers 12, 13, 14 are not classed as "numbers ending in 2, 3, 4" for the purposes of Russian grammar. I already understood this but only because of the many painful hours I spent being confused by the same concept in Croatian grammar. It's not intuitive to me that 12 isn't a number ending in 2 so I've been surprised how many textbooks assume this is obvious and fail to clarify.

Later on in the day I read a bit more of 'Игольное ушко' and also finished chapter 10 of the NPRC, which I think I'd stopped partway through a couple of weeks ago. This was about numbers too actually and introduced what I think is one of the most screwed up concepts in the whole of Russian grammar; the fact that - while nouns of all genders are genitive singular after 2, 3, 4 - the adjectives accompanying them are genitive plural if the nouns are masculine/neuter but nominative plural if the nouns are feminine. Even years after first encountering this concept, I can't decide what it is that upsets me about it the most; the fact that plural adjectives are accompanying singular nouns or the fact that the case of the adjectives varies depending on the gender of the nouns. Neither of these strike me as things which should be allowed

German
I forgot to log all the time but earlier this week I finished reading 'Sturm der Schwerter' in German. I don't think I'm counting pages of German read for any of my goals, but it was 768 so quite a long book. I've now moved on to reading 'Die Königin der Drachen', which is the next part of the Game of Thrones saga in German.

Total - Russian: 154 mins, Croatian: 3 mins, German: 48 mins

[Radioclare]

14 November
Plenty more charity finance admin to get through this evening. I think I made the right decision not to sign up for the 6WC.

Russian
I got a pleasant surprise when I logged into Memrise this evening - not too many reviews at all.

I watched the most recent Russian with Max video, which was an interview with an American guy studying in Kazakhstan. This American's Russian was absolutely incredible; you would not believe how quickly and fluently he spoke! It may be the quickest that anyone has ever spoken Russian in a Russian with Max video I almost found it depressing to see that anyone can learn to speak Russian that well; I'm not sure I can speak that fast even in Esperanto.

Once I'd watched it I put the text of the interview into LWT to work through in more detail. I spent about 45 minutes on it, but because I haven't used LWT that much for Russian yet there were still quite a lot of basic words that I needed to mark. I've tried to clear most of those these evening and then I'll aim to come back to the more difficult words that I genuinely don't know and need to look up later this week.

Total - Russian: 81 mins, Croatian: 55 mins