Radioclare's 2022 log (Russian, Croatian)

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
User avatar
jeff_lindqvist
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3135
Joined: Sun Aug 16, 2015 9:52 pm
Languages: sv, en
de, es
ga, eo
---
fi, yue, ro, tp, cy, kw, pt, sk
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2773
x 10462

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

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Mon Aug 15, 2022 5:31 am

Radioclare wrote:I am ashamed of how many books I have in the German part of my to-read pile. Today I started reading a novel called 'Flugangst 7A' by Sebastian Fitzek. I'm only about 50 pages in at the moment but my expectations are high; I normally find Sebastian Fitzek's books extremely exciting.


I've read two of his works (in Swedish), including the one you're reading right now. Another two are available at the libraries, and another two have been purchased and are on their way.
2 x
Leabhair/Greannáin léite as Gaeilge: 9 / 18
Ar an seastán oíche: Oileán an Órchiste
Duolingo - finished trees: sp/ga/de/fr/pt/it
Finnish with extra pain : 100 / 100

Llorg Blog - Wiki - Discord

User avatar
Radioclare
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2250
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:59 pm
Location: England
Languages: Speaks: English (N), Esperanto, German, Croatian
Learns: Russian
x 10434
Contact:

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

Postby Radioclare » Mon Aug 15, 2022 10:06 pm

I haven't found a Sebastian Fitzek book that I didn't like that. Although I do tend to find that I start a book thinking it's about one thing, but by the time I get to the end it turns out to have been about something else entirely :lol:

15 August
Fairly productive day at work. I've mostly blocked my social media again, which helps. Went out to see a friend this evening so not a big day for language learning.

Russian
I knew I was going out so I cleared my Memrise reviews at lunchtime. I also went for a short walk over lunch and listened to a Russian with Max podcast. This one was answering questions about Russian verbs from listeners of the podcasts. So there was an explanation of reflexive verbs and also some practical examples of the differences between perfective and imperfective verbs. I found I got on a lot better with the podcast with the distraction of walking.

Total - Russian: 33 mins, Croatian: 50 mins
8 x

User avatar
Radioclare
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2250
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:59 pm
Location: England
Languages: Speaks: English (N), Esperanto, German, Croatian
Learns: Russian
x 10434
Contact:

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

Postby Radioclare » Tue Aug 16, 2022 9:54 pm

16 August
Had to go into the office for 4-hour meeting today. In-person meetings are tiring!

Russian
I got up a bit earlier than I strictly speaking needed to so that I could have 20 minutes or so on my treadmill before going out. I need it to wake me up in the morning! That wasn't long enough to watch a Croatian TV episode, so I listened to a Russian with Max podcast instead.

Later when I was on the train I cleared all my Memrise reviews. For some reason I had loads of them today. It passed the time on the journey at least!

Total - Russian: 41 mins, Croatian: 18 mins, German: 83 mins
9 x

User avatar
Radioclare
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2250
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:59 pm
Location: England
Languages: Speaks: English (N), Esperanto, German, Croatian
Learns: Russian
x 10434
Contact:

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

Postby Radioclare » Wed Aug 17, 2022 10:03 pm

17 August
A day working from home, but quite a busy one. I had to give someone some bad news this afternoon, which is never fun.

Russian
I wasn't able to go out for a walk at lunchtime but I took half an hour's break a bit later and went on my treadmill for some extra steps. I was trying to find something fairly short to watch and YouTube recommended me an old Anton Ptushkin video about a pre-Covid road trip through Europe. I hadn't watched this one before and it was fun; he drove from Ukraine through Romania, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia and Croatia, so there were lots of nice shots of places I've visited. Also a few places - particularly in Albania - which are still on my list of places I really want to go. So that was fun :)

Total - Russian: 48 mins, Croatian: 54 mins, German: 97 mins
10 x

User avatar
Radioclare
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2250
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:59 pm
Location: England
Languages: Speaks: English (N), Esperanto, German, Croatian
Learns: Russian
x 10434
Contact:

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

Postby Radioclare » Thu Aug 18, 2022 9:28 pm

18 August
I started something I thought was only going to take an hour this morning... and 5 hours later I was still working on it. One of those days!

Russian
I did something a bit different this evening and decided to subscribe to the Sistema Kalinka video course. Honestly, I don't know whether this is a good idea :lol: But you can cancel within 7 days so for now I'm going to have a play around with it and see what I think. I just felt like I needed to try something different because I feel like I'm just learning the same Russian grammar over and over again, forgetting one topic as soon as I move on to something else. Also, I couldn't face trying to watch a telenovela tonight and this was convenient procrastination :lol:

Total - Russian: 101 mins, Croatian: 58 mins
5 x

User avatar
Radioclare
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2250
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:59 pm
Location: England
Languages: Speaks: English (N), Esperanto, German, Croatian
Learns: Russian
x 10434
Contact:

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

Postby Radioclare » Fri Aug 19, 2022 10:07 pm

19 August
Finished work early today but didn't do anything very exciting because I needed to walk to the bank and pay in a cheque. When I got there, the bank refused to let me pay in the cheque on the basis that I'm only allowed to do this at a "cash service branch", which this was not. Never heard the term "cash service branch" before so I was a bit bemused. Also this exact same bank let me pay in an identical cheque a couple of months ago. Never mind, seeing as I was out I went to the pub instead.

Russian
Before I went out I started the second chapter on verbs in TY Russian Grammar. This chapter starts with an explanation of aspect, followed by some fairly straight forward exercises. People make a lot of fuss about aspect in Slavic languages but this is actually quite low down on my list of things which I struggle with in Russian grammar :lol: Later I did a bit of Memrise and played around with the Sistema Kalinka course some more.

German
I finished reading the Sebastian Fitzek novel. It was really good! That's only the fourth novel I've read in German this year so I really need to make some more progress with my to-read pile in the near future.

Total - Russian: 115 mins, Croatian: 66 mins, German: 136 mins
6 x

User avatar
Radioclare
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2250
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:59 pm
Location: England
Languages: Speaks: English (N), Esperanto, German, Croatian
Learns: Russian
x 10434
Contact:

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

Postby Radioclare » Sat Aug 20, 2022 6:08 pm

20 August
Didn't have anywhere I needed to go today, which was nice. Though I do have a trustee meeting to go to this evening.

Russian
I did the chapter on the future tenses in TY Russian Grammar; both the compound tense, which is easy, and the simple tense, which I've always found harder. I did the exercises in the book, which were useful, but I feel like I need a lot more practice before I've fully mastered it.

I started reading a new book - 'Тайна голландских изразцов' - but I haven't made enough progress with it yet to comment on it sensibly. It's the third book in a detective series I've been reading by Daria Desombre.

While I was doing the housework this morning I also listened to couple of Russian with Max podcasts.

Croatian
I've started the next chapter in Hrvatska na drugi pogled, which is about Croatian cultural institutions. Not going to lie, it's a bit dry :lol:

I'm really enjoying watching Novine though. I realised today that it's written by Ivica Đikić. I read a novel of his called 'Sanjao sam slonove' and really enjoyed it; it was about the zookeeper who looked after the elephants on Brijuni. More recently I also read a really harrowing non fiction book which he wrote about Srebrenica.

Esperanto
Worked on the translation of another children's book this afternoon. Not the one I was working on last week (I still need to sort that out!) but a much shorter one for really young children. I learned the word "klapo" for "flap" when I realised I needed to translate "lift the flaps". Despite the book being so simple, there's still a couple of words/phrases I'm still thinking about whether I've got right.

Total - Russian: 91 mins, Croatian: 71 mins, Esperanto: 69 mins
8 x

User avatar
Radioclare
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2250
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:59 pm
Location: England
Languages: Speaks: English (N), Esperanto, German, Croatian
Learns: Russian
x 10434
Contact:

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

Postby Radioclare » Sun Aug 21, 2022 4:22 pm

21 August
Fairly quiet day here again. I'm going to the Azores in a couple of weeks so have been trying to sort out some stuff for that. Slightly hampered at times by not speaking Portuguese.

Russian
Nothing too exciting today. I finished the second chapter about verbs in TY Russian Grammar. Today's section was about the past tense, which again is a comparatively straight forward topic in Russian. I can see that the third verbs chapter is about verbs of motion so I predict that one will be considerably more difficult :lol:

Croatian
I finished the first season of Novine this morning. Definitely going to watch the second season and probably the third season too. I found it a bit difficult to get into to start with because there were so many different characters, but now I've really got into it :)

Esperanto
Spent some time this morning tidying up the Esperanto translation I started a while ago. When I came back to my first draft with a bit of distance I found that some bits of it were ok, but there were some bits I managed to get a lot better on the second attempt. And a couple of sentences I'm still not sure I've found the right solution for.

Total - Russian: 65 mins, Croatian: 65 mins, Esperanto: 95 mins
10 x

User avatar
Radioclare
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2250
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:59 pm
Location: England
Languages: Speaks: English (N), Esperanto, German, Croatian
Learns: Russian
x 10434
Contact:

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

Postby Radioclare » Mon Aug 22, 2022 8:46 pm

22 August
I had to go to the office today. Not my local office, but the head office which is a bit further away. Now I feel tired. And I went out for a meal on the way home, which involved a little bit of wine, so that's meant I've not had the most energetic of evenings.

Russian
But that's where this Kalinka course I've signed up to comes into its own. Even if I'm tired and I don't feel like doing anything, I can watch a video of someone talking about Russian. Somehow I have less resistance towards watching a video of someone talking about Russian grammar than I do to opening a Russian textbook and reading about grammar, so I feel like this course is something I can do on days when I lack the motivation to do anything else. I couldn't decide whereabouts in the course to start so in the end I decided to start at the beginning - which means everything I'm learning is really basic at the moment - but I quite like the method. It's a bit like Assimil, but as a video.

Croatian
I started the second season of Novine on the treadmill this morning before work. I'd just got to a place where I felt confident I knew who every character was and now it's a new season and there are new characters to get my head around :( I'm going to watch as much as possible of this season before I go on holiday in a couple of weeks, but I did see on YouTube today that new episodes of the telenovela Kumovi, which I'm currently about 100 episodes into, are coming soon as well. So when I get back to the Azores I'll have a dilemma about what to watch :)



Total - Russian: 87 mins, Croatian: 53 mins
6 x

User avatar
Radioclare
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2250
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:59 pm
Location: England
Languages: Speaks: English (N), Esperanto, German, Croatian
Learns: Russian
x 10434
Contact:

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

Postby Radioclare » Tue Aug 23, 2022 8:27 pm

23 August
I had to go to the office again today, but my local office this time.

Russian
That meant I had to get up earlier than normal to catch a train. I didn't get up sufficiently early to watch an episode of Novine on the treadmill, so I just did 25 minutes or so and watched a couple of short Russian with Max videos. I would comment on what they were about but I honestly can't remember :oops: I'm not really a morning person so I don't think watching Russian before 7am is probably a very good way for me to learn!

On the train I cleared my Memrise reviews. And this evening I've started the fourth lesson of the Kalinka course. Because I've started at the beginning it's all pretty basic stuff; today's grammar topic was the nominative plurals and prepositional singulars of nouns. I did learn something new, though; I was previously oblivious to the fact that it's "на заводе" and not "в заводе". So that was interesting :)

Total - Russian: 91 mins, Croatian: 5 mins
4 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: galaxyrocker and 3 guests