Radioclare's 2023 log (Russian, Croatian)

[Radioclare]

Week 8 update
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

[Radioclare]

Week 9 update
Not the best of weeks for various reasons. I've been spending the majority of my evenings revising, because I'm a witness in a legal case that has finally come to court this week. I thought I was going to have to give evidence on Friday, so I was really stressed in the run-up to that, going over my witness statement (which is 14 pages long) and the other evidence (which is more than 1000 pages in total). Then everything ran behind schedule and I'm not giving evidence until Monday, so that was a lot of nervous energy wasted on Friday And a lot of wasted time that I could have been spending on language stuff!

Russian

• Watched two episodes of the telenovela Обручальное кольцо, so I'm up to episode 11 in total now. I can't actually remember how far I got last time around; I keep thinking I must surely have got to the same point I reached last time so the next episode will be new to me... and then I find I recognise the next episode after all. I guess I did better than I thought last time around!
• I'm still full of enthusiasm for the Varlamov series about former countries of the USSR and so this week I watched the episode about Belarus. I was looking forward to this one because I'm quite keen to visit Belarus; it's one of a handful of countries on my list of unvisited countries in Europe. In the end I found it one of the least engaging episodes though and I don't really know why; it just didn't grab me.
• I watched one Russian with Max video which featured a walk around a park in Buenos Aires. Apparently there are a lot of dogs in Buenos Aires. It looks really pretty though and so amazing to see colourful parrots just flying around.
• Having finished the Memrise Russian 1 course last week, this week I made some progress with the Russian 2.
• I revised chapter 25 in the NPRC. This one was about diminutives which was mildly interesting, but that's all. If understanding the nuances of different diminutives was my biggest problem in Russian than I would be laughing
• Read about another 70 pages of Пассажир из Франкфурта. Honestly, it's confusing me now. There's not a lot of action - especially for a spy novel, where action is generally expected - and instead there's a lot of sitting around talking about vaguely evil forces in the world. There may be a reason why this is not one of Agatha Christie's better works. Or maybe I am just grumpy about everything this week because it's not been the best of weeks.
• I decided to unsubscribe from the Red Kalinka video course, because two weeks have gone by without me completing a single video lesson. It's not a reflection of the course, which I genuinely think is really good, but it's too expensive a subscription to pay and then not actively engage with it at least once a week. The exercises at the end were my favourite bit of it, so I'm contemplating subscribing to access their bank of online exercises, which is cheaper and potentially more useful.

Croatian

• Watched the first three episode in the second series of the telenovela Kumovi. It's jumped forward in action by one month and has introduced at least one new major character with a big bombshell. I would have made more progress with this if I hadn't gone to the gym on weekday mornings rather than using my own treadmill, but if I can keep up watching it at a rate of 3 or 4 episodes per week I think I'll still be getting a decent amount of Croatian listening practice in.
• Worked through the chapter on numerals in my BCMS grammar book. After Russian it seems refreshingly simple!
• Wrote another 500 words in Croatian; up to 6000 for the year now.
• Failed completely and utterly to read a single page of the novel Bog podzemlja, despite the fact I was really enjoying it last weekend, so Croatian reading needs to be a bigger focus for me in the coming week!

German

• Nothing to report this week.

Esperanto

• Finished reading Anna de Verdaj Gabloj. While I don't think it's the most shining example of Esperanto translation of all time, it's still so much fun to read if you love the books as much as I do. It's quite a long time since I last read the series and I'd forgotten that the end of this book was so sad!

YTD totals - Russian: 81.3 hours, Croatian: 51.8 hours, German: 16.2 hours, Esperanto: 16.7 hours

[Radioclare]

Week 10 update
I wasn't expecting this to be a brilliant week and it met my expectations I got through my legal obligation at the start of the week but it essentially took up most of Monday and Tuesday, as well as a great deal of my energy and general will to live. Then the weekend has been taken up with other obligations. I've taken on a lot more voluntary work recently and for the short-term at least, it feels like it's going to be the equivalent of having a part-time job on the side. Most of my waking hours this weekend have been devoted to getting on top of that, so language time has been limited.

Russian

• One thing I have done well with this week is my telenovela, watching a total of three episodes of Обручальное кольцо. I watched an episode this evening and I'm certain I've never seen that episode before, so I think I must finally have caught up to the point I reached last time I tried to watch it. I also felt like my comprehension was better than I expected today. I mean, still not great, but better than it was. So I'm going to keep persevering with it.
• My other listening activity was to watch the Varlamov episode about Ukraine from the series about former republics of the USSR. This was an interesting one, filmed about a year ago before the war broke out, I think. Varlamov himself wasn't able to go to Ukraine to film for some reason, so it was filmed by another guy. I'm afraid I found this other presenter's voice really annoying so I didn't really enjoy the episode as much as I expected. That sounds like a really horrible thing to say but the episode was over 2 hours long with just the one guy talking and goodness, it just felt like he had a really shrill voice and he was shouting the whole time There was a really long segment about the Ukrainian economy (state-owned companies, the failings of privatisation, the level of taxation in Ukraine) and it was all probably really fascinating but I just felt like this bloke was shouting it at me and it was a bit annoying! It was different in format to the other episodes, which normally involve some interviews with interesting people; this one didn't have any interviews at all.
• This reading I've mainly been reading, making some more progress with Пассажир из Франкфурта. I've read about 50 pages in total this week and it honestly feels like the strangest Agatha Christie novel I've ever read. Nothing to do with it being in Russian; it just seems like a rather odd story.

Croatian

• I've watched two episodes of the telenovela Kumovi this week, so I'm not getting through it quite as fast as I hoped. I really enjoyed the two episodes I did watch, so not watching more is just a lack of time problem rather than lack of inclination.
• My main aim for Croatian this week was to put some more time into reading Bog podzemlja. I didn't do very well with this during the week but I did manage to make some time at the weekend, with the result that I've read a further 114 pages. Still quite a bit to go but I'm hoping to finish it within the next week, assuming next week turns out to be better than this week has been.
• Mile Kekin, the lead singer of one of my favourite bands Hladno pivo has released a new solo song this week. I'm still at the stage of listening to it on repeat to decide whether I like it or not!
  

German and Esperanto
Nothing to report. Tried to listen to a podcast from Usone persone in the car on Friday but the audio quality wasn't good enough to hear over the noise of the road so gave up.

YTD totals- Russian: 87.4 hours, Croatian: 55.4 hours, German: 16.2 hours, Esperanto: 16.7 hours

[Radioclare]

Week 11 update
A fairly dismal week for language learning. This has been the first full week of me taking on my new voluntary obligation and while I don't think it's going to be too difficult in the long-term, it's required a fair amount of time and effort to get my head around things in the short-term. Languages have suffered as a result.

Russian

• Watched two episodes of the telenovela Обручальное кольцо. The plot is a bit slow but I'm finding that my comprehension is getting a bit better if I can force myself to focus on it. The forcing myself to focus on it part is often the hardest.
• Watched the USSR Varlamov episode about Estonia. I've only been to Estonia once and it was about 10 years ago now, but I enjoyed this episode more than I enjoyed the one about Ukraine. There was an interesting segment about why Estonia has been among the most successful post-Soviet republics , explaining that Estonians were at an advantage because of the similarities between the Estonian and Finnish languages; due to the proximity of Helsinki and Tallinn, Estonians were able to watch and understand Finnish TV even during Soviet times. So the argument was that Estonians were better prepared to cope with democracy and the "western" way of life once they had the opportunity to thanks to their familiarity with life in Finland.
• Starting watching a second Varlamov episode about Georgia. Georgia is arguably the former republic which I'm most keen to visit, so I've been looking forward to this one. I'm only about 45 minutes into it so far.
• Read another 26 pages of Пассажир из Франкфурта. I probably would be making more effort to find time to read this if it was a better book

Croatian

• Watched one episode of the telenovela Kumovi. My new found addiction to going to the gym is definitely reducing my time for watching Croatian TV. That, and the fact that I haven't been at home for the past few weekends. Will have to try harder with this once life calms down a bit.
• Read about 100 pages of the novel Bog podzemlja. I'm really enjoying it and I was hoping to finish it this week, but I didn't quite manage it.
• Listened to this new single from one of my favourite bands Brkovi multiple times on repeat
  

Esperanto and German
Nothing to report this week

YTD totals - Russian: 94.2 hours, Croatian: 58.1 hours, German: 16.2 hours, Esperanto: 16.7 hours

[DaveAgain]

Russian
[*]Watched the USSR Varlamov episode about Estonia. I've only been to Estonia once and it was about 10 years ago now, but I enjoyed this episode more than I enjoyed the one about Ukraine. There was an interesting segment about why Estonia has been among the most successful post-Soviet republics , explaining that Estonians were at an advantage because of the similarities between the Estonian and Finnish languages; due to the proximity of Helsinki and Tallinn, Estonians were able to watch and understand Finnish TV even during Soviet times. So the argument was that Estonians were better prepared to cope with democracy and the "western" way of life once they had the opportunity to thanks to their familiarity with life in Finland.

I watched an episode of Le dessous des cartes (German) a few days ago, which focused on the baltic states: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

[Nogon]

[*]Read another 26 pages of Пассажир из Франкфурта. I probably would be making more effort to find time to read this if it was a better book

I'd recommend you to stop spending time and effort in reading this crappy book. Maybe it would be worth reading it, if it was the only book ever printed in your target language, but otherwise it's just a waste of energy.
In my teens I had read all of Agatha Christie's works in German translation and was very surprised when I years later found one in English which I didn't know at all. Bought it, read it and understood why it hadn't been translated. (There is a German translation now, which came in 2008.)

[Radioclare]

Week 12 update
Have still spent a lot of time trying to get on top of my new voluntary chores, at the expense of languages (and everything else in my life, to be honest!). The next week or so will still be pretty intense, but after that I'm hoping it will ease off a bit. I don't think it's a commitment which is going to be huge on an ongoing basis; there's just been a lot of work to sort out some historical stuff and get systems in place.

Russian

• Finished watching the Varlamov episode about Georgia, which was almost 3 hours in total. I still really, really want to go to Georgia. The episode featured lots of beautiful scenery and interesting politics. There was an absolutely fascinating segment about drastic reforms of the Georgian police (in an attempt to get rid of corruption) which had - at least temporarily - resulted in Georgia becoming one of the safest countries in the world as far as petty crime is concerned.
• Watched two short Russian with Max videos on YouTube. This was on the treadmill one evening after work, when I hadn't been able to get to the gym. The first was filmed while on a short walk in Argentina and the second was about meal times, and what Russians traditionally eat at different times of the day.
• Listened to multiple Russian with Max podcasts. It was a struggle to find 30 mins for Russian on Wednesday, because I was working all day, then after work went to visit an Esperanto friend. But I pre-arranged with my boyfriend that I'd bring my headphones and listen to a Russian podcast in the car on the way there; not very sociable, but just about the only option I had. Wednesday's podcast was about pregnancy, birth and what it's like to have a small child.
• Listened to two podcasts in total on Thursday, when I had to get up early and travel to a client in Nottinghamshire. After getting home at 11pm on Wednesday, I really enjoyed getting up at 6am on Thursday The first podcast I listened to was about the beginnings of culture and philosophy in Russia and if I'm being honest, I was still in the process of waking up and not giving this podcast 100% attention. I did better with the second podcast (once caffeine had kicked in), which was about what it's like to live outside Russia at the moment with the ongoing war.
• Listened to a further two podcasts on Saturday morning, when I needed to walk into town to go to the bank. The first was all about baptism in the Russian Orthodox church, which I found so interesting. I really enjoyed going inside some Orthodox churches while I was in Russia but it's a religion I understand very little about, so I found this one of the best podcasts I've listened to in a really long time; I might even listen to it again some time. The second one I listened to was an older one, from the back catalogue that I'm still working through, featuring advice about how to get a job, how to answer the sorts of typical questions you get in interviews, etc.
• Watched one episode of Обручальное кольцо. Again, if I was doing a 6WC I'd have to be honest and say I didn't give this 100% of my attention; I was doing some voluntary admin work in the background while it was playing. But I'm not participating in any challenges this year and I think it's better to watch one episode - even with partial attention - than nothing at all.
• Finished reading Пассажир из Франкфурта. Nogon is 100% correct - this is a crappy book. It's definitely the worst Agatha Christie novel I've ever read and possibly the worst one she's ever written; so bad that I actually wonder whether she was losing her mind when she wrote it (it was one of her final books towards the end of her life). I only really continued because I was already so far through it and also because, while theoretically there aren't any problems with obtaining better reading material in Russian, in practice I do have some concerns at the moment about trying to obtain Russian reading material in a way which doesn't result in me financially contributing to the Russian economy. I had a physical copy of this book as a Christmas present, which is why I was reading it. But yeah, it was absolutely terrible - don't read it in any of your target languages! My copy was 352 pages in total, bringing me to a total of 904 pages of Russian read in 2023 so far.

Croatian

• Watched 3 episodes of the telenovela Kumovi this week. Genuinely enjoying this as light entertainment and want to figure out a way of watching more of it. It feels strange to me that I'm currently managing to fit in more Russian listening than Croatian listening.
• Finally finished reading the translated Ursula Poznanski novel Bog podzemlja. It was so good - recommend this in German or any target language its been translated into It's technically a young adult book but it has a really exciting plot. This takes me to 710 pages read in Croatian so far this year.
• This has been a good month for Croatian music and this week there was a new song released by another of my favourite singers, Mia Dimšić.
  

German and Esperanto
Still nothing to report.

YTD totals - Russian: 102.0 hours, Croatian: 61.7 hours, German: 16.2 hours, Esperanto: 16.7 hours

[Radioclare]

Week 13 update
More of the same. A busy week at work with a bit of travelling involved. A busy weekend away, completely dedicated to my new voluntary bookkeeping role. I just got through my first month end and I'm hoping that next month will be a bit quicker and easier

Russian

• Watched an incredibly long Varlamov episode about Uzbekistan. It was three hours As usual, really interesting stuff though and another country which I knew very little about, so there was plenty to learn. I feel like once I've got through all these episodes I'll be much better able to distinguish between the countries of central Asia.
• Watched on episode of the telenovela Обручальное кольцо. It feels a bit slow but then if I only watch one episode per week it is going to take a long time to get anywhere with the plot.
• Finished revising chapter 26 of the NPRC. I was supposed to have done this weeks ago but life got in the way. It was quite a useful chapter, refreshing on the differences between when to use words like кто-то vs words like кто-нибудь.
• Listened to a few Russian with Max podcasts, mainly while commuting this week. One was a recent one about language learning and it was refreshing to hear someone who doesn't really enjoy the process of learning languages talking about learning languages The others were older. One of them discussed a trip to central Asia so that complemented my Varlamov listening nicely
• Started reading Покоритель Зари (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader) in Russian. This is the fifth novel in the enormous Narnia collection that I've been working my way through this year. I felt like something light and easy after struggling through that unrewarding Agatha Christie over recent weeks. It was too big a book to take away for the weekend though, so I'm only about 20 pages into it at the moment.

Croatian, German, Esperanto
Nothing to report I haven't even had time to watch an episode of my Croatian telenovela, which is sad. I did do a bit of correspondence in Esperanto yesterday, but nothing particularly exciting.

YTD totals - Russian: 110.5 hours, Croatian: 61.7 hours, German: 16.2 hours, Esperanto: 16.7 hours

[Radioclare]

Week 14 update
This week has been a bit more relaxed, not least due to a long weekend for Easter. My main achievement of the week is not language-related but I'll mention it anyway: I managed to jog 5km for the first time ever Before I started trying to jog in the gym last month I think the furthest I'd ever run in my life was 400m in a school race So I feel quite proud.

Russian
Russian achievements have perhaps been more limited, but there have been a few:

• I finished reading Покоритель Зари (The Voyager of the Dawn-Treader). In my copy of the Narnia books it was 158 pages, so a fairly short novel. I enjoyed it though - it was a joy to read after that dreadful Agatha Christie I was reading a couple of weeks ago - and I didn't remember the storyline terribly well so it felt new, even though I have definitely read it at least a couple of times before. I've read 1,062 pages of Russian so far now this year.
• I also finished revising the New Penguin Russian Course. Honestly, I feel like I always do when I get to the end of a Russian textbook which is that I need to go back to the beginning and start revising the grammar all over again I haven't decided what I'm going to do next for grammar study.
• I watched another Varlamov episode about former countries of the USSR earlier in the week. This one was about Moldova, which is another of the handful of European countries which I haven't visited yet. It was a good episodes and fairly short compared to some of the episodes about Central Asian countries; only about 2 hours.
• I'm still making slow progress with the telenovela Обручальное кольцо and only managed one more episode this week.
• I listened to one Russian with Max podcast, which was about dating. This one didn't massively grab my attention but I'm not sure if it was the topic or just because I decided to listen to it while sitting down (normally I focus better on podcasts while walking).

Croatian
I managed to watch three episodes of the telenovela Kumovi this week. I'm still massively behind with it but that's better than last week at least

German, Esperanto


YTD totals - Russian: 119.3 hours, Croatian: 64.3 hours, German: 16.2 hours, Esperanto: 16.7 hours

[Radioclare]

Week 15 update
Theoretically this was a more relaxing week but I've still been doing quite a lot of voluntary work. The British Esperanto Conference is taking place next weekend and there's a fair amount to prepare for that.

Russian

• After finishing Покоритель Зари last week, this week I started reading a new book in Russian: Когда прилетит комета. This is the first of the Moomins books, which I read in Esperanto earlier this year. I'm new to the Moomins series but they're fun little books and seem pretty straightforward to read in another language. I'm 123 pages into this Russian version so far.
• I made a real effort with the telenovela Обручальное кольцо this week and watched a whopping FOUR episodes. If I was able to keep up this pace, I could finish the series in by summer 2027. But I think that might be overly optimistic
• Watched a Varlamov episode about Kyrgyzstan. This might be the former USSR republic with the best scenery And also the one that has had the most revolutions.

Croatian

• Watched two episodes of the telenovela Kumovi this week. I'm still struggling to find a good way to fit it into my life now that I'm going to the gym in the mornings rather than exercising at home.

YTD totals - Russian: 128.0 hours, Croatian: 65.9 hours, German: 16.2 hours, Esperanto: 16.7 hours