Stell's log: Russian and Spanish

[stell]

Monday March 14 - last day of the Six Week Challenge!
- Memrise: 9 minutes
- Duolingo: 13 minutes
- Russian Accelerator: 53 minutes. Finished Unit 5 Lesson 5, listened to unit 5 podcast, and watched the first ten Unit 5 media clips.
- Russian Made Easy: 27 minutes. Flashcards, audio exercises and media clips for episode 27.
Total time: 1 hour and 42 minutes

Wow, those six weeks really flew by! It amuses me to think that on January 1st, I had absolutely zero intention to start learning Russian. After two months, I’m definitely committed, and I don’t regret my impulsive decision!

For the first four weeks of the challenge, I didn’t do any Spanish at all. In hindsight, that was a mistake. Once I added a few minutes of Spanish every day, I felt much more balanced and satisfied in my language learning. And it honestly didn’t take any time away from Russian. I didn’t replace Russian with Spanish; I simply added some Spanish where I’d normally be doing something in English.

Looking at my graph from the challenge, it’s easy to see that I spent the most time with Russian Accelerator. Russian Made Easy and Pimsleur were just about even.

I spent more time on Duolingo than I would have expected, but that’s probably because I was spending close to half an hour a day on Duolingo at one point, usually in two sittings. Now I’m more likely to only use it only once a day, for about 15 minutes. I think this is the perfect amount of time for me. It’s fun, it’s motivating, and it’s not overtaking my other resources in terms of content. For me, Duolingo is best used a not-too-serious supplement, and I prefer to use it to practice things I’ve already learned elsewhere.

Memrise is just where I want it to be, at under 10 minutes per day. This is my sweet spot for Memrise. Any more and I feel frustrated and tired, any less and I feel that I’m not progressing. Some of the sentences are too complicated, but I just work at recognizing them if producing them is too hard right now. Also, huge shout out to Memrise for their video content. I love all of the silly little videos.

So what’s next?

I want to finish the last three episodes of Russian Made Easy this week. I’m feeling a bit of a mental block with regards to Pimsleur. I just…don’t want to. So I think I’m going to put that away for now, even though I still have five units to go before finishing level 1. I’ll probably pull it out again at some point, but right now I’m not feeling it.

So, for the next few weeks…

-Finish up Russian Made Easy, and then focus on Russian Accelerator for 45-60 minutes per day
-Continue with daily Memrise reps and 15 minutes on Duolingo

And maybe that’s it? I really like how I’m progressing with Russian Accelerator. I also have the New Penguin Russian Course, and the Assimil book “Le nouveau russe sans peine”, but I’m not sure that I want to start a new resource right now. There are definitely advantages to each of them. The Penguin book is highly recommended for learning grammar, and I expect that it will take me a looooong time to get through. And I love that Assimil will give me lots of reading and listening practice. But I know that I don’t have enough time to dedicate to three major resources right now, so maybe for the next few weeks I'll just do what I'm already doing. I can add something new later on if I'm feeling the urge.

[stell]

I’ve finished Russian Made Easy! I really enjoyed my pace of two days per lesson: day one to listen to the podcast, and day two to create flashcards, do the audio exercises, and watch the video clips. I would highly recommend Russian Made Easy to anyone who’s starting Russian as a beginner, or anyone who just wants to dabble for fun.

Anyway, in the second-to-last episode, they introduce the “grammar terms” for the constructions that we’ve been practicing since day one. While I’ve been playing with Russian for two months now, I haven’t actually done any formal grammar study. Well, it turns out that Russian Made Easy actually introduced all six cases. Obviously this is extremely simplified, and only scratching the very surface, but it was kind of exciting to learn that I could independently produce at least one example of each case.

Here are the cases introduced in the course (and only formally named at the very end), and some examples for each:

Nominative:
Он хочет пиво.
Мне нравится пицца.

Accusative:
Он любит кофе.
Она хочет работу.

Dative:
Я дала подорок Марку.
Он дал Лене ручку.

Prepositional:
Вы живёте в Испании.
Мы на работе.
Ты живёшь в Торонто.

Genitive:
У меня есть собака.
У Светланы есть кошка.
У Влада есть сестра.

Instrumental:
Я люблю кофе с молоком.
Мама гаварила с Франком.
Папа говорил с Олгой.

There are probably some mistakes in there, but still...cool, right?

[stell]

I’ve been playing on the Study Time Calculator that a few people have mentioned on their logs: https://autolingual.com/study-time-calculator/
I realize that this calculator is nowhere near precise, but it’s still fun to plug in different variables and see what it spits out.

I tend to prefer multiple short sessions scattered throughout the day rather than one long one. I’m estimating my level at B2 in Spanish and A0 in Russian. (I may honestly be closer to A1 in Russian, but it doesn’t really matter. For this not-too-serious thought experiment, A0 seems safest.)

B2 -> C1 Spanish
30 minutes per day: one year
45 minutes per day: 9 months and 18 days
Either of these are perfectly acceptable.

A0 -> B2 Russian
30 minutes per day: 4 years, 1 month and 16 days
45 minutes per day: 3 years, 3 months and 3 days
60 minutes per day: 2 years, 5 months and 10 days
Of those three options, 60 minutes per day is definitely the most appealing.

So I suppose my long-term goal for the rest of the year should be 60 minutes of Russian and 30 minutes of Spanish every day. This doesn’t seem too ambitious or overwhelming.

My interest in Russian is curious even to myself. It is completely disconnected from current politics and horrific world events. In the past, I wanted to visit Ukraine and Russia, but I really don’t see that happening anytime in the reasonably near future. I’m not learning Russian for the classics either. I don’t really have any interest in reading Dostoevsky in Russian. Who knows, that may change in the future, but for now I don’t have any grand ambitions. So why am I learning Russian? I honestly don’t know. Because it’s fun and I enjoy the process? I guess that’s reason enough!

I've decided that it's time to learn my first Russian song: Одиночка by МакSим. I just love everything about it: the rhythm, the melody, the singer’s lovely voice.

*disclaimer: I have no idea what the song actually means yet, since the only words that I understand are утро and одна.



And here’s the karaoke version so that I can belt it out at the top of my lungs once I’ve learned the words:

[Caromarlyse]

My experience with Russian is that it takes much longer . But it's fun (when it's not frustrating...), so don't let that put you off. I might be particularly slow, too: you seem to have made great strides recently.

[stell]

My experience with Russian is that it takes much longer . But it's fun (when it's not frustrating...), so don't let that put you off. I might be particularly slow, too: you seem to have made great strides recently.

Haha! Yes, I fully expect that it will take me much longer than that! I’m putting no pressure on myself at all, and I’m just having fun learning the language.

[stell]

Spanish Update

Grammar: So I’ve been saying for a few weeks now that I need to revisit and refresh some basic grammar in Spanish. I have the Gramática de uso del espanol C1, but it’s still buried in a box somewhere in the basement. (Note to self: I’m going to have to finish unpacking one of these days.) I also have The Ultimate Spanish Review and Practice, but I find it utterly dull and depressing.

I couldn’t reset my old kwiziq account from a few years ago, so I made a new one, and got 7 days free premium. It’s really a fantastic resource! My placement quiz put me at B2, but I’m hopping around through all of the levels, because it’s actually the preterite that has been causing me the most issues when speaking. I’ve spent 15-20 minutes per day and completed 77 quizzes, and I’m really seeing some improvement in automaticity. I’m seriously considering splurging for a paid month. It’s a bit more expensive than a grammar workbook, but it’s much more motivating. I wouldn’t pay for more than a month, because I definitely think that I would lose interest, but a month might be exactly the right amount of time to reawaken my dozing verb conjugations.

Reading: I am THIS CLOSE to finishing La casa de los espíritus by Isabel Allende. I could have finished last night, but I absolutely needed to take a break from the sheer horror of what I was reading. I will probably finish it today or tomorrow…so I’ll post my thoughts on the book then.

Listening: I’ve listened to Democracy Now daily since I last updated for Spanish. I also listened to El mundo al día a few times. These are both good sources of news in Spanish (and Democracy Now has full transcripts, for anyone who needs a bit of support with native-Spanish audio), but the world news is so sad and horrific. I’ve decided that doubling up on Spanish-language news just isn’t good for my mental health, so I’ll just pick one per day from now on.

I also listened to a fantastic episode of Nómadas: Cali, la salsa de Colombia. I’ve spoken to a few tutors from Colombia this year, and it sounds like such a fascinating country. I would love to visit someday, although I’m less eager to travel now than I was pre-pandemic. I think I’ll need a bit more time before I’m ready to board a plane and be a tourist again. Anyway, Nómadas used to be my favourite RTVE podcast. I haven’t listened to it in years, and it felt so cozy and familiar to listen to it again! It’s the perfect mix of city noises, nature sounds, brief interviews, interesting stories, descriptions of art and architecture, and local music, all perfectly packaged in an hour-long episode.

Speaking: I spoke with a lovely Colombian woman living in Hungary last weekend, which was really fascinating. I love to learn about people’s trajectories, and how they end up where they are. I would happily book more sessions with her, but she is no longer opening classes when I’m available to talk, so I guess it was just a one-time conversation.

It’s just as well, because I’m feeling tired. It’s not speaking Spanish specifically that’s the problem, but conversations with people I don’t already know well feels like such an effort. I’m not feeling socially withdrawn or unhappy in general, but I’m just tired these days. So while my plan was to book weekly one-hour sessions with italki tutors, I’m not feeling it right now.

Russian Update

Really not much to say here! I’ve kept up with Memrise, Duolingo and my paper flashcards every day. I also completed three more lessons in Russian Accelerator. The past few days I’ve been dealing with a throat infection and feeling pretty sick, so I’ve only been doing Memrise and Duolingo. It’s nice to have something easy that I can do on the couch or in bed when I’m not feeling well.

Overall, I definitely spend more time on Russian than I do on Spanish every day. But there’s really not much to say about my Russian learning, because it’s just slow and steady and not too exciting for anyone but me!

[stell]

I FINALLY finished La casa de los espíritus!

This is a book that I often see recommended to Spanish learners, but I didn’t find it to be particularly easy. It was poetic, descriptive and vivid - but it definitely wasn’t an easy read for me.

There’s a lot of darkness and brutality and violence in this book. While some parts were problematic for me, I felt ok reading them for the most part…and then I got towards the end of the book. I can’t talk too much about it without posting spoilers for those who haven’t read the book, but there were some horrifically graphic scenes. The violence wasn’t gratuitous, and it served the story, but I felt really upset and uncomfortable reading it, and I had a hard time sleeping afterwards. If I’d known about a few of the scenes in this book, I might have passed on the book altogether - which I suppose would have been a shame, because it really is beautifully written.

While I can't imagine that anyone would ever describe the book itself as funny, Allende has such a gift for writing absurd comedic scenes. I laughed out loud a few times while reading (a rare thing for me), such as in this scene where Nicolás convinces everyone that he’s a trained flamenco dancer:

A la menor provocación, ofrecía una demostración. Saltaba sobre la mesa del comedor, la gran mesa de encina que había servido para vela a Rosa muchos años antes y que Clara había heredado, y comenzaba a batir palmas como un desenfrenado, a zapatear espasmódicamente, a dar saltos y gritos agudos hasta que conseguía atraer a todos los habitantes de la casa, algunos vecinos y en una ocasión a los carabineros, que llegaron con los palos desenfundados, embarrando las alfombras con las botas, pero que terminaron como todos los demás, aplaudiendo y gritando olé.

Overall, I'm happy to have read the book...and very happy to be finished.

Anyway, after finishing La casa de los espíritus, I fell down a bit of a YouTube hole of videos and book reviews. Here are my two favourites:

In this video, the author Isabel Allende explains that Clara (arguably the most important character in the book) is inspired by her own grandmother Isabel.


I enjoyed this vlogger’s review (and I'm pretty sure there are no major spoilers in the video).


*Please note: if you're searching on YouTube and you find a video called “A la caza de espíritus malignos”, do not be fooled. It has nothing to do with the book. I didn’t watch it myself, but I welcome your reviews if you did!

[MorkTheFiddle]

Your review of the book matches my impression of it, too. Very much enjoyed, but the dark parts at the end made me feel very uncomfortable. Thanks for your review.

[stell]

Monthly Russian Update

Month of January:
Memrise: 102 items
Duolingo: finished unit 1
Pimsleur level 1: units 1-12
Russian Made Easy: episodes 1-10
Russian Accelerator: U1L1 - U1L4

Month of February:
Memrise: 223 items
Duolingo: working on unit 2
Pimsleur level 1: units 13-22
Russian Made Easy: episodes 11-22
Russian Accelerator: U1L5 - U4L5

Month of March:
Memrise: 334 items
Duolingo: working on unit 2, 128 crowns
Pimsleur level 1: units 23-26 (stopped after 26)
Russian Made Easy: episodes 23-30 (completed all of them)
Russian Accelerator: U5L1 - U6L5

[stell]

I'm really enjoying my new job. I'm busy and challenged, but I work from 8:30 until 4:30, and then I can turn off until the next day. I love having my weekends to myself, without having to do any planning and marking. I have work-life balance for the first time in my life. Every day I'm more certain that I made the right decision when I left my teaching career.

I've been working on Russian very slowly over the past few days. I only spend about 30-40 minutes per day after work, and I'm not advancing very quickly, but I'm ok with that right now. I will probably alternate doing the minimum with short bursts of intensive study. I'll just follow my mood - so long as I do at least a half hour of Russian everyday (enough for the 365 day challenge), then I'm satisfied!

I've been learning five new words and clearing my Memrise reviews every day; doing anywhere between one and five Duolingo lessons every day; and working on bite-sized chunks of Russian Accelerator lessons. I'm only spending about 15 minutes per day on Russian Accelerator, so it's taking me three or four days to complete a lesson. Probably not the most efficient way to learn, but I'm enjoying myself and learning Russian for fun, so "most efficient" isn't really on my radar.