Radioclare's 2023 log (Russian, Croatian)

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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2023 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Wed Feb 01, 2023 9:23 pm

Caromarlyse wrote:On the topic, there are these videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOBGaVJH54A and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRSmuuXg7hI. There are similar about the status of Russian in Estonia and Lithuania, as well as a video (and separate podcast) appraising these "Baltic tour" videos and giving some behind-the-scenes detail.

Thank you! I've just watched them both this evening and they were really interesting :) I have to admit I found the accent of the dark-haired presenter a bit painful to listen to though!!
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Re: Radioclare's 2023 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Caromarlyse » Thu Feb 02, 2023 9:02 am

Radioclare wrote:
Caromarlyse wrote:On the topic, there are these videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOBGaVJH54A and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRSmuuXg7hI. There are similar about the status of Russian in Estonia and Lithuania, as well as a video (and separate podcast) appraising these "Baltic tour" videos and giving some behind-the-scenes detail.

Thank you! I've just watched them both this evening and they were really interesting :) I have to admit I found the accent of the dark-haired presenter a bit painful to listen to though!!


Oh dear. He's Dutch. His accent is raised and addressed in the video answering questions about this series of videos on Russian in the Baltic states, though you might not want to watch it! I'm sympathetic, because I know I always impose a heavy foreign accent on my interlocutors!
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Re: Radioclare's 2023 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Thu Feb 02, 2023 10:34 am

Caromarlyse wrote:Oh dear. He's Dutch. His accent is raised and addressed in the video answering questions about this series of videos on Russian in the Baltic states, though you might not want to watch it! I'm sympathetic, because I know I always impose a heavy foreign accent on my interlocutors!

It's a bit mean of me to criticise because his Russian is amazing and I'd be thrilled if mine was half as good as that :lol: I just found the accent jarring, especially in words that involved an r!
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Re: Radioclare's 2023 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Sun Feb 05, 2023 3:04 pm

Week 5 update
I've felt quite tired this week. I didn't get home from Tampere until 01.30 on Monday morning and I had to be in the office for a meeting at 08.30, so that was hard. Tuesday was also D-Day for one of my bigger clients to sign their accounts, so the first part of the week was a bit intense.

Russian
I don't tend to do many listening activities while I'm away travelling, so as I've been at home this week I've tried to focus on listening as much as possible.
  • At the start of the week I intended to watch another Varlamov episode about the former countries of the USSR, but instead I got sucked into watching one YouTube recommended to me about parts of Russia where people are living without gas, heating their homes with wood. The content was too difficult for me really and I struggled in particular to follow what was being said by some of the elderly people being interviewed. But essentially it was about the fact that Russia has a lot of gas, some of which it is selling abroad, while parts of its own population are living in freezing homes they can barely afford to heat. Heating a home with wood is not only massively inconvenient but also quite expensive, at least compared to the pensions that the interviewees were receiving. If I understood correctly, one old lady had had to go into debt to pay for wood. Even if I only understood a fraction of what was being said, I found it fascinating.
  • Later in the week I did start watching a Varlamov USSR episode. This one was about Turkmenistan, which I guess is the former republic of the USSR I'm least likely to ever visit. On the one hand I found this episode really interesting, because I knew so little about Turkmenistan in advance. In fact, even after watching the episode I suspect that I might struggle to mark Turkmenistan correctly on a map on the first attempt. But on the other hand, it was a strange episode because Varlamov wasn't actually allowed to go to Turkmenistan to film it. It's a very closed country, especially to journalists I think, and if I understood correctly, I think he'd previously published something about Turkmenistan which the authorities there didn't like. So the episode was more focussed on interviewing people in other countries who were in exile from Turkmenistan. That was interesting in its own way but I would have loved to see more footage of the country itself.
  • I watched one more episode of the telenovela Обручальное кольцо. This was episode 5 so I'm averaging about one episode per week. I know, not exactly binge-watching :lol:.
  • As already mentioned, I watched the two Easy Russian videos which Caromarlyse linked me to (thank you!). I won't say anything else about the guy's accent.
  • Somewhere in the middle of the week I watched a recent Russian with Max video about energy and what little things you can do to increase it when you're feeling tired or down.
  • I finished work early on Friday and did some housework. While I was cleaning, I listened to the most recent Russian with Max podcast. It was about the birth of his new baby and also about Russian superstitions relating to small children.
  • I had to walk into town on Saturday to get a photo to renew my passport. I listened to an older Russian with Max podcast which was discussing the question of whether people are becoming less intelligent than they were in the past (or - at least - less capable of thinking for themselves), as a result of the constant flow of information from the internet in general and phones in particular.

In non-listening related activities, I also did the following:
  • Finished lesson 3 of stage 3 in the Red Kalinka video course. The theme of this one was the seaside and from a grammar point of view, prepositional plurals. I must admit that sometimes I lose the will to live with the videos but I am finding the course useful, in that each lesson introduces a handful of new verbs and runs through their conjugation. This is an area I need to focus on more so even if I don't exactly enjoy it, I think it's useful. I also think it's really good that the course is introducing the Russian names for different parts of grammar. So in the videos I watched this week, there were lots of instances of the teacher asking in Russian which case a particular noun was in and then giving the answer in Russian.
  • I finished reading Конь и его мальчик (The Horse and His Boy) yesterday evening. It was only 106 pages, so not very long even by the standards of Narnia books. Words which I looked up over the course of the week included ущелье (gorge, ravine, canyon) and усыпальница (tomb).
  • Read the first chapter of the following Narnia book, Принц Каспиан.
  • I completed chapter 20 of the NPRC. I was working through this one last week when I was in Finland, but it was the verbs of motion chapter and there was just too much grammar to take in all at once. I still have a lot to learn about verbs of motion - and, being honest, I still don't feel like I truly understand a lot of the logic of it - but I think each time I revise the subject I remember a little bit more.
  • I also finished revising chapter 21 of the NPRC. This one was about the use of свой and чтобы. Both of those are topics which I find much more straightforward than verbs of motion!

Croatian
  • Finished reading the novel Ispovjedna tajna by Drago Hedl. That's my first Croatian novel read this year - 351 pages. I enjoyed it but as crime novels go, I can't pretend it had any great plot twists. It was clear from the first third of the book or so what the outcome was going to be and who was responsible for the murder.
  • I've watched six episodes of the telenovela Kumovi this week. I'm up to episode 157 out of 171 at the moment. I think the new season starts next week, so I'm not quite going to manage to get back up-to-date on time for that.
  • I've revised a few more sections in my BCMS grammar book. This week I covered locative case endings and genitive plurals, neither of which are particularly difficult topics in Croatian. I didn't spend as much time as I intended to with this book this week to be honest.
  • I've done a little bit more writing in Croatian although again, probably not as much as I'd hoped. I've written 3000 words so far this year.

German
Absolutely complete and total failure :lol: I wanted to finish watching the Arctic Circle series I was watching and somehow I managed to get through an entire week without watching an entire episode.

Esperanto
Nothing significant to report here either. I had an Esperanto trustee meeting this week and did some accounts work, but that was all in English.

YTD totals - Russian: 42.9 hours, Croatian: 29.6 hours, German: 10.6 hours, Esperanto: 9.6 hours
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Re: Radioclare's 2023 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby stell » Sun Feb 05, 2023 4:30 pm

I'm always amazed at how much you do in a week!
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Re: Radioclare's 2023 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Sun Feb 05, 2023 9:34 pm

stell wrote:I'm always amazed at how much you do in a week!

Thank you! It's strange because when I was updating every day last year, I didn't feel like I was doing much at all. Now that I'm only updating weekly, it feels like a lot more. I guess it's a good reminder that even if you don't achieve much on an individual day, you can still achieve a fair amount over the course of a week :)

Look forward to following your Russian journey!
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Re: Radioclare's 2023 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Sun Feb 12, 2023 12:55 pm

Week 6 update
This week hasn't been as tiring as last. I've spent it all at home for a change :) And the weather was nice and sunny for a few days, which made it easier to find the motivation to get outside.

Russian
I've tried to focus on listening as much as possible again. At some points this week I actually felt like I was doing a bit too much listening :lol: But I think it's starting to have some impact and I can feel my comprehension slowly improving.
  • I listened to an older Russian with Max podcast when I went out for a walk on Monday lunchtime. This one started with a bit of grammar, explaining the particles -то and -ка. I wasn't really familiar with the latter, so that was useful. It then went on to discuss some productivity and time management themes, so how to capture the thoughts which swim round your head about what you should be doing and schedule them for proper times so that your mind knows you have a plan and doesn't need to keep thinking the same thoughts over and over again.
  • I felt virtuous and listened to a second Russian with Max podcast on Tuesday. I didn't find this one as gripping so I don't remember it as clearly. It was some long involved story about a fire in a forest.
  • I tried again and listened to another podcast while walking during Wednesday lunchtime. This one was much more memorable, about superstitions. Some of them were superstitions specific to Russia (like sitting down for a moment before leaving the house on a journey - this is something that confused me the first time I saw it happen in a telenovela), others were more general superstitions about black cats being unlucky. I thought it was a good discussion of the topic because he didn’t just describe the superstitions, but tried to explain what their origins might have been in the Middle Ages etc.
  • On Thursday I had meetings which meant it wasn't possible to get out at lunch and on Friday I couldn't face another podcast. But I did listen to one more on Saturday morning when I was walking into town to catch a train. This one was about mental traps, like worrying about things you can't change, and how to stop your mind from falling into them.
  • Away from podcasts, I watched one more episode of the telenovela Обручальное кольцо. My goal for the week was to watch two, so I failed at that. I've realised that there are allegedly 820 episodes of this telenovela so if I only watch one episode per week, it will take me 15 years to get through it :lol:
  • The reason I didn't watch more of the telenovela was probably that I got sucked into watching another really long Varlamov episode about former countries of the USSR. This one was about Lithuania and it was nearly 2 hours and 40 minutes. Lithuania is the former republic that I've travelled to the most though (3 times, I think) and actually one of my favourite countries in Europe. It's not the most stunning or the most exciting but it's just really nice and there's so much nature. I spent a week there in 2015 and visited a couple of national parks, one of which in particular was a real wilderness. I've also read quite a bit about the history of Lithuania already - including a book about Lithuania in Esperanto at some point, I think - so I got quite a lot out of this episode because the content wasn't completely new to me.
  • In addition to all the listening, I've done a bit of reading this week. At the end of last week, I was only one chapter into the Narnia book Принц Каспиан. Since then I've read another 50 pages or so.
  • I've also been trying to make some progress with the Red Kalinka video course, because I don't want to pay the subscription longer than I have to. This week I completed lessons 4 and 5 from stage 3, the themes of which were children and animals respectively. Grammar covered included the dative case, an introduction to verbs of motion and some more complex bits of the accusative case not previously covered, like the accusative of animate nouns. The verbs of motion stuff was most useful; I still feel like every time I cover this topic in some format, I'm learning a tiny bit more.
  • I was also revising chapter 22 of the NPRC this week, but honestly it just felt too hard. It's complicated the number section and I did spend half an hour or so practising fairly basic things like the declensions of 2, 3 and 4. But when I'm struggling even to master those, worrying about how I'm going to decline bigger numbers seems like a waste of energy. In the end I decided that this isn't my biggest problem in Russian right now and I'm going to have to come back to this chapter another time.

Croatian
  • Watched five more episodes of the telenovela Kumovi while on the treadmill before work. It's very humorous at the moment and there were a few scenes this week that made me laugh out loud.
  • Finished working through the chapter about nouns in the BCMS grammar book. Later in the week I also completed the adjectives chapter, which was quite straightforward. The nouns chapter finished with some declensions of irregular nouns, so I spent some time trying to write those out from memory one evening this week.

German
  • I finally got to the end of the TV series Arctic Circle - Der unsichtbare Tod which I started watching while I was in Lapland. I really enjoyed it - it was an exciting storyline and I feel like the ending left things open for a sequel. There was even a small bit of Russian dialogue in a few of the episodes.
  • Started reading a book called Der erste letzte Tag by Sebastian Fitzek. He's one of the authors I normally read quite frequently in German but he normally writes a genre called "Psychothriller". This book he's written is completely different; I'm only about 60 pages into it so far, so not really enough to judge, but so far it reads like the book version of a romcom.

Esperanto
Nothing worth reporting this week.

YTD totals - Russian: 55.7 hours, Croatian: 36.4 hours, German: 13.8 hours, Esperanto: 10.9 hours
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Re: Radioclare's 2023 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Le Baron » Sun Feb 12, 2023 1:09 pm

Radioclare wrote:I've realised that there are allegedly 820 episodes of this telenovela so if I only watch one episode per week, it will take me 15 years to get through it

:shock: My word. Hopefully you get so good before you're halfway in that you can abandon the rest of the episodes. I started a Spanish soap and also saw it had episodes running into infinity. I couldn't stomach that thought and abandoned it. I don;t want to be 85 and dragging myself to a video find out what happened in a melodramatic Spanish love triangle.

Great progress totals there at the end. Reading your log sometimes makes me feel lazy.
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Re: Radioclare's 2023 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Sun Feb 19, 2023 4:25 pm

Week 7 update
This week doesn't feel like it's been as productive as the past few. It hasn't felt like a very typical week anyway. I went to a concert on Tuesday night which involved staying away overnight, then I had Friday off work because I had a day of work I needed to do for the Esperanto organisation I help run. As part of that I need to learn how to use a new piece of software, so I've spent a lot of this weekend trying to get up-to-speed on that rather than focussing on language stuff.

Russian
Looking at my spreadsheet, it's still been a reasonable week for Russian listening activities though
  • I listened to a Russian with Max podcast while out for a walk on Monday lunchtime. This was quite a long one - about 50 minutes - discussing some protests which were happening in Moscow. It was an old podcast, from 2019 I think, so nothing recent but it was reasonably interesting anyway.
  • I worked from the office on Tuesday and on the train there I listened to two more Russian with Max podcasts. The first was about the history of samovars, which was an interesting topic. The problem was that the podcast was in an interview format and the person being interviewed either had a very quiet voice or wasn't quite near enough to the microphone. They also didn't enunciate very clearly, so I found it more difficult to follow than normal. At least, it was difficult to follow on a train with a reasonable amount of background noise. Perhaps it would have been easier in a completely quiet room. The second podcast was about a man who made a great escape from the USSR by jumping off a Soviet cruise ship and swimming to the nearest island. That one was easier to follow.
  • I also listened to the most recent Russian with Max podcast while out for a walk on Saturday afternoon. It was about life in Russia one year after the war began and whether anything has changed for people. It was a really interesting topic and the best interview format podcast I've listened to in a while (because the interviewee had a really clear voice!) but not a very uplifting one.
  • I watched two episodes of the telenovela Обручальное кольцо on a couple of evenings when I felt too tired to be bothered doing anything else. I think if I watch a couple of hundred episodes of this and don't make any noticeable improvement, it would be better to give up and accept Russian is not for me than continue all the way up to episode 820 :lol:
  • I watched another Varlamov episode about former republics of the USSR. Republic of this week was Kazakhstan. Again not a country I know loads about, although Max from the Russian with Max podcasts was there briefly last year so I have listened to some of his videos and podcasts about it. There were some interesting bits about the Aral Sea and also about freedom of the press. Also some great shots of the nature outside Almaty; the mountains in Kazakhstan look beautiful :) There was also quite a long segment about new architecture in some of the big towns - big squares and statues, that sort of thing. It was simultaneously all very grand and all very unnecessary; it reminded me a bit of central Skopje with all its Greek-style monuments. This was a massive episode anyway; an entire three hours!

In non-listening activities, I also:
  • Finished reading Принц Каспиан in Russian. That means I've read four out of the seven Narnia books in Russian now. This one felt quite a bit longer to me than Конь и его мальчик which I finished earlier this month, but actually it was only 138 pages so still a pretty short book.
  • Completed lesson 6 of stage 3 of the Red Kalinka video course. I had to pay my subscription again this week and that made me think about whether I really want to keep spending money on this. I do objectively think it's good but then the videos take so long to get through that I keep finding myself dreading having to tackle them. At the start of the year I had an idea that I could watch them while on my exercise bike, which would help me stayed focussed a bit. Unfortunately, I sustained a rather painful tailbone injury from falling over on some ice in Tampere a few weeks ago and so sitting on a bike seat does not currently feel like a good idea :lol:
  • Revised chapter 23 of the NPRC. This one was about time expressions, so how to say how long something takes or that someone is staying for a week/doing something in a week's time. So that was useful and not as complicated as the previous chapter about numbers.

Croatian
  • I've only managed to watch three episodes of Kumovi this week. I normally watch an episode every day while on my home treadmill before work. But this week my boyfriend got me a one week membership in his gym, so I went to the gym before work a few times instead. I've never been to a gym before in my life but I actually really enjoyed it. So now I'm wavering over whether I want to join up properly; on the one hand I do and on the other hand I'm not sure how I'll fit Croatian TV in my life if I don't watch it before work :?
  • Started working through the chapter on pronouns in BCMS: An Essential Grammar but I'd be lying if I said I'd made massive progress with this.
  • Managed to spend a bit more time writing in Croatian. My target for this week was to hit 5000 words written for the year to date and I managed that :)

German
  • Finished reading Der Erste Letzte Tag by Sebastian Fitzek. I'd say it was a bit harder to read than his normal thrillers because the language was a bit more colloquial. At least, I found some expressions I didn't know. I enjoyed it but the plot ended up being much sadder than I'd initially expected. It was 272 pages of German in total, so a fairly short book but my second read in German so far this year :)

Esperanto
  • Not a lot BUT my boyfriend bought me a copy of Anna de Verdaj Gabloj (Anne of Green Gables) in Esperanto for Valentine's Day. I'd considered buying this for myself when I saw it come out because the Anne of Green Gables series was one of my absolute favourites as a child. I spent years trying to take all the books out of the local library in the right order and read them, before eventually saving up Christmas money etc to buy my own copies (which I still have now!). I was really tempted to buy this Esperanto version when it came out, but in the end I didn't because I thought the pricing was extortionate so I was pretty excited to receive it as a present. I haven't started reading it yet but I'm not sure I'll be able to hold off for very long.

YTD totals - Russian: 66.7 hours, Croatian: 39.6 hours, German: 16.2 hours, Esperanto: 11.1 hours
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Re: Radioclare's 2023 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby stell » Sun Feb 19, 2023 5:17 pm

I love Anne of Green Gables! I grew up on those books.
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