Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

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Expugnator
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Expugnator » Tue Apr 25, 2017 11:36 pm

I'm in for a Supertom, a Tomchallenge, a Promptom challenge! I'm visiting six of his linguistical incarnations and if, for every sentence about him that popped up I wrote two more, either prequels out sequels, I'd have more output in the first week than in my entire year so far.
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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Wed Apr 26, 2017 10:24 pm

JohannaNYC wrote:Where do I find this Croatian Clozemaster?!


You need to create an account at Clozemaster.com and choose Croatian from the languages. There aren't as many sentences for Croatian as for lot of other languages, but I definitely still recommend it :D

Expugnator wrote:I'm in for a Supertom, a Tomchallenge, a Promptom challenge! I'm visiting six of his linguistical incarnations and if, for every sentence about him that popped up I wrote two more, either prequels out sequels, I'd have more output in the first week than in my entire year so far.


I can't believe you've been doing Clozemaster all this time and never told us about Tom :lol:
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Expugnator » Thu Apr 27, 2017 9:34 pm

Radioclare wrote:
Expugnator wrote:I'm in for a Supertom, a Tomchallenge, a Promptom challenge! I'm visiting six of his linguistical incarnations and if, for every sentence about him that popped up I wrote two more, either prequels out sequels, I'd have more output in the first week than in my entire year so far.


I can't believe you've been doing Clozemaster all this time and never told us about Tom :lol:


I'm not a gossip person :lol: :D

I was supposed to start today, but I decided I'd check the forum only after finishing my tasks and so I forgot to save the sentences :roll: I should remind myself to use only the desktop from now on, makes things easier (or maybe do like you, take a screenshot. Just more work).
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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Fri Apr 28, 2017 9:04 pm

It's been a bit of a rubbish week workwise. A tight deadline meant that on Wednesday and Thursday, I was in the office from 08.00 to 20.30, which hasn't left a lot of time for languages in the evenings. I haven't written any Tom sentences yet and I'm not going to meet my goal of finishing Larin izbor this month :(

The most positive thing about this week is that I decided to spend my commutes listening to an Agatha Christie audiobook in Croatian ('Deset malih crnaca' - known more politically correctly as 'And then there were none' in English these days). It was 5 hours 45 minutes in total and I've managed to listen to the entire thing from start to finish since Wednesday morning, which tells me that I spend too much time commuting :lol: But it should give my SC stats a nice boost when the bot comes back online.

I probably won't get much language stuff done this weekend; Monday is a public holiday in the UK and so I'm going to France for a few days :)
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Brun Ugle » Sat Apr 29, 2017 4:42 am

I've been listening to Agatha Christie too lately. It's great for taking long walks. I just finished one audiobook in Spanish. Maybe the next one should be in German.
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Tue May 02, 2017 8:07 pm

I had an amazing weekend in France, managing to avoid speaking French :lol: I went to Montpellier, which is a really pleasant city, and considerably warmer than the UK. Unfortunately my flight, which was due to get in to London at 23.00, was delayed by 3.5 hours with the result that we didn't land until 02.30. I don't live anywhere near London, so by the time I got home it was 05.45. Technically I should have been getting up at 06.00 for work, but I slept until 9 and got in for 11 instead.

As you can imagine, it wasn't a very productive day at work :( And I haven't really done anything for the 6WC yet either, except a bit of reading in German at the airport.

I actually wanted to come online at some point yesterday and post a topical link to one of my favourite Dubioza Kolektiv songs at the moment: "Prvi maj" (May Day) but I failed, so you'll have to listen to it a day late instead :lol: There isn't a proper video for this one, so I've put a link to a video with the lyrics as the next best thing :) There's a rough translation of the lyrics here.

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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Sat May 06, 2017 6:20 pm

I just realised we were in May and I hadn't done a post to update on how my goals had gone for April. Overall, April was a month which started off with the best of intentions and then went rapidly downhill. Somehow I seemed to get completely thrown off course by Easter, because having four days off work was so exciting that I had a bit of a holiday from all my sensible goals, and then really struggled to get back into a routine afterwards.

Goal 1 - Read 10 books in German
I didn't read any German books during April, so I'm still on a total of three for the year so far.

Goal 2 - Try not to forget any more Esperanto
I started doing a bit of Clozemaster in Esperanto during April, mainly to compare quality of Tom-sentences in Esperanto to those in Croatian if I'm honest. May is going to be a bigger month for Esperanto than April.

Goal 3 - Increase my Croatian vocabulary
I did really well with Glossika until Easter, and then seemed to let it slip again. Frustrating. I don't think I have done very well with Memrise, because when I logged in at the start of the 6WC in order to catch up on my reviews, I had over 900 words outstanding in Croatian and over 600 in Serbian. Oops :oops:

Goal 4 - Read at least 4,200 pages in Croatian
As at the end of March, I was on 2,134 pages. During April I finished reading ''Slušaj i gledaj, Latice'' (458 pages) and started reading "Kalendara Maja" (currently 146 pages into it). That's 614 pages for April, so 2,748 for the year to date.

Goal 5 - Listen to/watch at least 9,990 minutes of Croatian TV/films/audiobooks.
This one is difficult to judge without having the Super Challenge website functioning :cry: At the end of March I was on 2,233 minutes. Judging by the tweets I've sent the SC bot, I *think* I've added 943 minutes this month, so would be on 3,176 in total. I'll have to check for sure once the bot is up and running though. This month's listening has been mainly 'Larin izbor', as I was hoping to finish the series this month. In addition, I've watched one current affairs programme on Deutsche Welle and one show by a Croatian comedian. Plus I've listened to an entire Agatha Christie audiobook, which has definitely helped my stats :)

Goal 6 - Do better than last year at Croatian output
At the end of March I'd written 1,846 words :( I decided to try and write 100 words in Croatian every day during April and that worked pretty well for the first two weeks, but as I mentioned, I then got thrown off course by Easter. It's a shame I didn't manage to continue with it, because I actually managed to write 2,298 words in those first weeks, raising my total for the year to 4,144. I need to start writing some Tom sentences every day in May :)

Goal 7 - Learn enough Russian to feel confident enough to take my Mom to St Petersburg.
Russian is on hold until after my holiday in Croatia and Montenegro in June, so nothing to report here.
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Tue May 09, 2017 8:24 pm

Struggling to believe we're 9 days into May already :shock:

I started the month with my weekend in France, where I began reading another German novel: 'Stimmen' by Ursula Poznanski. This is the third in a series of books about a murder investigation team in Salzburg. I'm yet to read a book by this author that I haven't enjoyed, but I found this one particularly engaging. The plot in itself was exciting and I didn't get anywhere close to guessing who the murderer was, but the sub-plot of a relationship developing between two of the key detectives was also really well done. Sometimes with crime fiction you have to choose between a clever mystery (eg. an Agatha Christie) and something which is well written/has believable characters. But this book had it all :)

So I've had some fun reading in German, but more exciting for me was the fact that when I was in France I actually read two books in English - my first two books in English of 2017 :lol: I've read 11 books this year now, of which 4 were in German, 5 in Croatian/Serbian and now 2 in English. I don't think I've ever gone 4 months without reading in English before.

During my commutes this week I've started listening to another audiobook: "Ko je ubio Rodžera Akrojda?" (The murder of Roger Ackroyd). This is a Serbian audiobook and I'm struggling with it a bit; not because it's Serbian but because it's been ripped from a cassette tape and the quality isn't perfect. In order to listen to it on public transport, I have to have the volume of maximum and really, really concentrate. It's one of my favourite Agatha Christie novels though, so I don't mind. And it's actually really cool to listen to it when you already know who the murderer is and try to pick up on clues in the text.

The big news of this week though is that I've finished watching 'Larin izbor' :shock: I watched my very first episode on 17 July 2015 and the final episode on 8 May 2017, so it's nearly taken me two years. If I'd known how many episodes there were and how many bizarre twists and turns the plot would take, I'm not sure I'd have ever started watching it :D But I'm glad I did, because I feel like my listening has improved massively since 2015 and there's only a bit of me that is terrified all I've actually achieved in two years is to understand 'Larin izbor' and that when I start a new series, my listening skills are going to start again from scratch.

The big question now, of course, is which series do I start next?! I feel like I need to choose carefully if a series might take me two years to complete. Two series which I have heard compared/contrasted to 'Larin izbor' are 'Ruža vjetrova' and 'Vatre ivanjske'. However, they weren't shown on the TV channel for which I have a subscription and I think I've prepaid my subscription until the end of 2017, so I should probably make the most of series which I can watch legally. The options I seemed to have are:

1) 'Najbolje Godine' (318 episodes). The plus points of this one are that it's set in a different part of Croatia, so I might get to hear different accents, and the actor who played Jakov in 'Larin izbor' has a role in it as a baddy.

2) 'Zora dubrovačka' (161 episodes). This one is set during the siege of Dubrovnik during the early 90's. It's tempting because I'm going to Dubrovnik in June.

3) 'Zlatni dvori' (160 episodes). This one looks like it has several of the actors from 'Larin izbor' in it. I'm tempted because I think it's still actually showing on Croatian TV right now, so I'd be watching something fairly current rather than several years out of date.

I don't actually know how I'm going to decide :?
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Elenia » Tue May 09, 2017 9:29 pm

How can you tell us you've finished Larin Izbor without telling us about the feats of screenwriting that managed to lead to its (no doubt) spectacularly happy end?! Is this your cunning ploy to get us all learning Croatian? :o
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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Wed May 10, 2017 8:40 pm

Elenia wrote:How can you tell us you've finished Larin Izbor without telling us about the feats of screenwriting that managed to lead to its (no doubt) spectacularly happy end?! Is this your cunning ploy to get us all learning Croatian? :o


Haha, yes you all need to learn Croatian and watch it youselves :lol:

I do actually have a file saved somewhere with some links to Youtube clips that I've been planning to post with a final storyline update, but I've been a bit short of time. Maybe at the weekend!

As a stopgap measure, I did recently find a Youtube channel with two hilarious videos of Lara and Jakov.

The first one is called "Lara Zlatar - Crazy" which just about sums up the entire series to be honest. The clips are mainly from the scene where Lara kills creepy doctor Dorian and then wanders around town covered in blood, before finally being arrested and thrown into jail for murder.


The second one is called "Jakov Zlatar - Human" and summarises Jakov's trials and tribulations from series one. This is when, shortly after marrying Lara for the first time, he was separated from her when he set off on a long sea voyage as a the captain of his father's ship. On the way he was attacked by pirates and faced mutiny from some of his own sailors, before being arrested in South Africa for drug trafficking, sentenced to 30 years of jail, breaking out of prison and faking his own death in a car crash so successfully that his family bury him and Lara believes herself to be a widow. From about 02.35 you'll also see clips from when the supposedly dead Jakov returns to Split in disguise after his 18 month absence to find Lara has successfully mourned his death and is marrying another man. The final shots of this video are the most iconic ones of the entire 347 episode series: the moment when Jakov finally shows himself to Lara and she realises he isn't actually dead.
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