Radioclare's 2022 log (Russian, Croatian)

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Radioclare
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Radioclare's 2022 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Sat Jan 01, 2022 5:21 pm

Starting a new log for the new year. I feel like I should have put some more thought into this and come up with an exciting title, but never mind :D

I should perhaps also have put some more thought into what my goals are going to be in 2022. Overall I feel like 2021 went pretty well so I'm not planning any drastic changes for 2022.

Having thought about it for a while this afternoon, I think my goals are going to be as follows:

1. Continue to study Russian for at least 30 minutes per day
As I said in my 2021 end-of-year post, I can't think of a good reason to stop this habit. I've signed up to the 365 Challenge for a specific challenge in Russian. Last year I was actually signed up for a generic challenge with the thought that I could count Croatian time towards my 30 minutes as well, but in reality I continued doing at least 30 minutes of Russian every day on top of whatever Croatian I fitted in. So this year it seems simpler just to sign up for Russian.

2. Read 5 000 pages in Russian
The number 5 000 is a bit arbitrary to be honest but I read in excess of this (5 630 pages) in 2021 so it feels like it ought to be achievable. I reckon I have 14 unread Russian novels in my to-read pile, so finding reading material isn't going to be a problem, and if I do run out I think it's fairly easy to buy Russian e-books (compared to the nightmare that is trying to find an e-book in Croatian!). I like having a measurable target and the reason for setting a high number is that I feel like over the past couple of months I've just started to see an improvement in my Russian reading. That suggests that the 2020-21 Super Challenge which I did enabled me to make progress, but nowhere near enough for Russian to be a language that I can read in for pleasure. When I made a breakthrough in Croatian comprehension it was after a double challenge, so my strategy is to more-or-less repeat the quantity I read last year and hope my progress becomes more significant.

3. Listen to/watch 10 000 minutes in Russian
This is a stretch goal :lol: I only managed 8 255 minutes in 2021 so I think I'll need a real focus on Russian listening in 2022 to achieve 10 000. But I've set the target because I think that's what I need. As with reading, I think the Super Challenge helped... a bit... but nowhere near enough. For a start I only listened to about half as much Russian audio in this Super Challenge as I did in my first Croatian Super Challenge, so I clearly couldn't expect to make as much progress. And secondly, I think Russian is a much harder language to listen to than Croatian (which is more phonetic, so you don't have the same disconnect between hearing how a word sounds and wondering how on earth it's spelt!). So I think I need to do a vast amount of Russian listening in 2022 if I want to make a real breakthrough in Russian listening. Whether or not I achieve the goal might depend on whether I can find something truly interesting to watch. So far I haven't found something to watch in Russian that's absolutely grabbed me, to the extent that I can hardly wait to watch the next episode. But there is way more TV content available in Russian than there is in Croatian, so I think I just need to make more of an effort to look for interesting things.

4. Read 12 novels in Croatian
I'm not going to set a page goal for Croatian, because I think I'm at the stage when I should focus on quality of reading vs quantity. But by my calculations I have 16(!) unread Croatian books in my to-read pile, so I'd like to reduce that number. Reading one book in Croatian every month feels like it should be achievable.

5. Listen to/watch 10 000 minutes in Croatian
This should be easily achievable if I continue watching one episode of a Croatian telenovela on the treadmill every morning. I've only quantified the goal because I don't want to end up doing less listening in Croatian than I do in Russian.

6. Increase my confidence with Russian grammar
Not a very measurable goal, but I'm not sure how else to formulate this. There are still parts of Russian grammar which I either don't understand or which I just can't get to stick in my head. My main plan is to work through 'A Comprehensive Russian Grammar' so possibly my goal should be to get to the end of that resource by the end of 2022 (but I haven't looked at the number of pages/exercises to decide whether I think that's actually achievable or not).

7. Improve my Croatian
Again, not measurable, but I feel like putting my focus on Russian for the past couple of years has meant that my Croatian has very much been in "maintenance" mode. I don't think it's got any worse, but I don't think it's got noticeably better. I'm at a level where I can comfortably read detective fiction and enjoy telenovelas; that's not a bad level to have, but I'd like to do better than that. I haven't got a firm plan of exactly what I'm going to do, but I think it needs to be something different to what I've been doing for the past couple of years. Perhaps I need to revise some grammar. Perhaps I need to listen to more difficult TV (i.e. find programmes above the intellectual level of a telenovela) or watch TV that features different regional accents. Doing that probably requires a VPN, but I guess that's not an insurmountable obstacle. Perhaps I need to do some intensive reading and force myself to look up all the words I don't actively know, even if I can passively guess what they mean. I can be quite lazy with reading in Croatian at the moment because I'm at a level where I don't struggle to understand the action/dialogue in a novel, but often there are unknown words in more descriptive prose that I don't understand but don't look up because they don't hamper my understanding of what's going on (i.e. perhaps I don't understand some of the adjectives in a sentence but I can tell that it's describing a landscape, so I accept that level of comprehension and move on to a more exciting sentence). So that feels like it might be something to address. I guess I'll have to try some different things and see what works.

8. Read 12 novels in German
I have 12 unread German novels in my pile; I'd like to have read them all by this time next year. I read 11 German novels in 2021, so this feels like it should be achievable :)
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Re: Radioclare's 2022 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby DaveAgain » Sat Jan 01, 2022 6:04 pm

Radioclare wrote:8. Read 12 novels in German
I have 12 unread German novels in my pile; I'd like to have read them all by this time next year. I read 11 German novels in 2021, so this feels like it should be achievable :)
If you read 12 German novels this year, I fear you will still find 12 unread novels in your to-read pile. There is no natural logic to this, but the things do multiply.
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Re: Radioclare's 2022 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Sat Jan 01, 2022 9:55 pm

DaveAgain wrote:If you read 12 German novels this year, I fear you will still find 12 unread novels in your to-read pile. There is no natural logic to this, but the things do multiply.

I'm hoping that if I manage to read 12, they will indeed multiply and I'll get another 12 for Christmas to read in 2023 :lol:

1 January
I guess I'm going to keep updating my log every day. I think it helps create an extra little bit of pressure for me to keep up the 30 minutes per day consistency with Russian.

Russian
I finished reading a Sherlock Holmes book in Russian yesterday, so that meant I was able to start the new year today with a new book. After a bit of deliberation, I chose 'Убийство Роджера Экройда' (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd) by Agatha Christie. This book is definitely in the running for my favourite crime novel of all time; I can still remember my shock the first time I read it as a child and found out who the murderer was. So I know I'm going to enjoy re-reading it in Russian. I was initially planning to just read one chapter today but the first chapter turned out to be pretty short, so I ended up reading two chapters which was around 22 pages. I looked up the word "сплетни" (gossip). After I looked it up, I felt like it was a word I should already have known.

Otherwise just the usual Memrise (I didn't explicitly set a goal for Memrise because I don't want SRS to rule my life, but I'm trying to learn 10 words every day) and I did a bit of studying with 'A Comprehensive Russian Grammar'. I think I might abbreviate that to ACRG for the rest of this log, because it's really not a very catchy name :lol: Today's theme was those masculine nouns that unexpectedly have a plural with -a.

Oh, and I watched president Putin's new year speech on the Boost Your Russian YouTube channel, which had posted a version with Russian and English subtitles. I won't post the link here in case it's too political, although it wasn't a terribly political speech. I don't think I've listened to Putin speaking Russian before, so it kinda felt like a cool achievement to listen and understand at least some of what he was saying. He actually spoke really slowly and clearly, so I slightly regretted watching a version with subtitles; it would have been interesting to watch it without subtitles and see how much I really understood!

Croatian
Did my usual Memrise and watched an episode of 'Najbolje godine' on the treadmill before breakfast. This afternoon I decided to try something a bit more challenging, so I watched 'Dnevnik', the daily news, on the main Croatian TV channel HRT. I was pretty reassured that I understood most of it, but I did find that understanding required more concentration than when watching a telenovela. The sentences were longer and phrased in quite a formal way, which meant I sometimes had to listen to quite a lot of the sentence before I realised what it was actually about (a bit like in German, when you wait in suspense to get to the verb at the end of the sentence). I think it would do me good to listen to more "difficult" audio like this, although last time I tried watching the news regularly I got a bit bored by Croatian politics. Today's edition was all about new year celebrations around the world, so a reasonably interesting theme.

I also continued working with the monolingual textbook 'Hrvatska na prvi pogled'. The first chapter is about the geography of Croatia. I've been through the first couple of pages quite intensively, looking up all the words I wasn't 100% sure on and making a list of them. Not sure what I'm going to do with this list. Maybe it's worth putting into Memrise.

Total - Russian: 61 mins, Croatian: 108 mins
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Re: Radioclare's 2022 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Teango » Sun Jan 02, 2022 6:13 am

Great start to the new year, Radioclare! I hope you make massive strides forward in all of your languages and rock this forum in 2022!! 8-)
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Re: Radioclare's 2022 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Amandine » Sun Jan 02, 2022 8:51 am

Just had to say I know exactly what you mean about The Murder of Roger Ackroyd -- I also still remember my shock when I read it aged 12 or whatever. I had to put my Russian aside to focus on French but I do miss it so I definitely enjoy living vicariously through your log. Good luck!
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Re: Radioclare's 2022 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Sun Jan 02, 2022 11:07 pm

Thanks Teango :)

Amandine - I love reading detective fiction, but I can't think of any book where the twist has surprised me as much as that one! Maybe it's partly due to reading it as a child, but even as an adult I think it's really cleverly done.

2 January
Started taking the Christmas tree down today, which was sad. But there were actually a few hours of sunny weather this morning, which was nice. December was a ridiculously gloomy month in the UK; I heard on the radio this morning that there were only 27 hours of sunshine :(

Russian
I cleared my Memrise reviews this morning and read some more of 'Убийство Роджера Экройда'. Just one chapter today because it was a bit longer. I also like this book so much that I want to enjoy the re-reading and not rush through it. I looked up the word "кабачок" which is a marrow. I felt daft as soon as I looked this up because I should definitely have remembered that Poirot has retired to the country to grow marrows :oops: I also got temporarily confused because Google Translate gives "кабачок" as "zucchini" and then I had to look up "zucchini" because I couldn't remember what it was (it's the American word for a courgette). To be honest, I have no idea what the difference is between a courgette and a marrow, but I resisted the temptation to start googling that while I had the timer running for my Russian reading :lol:

I continued with the textbook ACRG - today's topic was more irregular plurals of masculine nouns. It started with nouns like стул, брат, муж, сын and I did quite well with the exercises on the nominative plurals of these. But I failed massively when it came to exercises on their genitive plurals, so that's something I need to spend some more time on tomorrow.

I felt tired after lunch so I sat down with a coffee to see if I could find something more exciting than Кухня to watch in Russian. I ended up trying the first episode of a series called 'Разведчицы' (Spies), which I chose mainly because vonPeterhof mentioned the word "разведчик" in my 2021 log a few weeks ago. The series is available on YouTube - I assume legally - and it even has subtitles. I'm a bit on the fence about whether using subtitles is helpful in the long term, but I turned Russian subtitles on for the first episode until I saw how difficult it was. I found it pretty difficult and the subtitles definitely helped me to keep track of the names of all the new characters. But it was also pretty exciting, so I'm definitely going to watch another episode.

Croatian
Nothing too exciting today, beyond my normal Memrise and watching an episode of 'Najbolje godine'. I did watch the midday 'Dnevnik' on HRT again and quite enjoyed it. It's only 15 minutes, so an easy amount of time to focus for, and I found it fascinating how different it was to the typical UK news. It was interesting to listen to some news that wasn't predominantly about either Brexit or Covid :lol: Covid did feature midway through the news bulletin, but the lead story was about a fatal car accident on Korčula and there were also quite long reports about a rescue operation for a mountaineer who fell on the highest peak in the Velebit range, plus the length of traffic jams at border crossings with Slovenia. I'm sure the news will become more political once the holidays are properly over and everyone's back at work, but for today at least it was oddly refreshing.

Total - Russian: 130 mins, Croatian: 71 mins
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Re: Radioclare's 2022 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Mon Jan 03, 2022 9:11 pm

3 January
It was nice and sunny again today, so went for a walk in the park. Back to work tomorrow unfortunately.

Russian
I read another chapter of Roger Ackroyd before I went out this morning. Don't think I found any interesting words to look up today.

Later in the afternoon I drank quite a large glass of mulled wine and for some reason(!) I didn't feel terribly energetic after that, so I decided to watched the second episode of the 'Разведчицы' series which I started yesterday. It's set in 1941 and about two girls from very different backgrounds who find themselves in prison and are recruited to train as spies. I really enjoyed today's episode and I found the more I got into it the less I looked at the subtitles, so that was good :)

Later in the evening I did do a little bit of grammar study and tried to go back over all those genitive plurals I got wrong the other day.

Croatian
I watched the 15-minutes 'Dnevnik' again today and Covid did feature as the main story, but one of the other main stories reported was just a traffic accident. It feels a little bit to me like watching local news in the UK, where there isn't really a lot of actual news to report but they have to somehow fill the time. It's also quite... I hesitate to say "amateur" as that sounds negative.... "low budget" might be a better expression. I've only watched it a few times and already there have been quite a few instances of things like news reports being cut off at not quite the right time, almost as if someone has pressed the wrong button :D I'm finding it more entertaining than the BBC news anyway!

German
This evening I've started reading a novel called 'Vanitas - Grau wie Asche' by Ursula Poznanski. It's the second in a series about a woman who is in police protection from the Russian mafia. I'm yet to find a book by Ursula Poznanski that I haven't enjoyed and so I'm already 85 pages into this one :)

Total - Russian: 106 mins, Croatian: 71 mins, German: 68 mins
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Re: Radioclare's 2022 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Tue Jan 04, 2022 9:46 pm

4 January
Back to work today. But the emails really weren't as bad as they used to be in my other job :)

Russian
After work I cleared my Memrise reviews and read another chapter of 'Убийство Роджера Экройда'. The murder has happened now, so things are hotting up. I looked up a couple of new words including "предварительный" (preliminary).

I did a little bit of grammar study, but only a little bit. The next section in my book was about masculine nouns which have the same plural in the genitive as in the nominative. Not a topic I'd ever given much thought to, but turns out there are quite a few nouns which fit that category. This section was followed by a section on the possible changes in stress patterns when masculine nouns are declined and this is the sort of thing which makes me think that I will never be able to speak Russian :lol: You can learn how to spell and pronounce a word in the nominative, but have no idea that the stress changes in other cases, or perhaps in the plural, and so still pronounce it incorrectly :(

Later in the evening I watched the third episode of 'Разведчицы'. I'm quite enjoying this, it's a bit like a Ken Follett story except it's Russian girls being parachuted into the occupied Baltic countries rather than English girls being parachuted into France. Today's was an exciting episode because war was declared.

Croatian
I've decided to give up on the random Memrise course I was studying and learn some of the new vocabulary on geography that I've extracted from the 'Hrvatska na prvi pogled' textbook. I already seem to have accumulated quite a lot of words, so I spent some time this evening putting them into Memrise. I ended up subscribing to Memrise again after my attempt to install Anki last year broke my computer.

I watched the midday 'Dnevnik' again. The lead story today was about a Croatian guy who went missing in Belgrade over New Year. Covid was the second story and in particular that Croatia had its first case of "flurona" (flu+corona") today. In general the Croatian coverage of the pandemic seems more interesting because it's reporting what the situation is in lots of different countries, not just internally. So today's report talked about Covid in Greece, France, Germany, the USA, Australia, China... the UK coverage I follow tends to be a lot more focussed on just what's happening in the UK.

Total - Russian: 88 mins, Croatian: 73 mins
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Re: Radioclare's 2022 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Wed Jan 05, 2022 11:04 pm

5 January
The novelty of being back at work has worn off now. Also the novelty of trying to be healthy :lol:

Russian
I cleared my Memrise reviews before dinner and then read a short chapter of Roger Ackroyd. Today's new word was "кинжал " (dagger). Probably not a very useful word for conversation, but a good one to know for detective fiction :)

I gave up on the section in the textbook about stress patterns in masculine nouns; it just felt like too much for me to take in right now. So this evening I started the section on the declension of neuter nouns. I figured neuter nouns were pretty easy, but the book revealed all kinds of exceptions I'd never thought about, so that was interesting. I did okay in the exercises, even though a lot of them focussed on genitive plurals.

I'm starting to get addicted to 'Разведчицы' so I watched episode 4 this evening. Lots of shooting and all very exciting. I'm still watching with subtitles because I want to maximise my understanding of what's going on, but I think there are only 12 episodes in total so I'm wondering whether it might be worth rewatching it at some point without the subtitles. We'll see. The important thing is that I've found something I'm enjoying watching :)

Croatian
Made a start on learning some of the geography vocabulary I've gleaned from 'Hrvatska na prvi pogled' in Memrise. I continued with my plan of reading the textbook intensively this evening and I'm reminded of why I don't normally do intensive reading; it's sooooo slooooow :lol: I'm finding it hard to believe that this particular chapter of the book is written at B2 level, because I've looked up several words today and not known what they mean in English, never mind Croatian. So today I learned that "petrografija" is Croatian for "petrography" and petrography is "a branch of petrology that focuses on detailed descriptions of rocks". I also looked up the word "fliš" and found that it is Croatian for "flysch". Wikipedia tells me that "flysch is a sequence of sedimentary rock layers that progress from deep-water and turbidity flow deposits to shallow-water shales and sandstones." This is definitely harder than anything I did in A Level geography at school; it feels like a university-level text.

Never mind, the objective was to read hard things so from that point of view I am succeeding!

Total - Russian: 105 mins, Croatian: 92 mins, German: 55 mins
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Re: Radioclare's 2022 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Thu Jan 06, 2022 11:19 pm

6 January
I had an afternoon of meetings which involved me doing a lot of talking and afterwards I felt pretty worn out.

Russian
Loads of Memrise reviews today for some reason but fairly easy words. I read another chapter of 'Убийство Роджера Экройда' and wasn't energetic enough to look up any words.

I was tempted to opt out of grammar, but the early January motivation carried me through :lol: Today's topic was the declension of neuter nouns ending in -e (the bit I did yesterday was only neuter nouns ending in -o). I thought I'd do okay on the exercises for this, but I got some of the genitive plurals wrong, again. I hate genitive plurals!

Watched the fifth episode of 'Разведчицы' a bit later to relax. The spies are on a mission which involves them posing as Orthodox nuns, so that was quite interesting to say. It felt like an episode where I wouldn't have understood a lot without the subtitles. Even with the subtitles there were some bits I wasn't quite sure of.

Croatian
I didn't have time to go out for a proper walk at lunchtime so I watched 'Dnevnik' on the treadmill. Covid was the lead story, followed by the saga of Novak Đoković in Australia. I read another few pages of 'Hrvatska na prvi pogled' this evening. The good news is that I got to the end of the section on rocks, so today's section was about climate. The climate vocabulary didn't seem quite so difficult, although there was a section on vegetation where I had to look up the names of lots of different trees. But otherwise it seemed more straightforward :)

Total - Russian: 120 mins, Croatian: 107 mins, German: 67 mins
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