This hasn't felt like a very typical week either. I'm wondering whether what I'm going to learn from updating weekly this year is that there's no such thing as a typical week I decided to join a gym (for the first time in my life) which means that I have been on my own home treadmill less often than usual this week and watched less Croatian TV as a result. I went away for the weekend, which means I've done more reading than usual. And for the next few months I am going to have significantly more voluntary work to do for the charity I help run, so I'm going to have a bit less free time for languages.
Russian
- I think I've only listened to one Russian with Max podcast this week, which was when I went for a walk outside on Monday lunchtime. This one was a short story about a little boy who swapped a winning lottery ticket for a pet hedgehog. I'm not normally a massive fan of the story podcasts, but I actually really enjoyed this one. It was a nice little story and I think Max has a real gift for explaining words you might not know using words which you almost certainly will.
- Something which I haven't mentioned much in recent updates but which I have still been doing almost every day this year is Memrise. I decided to give up on the 10 000 Russian words course which I was struggling through last year and go back to the official Memrise Russian courses. I finished Russian 1 this week, which is about 500 words/phrases, and started Russian 2. I did these before (in 2019, before my trip to Russia) and I definitely think they're a useful way to pick up modern tourist phrases in Russian.
- In the first half of the week I watched a Varlamov episode about Tajikistan. This is the best one I've watched so far and I found it absolutely fascinating. It was presented by a woman who had left Tajikistan during the civil war there in the 1990s. I didn't even know that there had been a war in Tajikistan, so I learned a lot. There were some really interesting bits about the impact that the introduction of communism and the USSR had had on the liberation of women, with many of them throwing off their traditional head coverings. I learned that the government in Tajikistan is not a fan of women wanting to wear traditional Islamic clothing like the hijab today, because they're worried it's linked to more extreme religious views; a particular concern for a country which borders Afghanistan. I really, really enjoyed this episode anyway. And I feel like my Russian comprehension must be improving because I really did understand a significant proportion of what was being said. I feel like my attempts to focus more on listening this year might be starting to pay off.
- I watched one more episode of the telenovela Обручальное кольцо, so my dismal rate of progress with that continues.
- I revised chapter 24 in the NPRC, which was about negation. Negation in Russian is a little bit harder than negation in Croatian, but not too bad by the standards of Russian grammar. At one point when the book was trying to explain the rules about when to use the genitive vs the accusative in negated sentences it said "If in doubt, use the genitive." I think that's good advice for Russian in general
- Over the weekend I started reading Пассажир из Франкфурта (Passenger to Frankfurt) by Agatha Christie. I've read about 100 pages so far and I'm really enjoying it. It's not really a traditional murder mystery, it seems to be more of a spy thriller. Again, it's one that I'm not sure I've read before in English.
Croatian
- Despite joining the gym, I managed to watch six episodes of Kumovi this week, with the result that I hit episode 171 and finished the first season I really enjoyed the last few episodes actually; they were a good mixture between funny and exciting, with lots of storylines that had run for ages finally being resolved. I will attempt to watch the second season, but it may be slow progress if I spend less time than usual on my home treadmill.
- Still trying to do some writing in Croatian on the theme of last year's trip to the USA. I'm up to 5 500 words at the moment.
- Yesterday I started reading a novel called Bog podzemlja which is a translation from the German novel Erebos by Ursula Poznanski. This Croatian translation has been sitting in my to-read pile for ages but I had the sequel Erebos 2 in German as a Christmas present, so I figured it made sense to re-read the first book now before I start on that. I'm only about 80 pages into it so far but it's a fun story and I'm enjoying it
German
Nothing to report this week.
Esperanto
- I was unable to resist temptation and so I started reading Anna de Verdaj Gabloj. It's so much fun to re-read books you really loved as a child when you're an adult and reading them in a different language is a good excuse to do that I'm about 130 pages into this Esperanto translation so far and there have been a fair few words I've had to look up. They've mostly been the names of trees and plants, so I've learned alno (alder) and betulo (birch). I also had to look up efelidoj (freckles). It's not a perfect translation and there are a few places I've spotted typos or other errors. All the first names of characters have been Esperantized and all the surnames retained in their original forms, which personally I don't massively like as an approach. I thought it was a shame in particular to change "Anne" to "Anna" when the fact that "Anne" is spelled with an "e" is an integral part of the story. But the translator has changed it so that instead "Anna" insists on her name being spelled with two n's, i.e. Anna rather than Ana, which I guess does retain the essential point. I'm having great fun reading it anyway and hope someone translates the rest of the series so I can reread that too
YTD totals - Russian: 74.5 hours, Croatian: 47.3 hours, German: 16.2 hours, Esperanto: 14.0 hours