Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

[Radioclare]

Time for an update!

From 15 - 23 July I was on holiday in France, which was amazing. We flew to Lyon and visited Grenoble, Chambéry, Annecy and Chamonix, so it was a bit of a whistle-stop tour, but we had a really great time. I'd never been to that region of France before and it's really beautiful, especially around Chamonix

The other good thing about not being at work was that I finally had time to do some reading While I was away I read seven books, of which four were in English, two in German and one in Croatian.

In German, I read...

'Mord im Herbst' by Henning Mankell. This is a German translation of a Wallander novella. It was only 140 pages, so counting it as a book may be cheating slightly, but I love Wallander and I hadn't already read this story in English, so I really enjoyed it.

'Saeculum' by Ursula Poznanski. I know: my obsession with Ursula Poznanski continues This one was 500 pages, so makes up for the brevity of the Wallander book. The story was about a student who agrees to take part in a medieval re-enactment/role-playing game for 5 days in a remote forest to impress a girl he's interested in. But the forest they're going to is cursed, and soon things start to go horribly wrong, to the point where you're not sure whether anyone is going to make it out alive. This was a gripping thriller with a convincing love story woven in, plus some Lord-of-the-Flies-style explorations of what a group of people are capable of in extreme survival situations thrown in for good measure. I definitely recommend it.

In Croatian, I read...

'Hotel Bertram' by Agatha Christie. This was one of those rare Agatha Christie novels which I've never read in English, so I got a lot of pleasure from reading the Croatian version. Though the translation felt very formal/'correct', eg. there was at least one sentence which started "Gospođica se Marple....". I know the "clitics second" rule and all, but most books I've read haven't felt the need to insert them in the middle of someone's name

On the plane home (well, two planes home because I flew via Brussels) I was also reading 'Ponos i predrasude', which is the Croatian translation of Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice'. This was one of my favourite books when I was growing up and I must have read it at least 10 times in English if the state of my original copy is anything to go by, so I'm having loads of fun re-reading it in Croatian, even if it does feel slightly surreal to read something so English in another language. I'm at least 75% of the way through it now so should finish it within the next few days, despite the inconvenience of having to go to work

I had a few bus journeys during my travels as well and as I can't read on buses without feeling really ill, I'd been busy downloading Croatian audiobooks before I went away. In the end I only had time to start listening to one - 'Čavke' (Jackdaws) by Ken Follett. It's an exciting story about a team of female spies working with the French resistance during WW2. The quality on the audiobook is really bad because it's ripped from cassette tapes from a library for the blind. But if I turn the volume up really high I can make most of the words out. I'm over halfway through and listening to it during my commutes now.

The only thing I didn't really do any of while I was on holiday is Russian. But I've signed up to the 6WC with Russian now, so that is going to be my motivation to get started again

[Radioclare]

I can't really post anything serious on a Friday, although I have finished reading 'Ponos i predrasude' (which brings me up to 186 books for the SC) and finished listening to the 'Čavke' audiobook (which brings me up to almost 167 films).

So instead let me share my new way of procrastinating doing meaningful things, which is to listen to ukulele versions of ex-Yu pop music on Youtube I read an article the other day which was talking about a guy called Hrvoje Ban from Croatia, who records ukulele versions of popular songs.

What caught my attention first of all is that he has done a cover of a 'Dubioza Kolektiv' song called 'Kokuz', which I couldn't imagine being played on a ukulele at all...



It turns out he has covered all sorts songs with wildly differing styles, from Riblja Čorba....



...to Haustor...



..to Majke...



... and Zabranjeno Pušenje.



There's lots more, but these have been the ones I've enjoyed most this evening

[Radioclare]

It's nearly the end of July, so time for another goals update.

Goal 1 - Read 10 books in German
I read two German novels in July, which brings me up to a total for six for the year

Goal 2 - Try not to forget any more Esperanto
Honestly, I had no idea when I set this goal that 2017 was going to be my most negative year for Esperanto ever. But one positive thing which happened in July is that we went to a BBQ with a group of friendly Esperanto speakers/learners who are completely normal. Well, as normal as speakers of Esperanto can be. I didn't speak loads of Esperanto, because some people were there with non-Esperanto speaker partners/children, but it was nice to have a positive, non-toxic experience for a change. Otherwise this month I've mainly been enjoying reading articles on Libera Folio about the crisis between UEA and TEJO and the general chaos of the UEA committee meetings at the UK. This is "enjoying" in a Schadenfreude sort of way, as it makes me feel better to know that other organisations are also plagued by difficult, argumentative and/or manipulative people.

Goal 3 - Increase my Croatian vocabulary
Nope, not really. Well, Memrise tells me that I had learning activity on 11 days out of the past month. These were mainly at the start of the month, when I was trying to be virtuous and clear my backlog of reviews. I did achieve Memrise zero in Croatian at some point before I went to France, but I've just logged in and found I have 443 reviews to do again.

Goal 4 - Read at least 4,200 pages in Croatian
I had lots of time to read during the week I was in France I therefore completed two books in Croatian this month: 'Hotel Bertram' (203 pages) and 'Ponos i predrasude' (412 pages). I've also started re-reading 'Kalendar Maja' by Zoran Ferić. I'm a bit embarrassed to say that I started reading this book in April, and commented on how much I was enjoying it/how beautiful the prose was, before giving up on it entirely. That wasn't intentional at all, but in May I spent one weekend in France, another in Edinburgh and another in the Netherlands; all of those trips were without checked luggage and it's a heavy hardback book which I didn't want to be carrying around all weekend, so I left it at home. Then in June I had one weekend at an Esperanto trustee meeting, where I was working and had no time to read at all, then two weekends in Croatia/Montenegro, where I didn't get much reading done at all because I was with my parents and they talk a lot So with one thing and another, I never seemed to have the opportunity to pick up ''Kalendar Maja' until yesterday, when I was at home and had plenty of time... but by this point I realised I had completely forgotten the plot I'd been on page 146 out of 603, but yesterday I felt I needed to start again at page 1... which I did... and I'm now pleased to report that I've reread everything I read before and more, being on page 196

That's a long way of saying I've read 811 pages this month, which brings me up to 3,862 for the year. I don't think this goal is going to be a problem

Goal 5 - Listen to/watch at least 9,990 minutes of Croatian TV/films/audiobooks
I listened to the audiobook 'Čavke', which was 740 minutes, and 20 episodes of the series 'Zora Dubrovačka', which was 874 minutes, so 1,614 minutes for the month in total. Added to my total for the previous months, that brings me to 7,094 minutes, so I am still on track

Goal 6 - Do better than last year at Croatian output
I think it's worse than last year

Goal 7 - Learn enough Russian to feel confident enough to take my Mom to St Petersburg.
Russian was on hold until after my trip to Croatia/Montenegro in June, so July was officially time to re-start. I actually did quite well in the first part of the month (before my holiday), when I managed to work through all of the lessons in the 'Keyboard Tsar' typing programme again and finished the 'Russian 1' course on Memrise. Then I went to France and didn't do anything and I haven't done anything since I got back either, except that this morning my boyfriend and I watched the first episode of a Доктор живаго DVD that my Mom bought me for Christmas (it's in Russian, with English subtitles). I got excited every time I heard a word I knew But mainly I think what I learned is that I need to read the book in English to try and understand who all the characters are!

Plans for August

• Make time to keep reading; this is something I've been really bad at over recent months, but going to France reminded me how much I enjoy it.
• Continue to make progress with watching 'Zora Dubrovačka'. I am 38 episodes into this series now and I definitely need to write a proper post about it.
• Use the extra motivational boost of the 6WC to make progress with Russian. I can't decide whether I want to go back to Duolingo or not, but I definitely want to get back into the habit of using Memrise regularly and also to work my way through 'Colloquial Russian'.

Also I signed up for rdearman's survey with Russian, in the control group. I need to practise trying to use the spreadsheet today. So far it's just upsetting me that it's a Google spreadsheet and I can't work out how to do things that are really simple in Excel, like zooming in and out. I'm hoping it's going to grow on me!

[IronMike]

I have finished reading 'Ponos i predrasude'

Can't stop laughing every time I see "ponos".

[Serpent]

I chuckled too

[Radioclare]

You are both lowering the tone of my log

[Radioclare]

This week doesn't feel like it has been the most productive, but mainly for reasons which are not connected with language-learning.

Russian
I'm doing Russian for the 6WC and also for rdearman's study. I feel like these two factors should be motivating me more than they are. But there are some positives from this week. I've revised the first two discs of the Michel Thomas Foundation Russian course, helped partly by the fact that I had to work in Crewe on Tuesday, so spent over three hours commuting. I've revised all the vocab in the Memrise "Russian 1" course and moved on to learning some of the vocab in "Russian 2". I've also started using Assimil, which I've never tried before in any language, but which I "found" a copy of for Russian somewhere in the depths of the Internet. Very early days at the moment but so far I like it; the pronunciation tips seem far more accessible than in any of my other textbooks.

Croatian
I finally finished reading 'Kalendar Maja' by Zoran Ferić and all I can say is "Wow!". It's the sort of book where every sentence is a thing of beauty; genuinely some of the best prose I have read in any language for the past few years. But I can see why Daniel N commented a few months ago that some people find his novels "dark". This one was definitely dark. Not just because it dealt a lot with death, funerals, and a group of people who were growing old. But also because it dealt with some quite difficult subject matter, eg. backstreet abortions, in quite a casual way. And the main character (narrator) had an obsession with prostitutes which made him quite difficult to respect. But it was still an outstanding novel and I will definitely be adding Ferić to my list of authors I want to search for in bookshops next time I'm in the region.

Otherwise, I'm still watching "Zora Dubrovačka" and I started writing what I want to post about it, but it's turning into an essay. I'm starting to wonder at what point I need to stop posting about Croatian telenovelas here because too much of what I want to say is about history, culture and politics rather than the language itself.

My favourite new musical discovery this week is a song called "Sve će biti u redu" (Everything will be okay) by Psihomodo Pop. I want people to watch this video and tell me which band they remind you of, because they definitely remind me of something - and it's not something Balkan - but I can't think what. The humour in their video is quite black though - it's essentially a series of failed suicide attempts, with the text that appears on the screen at around 01.44 saying "Committing suicide by means of a picture falling off the wall onto your head is successful in 0.0002 cases" - so if that is something which is going to upset you, best to avoid.

[reineke]

This song is an excellent illustration of a couple of (advanced) grammar points. How would you translate this to English?

Jer meni se ne da biti komad leda

(I'm really asking, I don't know the best translation, meni se ne da is not exactly the same as the feel-like construction)

I've been thinking about this and I can't find a satisfactory way to translate it at all

I had a look at my textbook and it makes a distinction between "inclinational se-verbs"...

Screenshot 2017-07-18 22.48.51.png

.. and "desiderative se-verbs"...

Screenshot 2017-07-18 22.50.36.png

...with "ne da se" being an example given of the latter...

After I read all that my main conclusion was just that my head hurt And none of that helps translate the emphasis implied in starting the phrase with "meni". So in answer to your question, I can't come up with a better option than "I really don't want to be a block of ice"

The main idea here is that he does not want to be a cog in someone else's wheel. Ne da mi se conveys the feeling that he does not have it in him to continue living as a cold automaton. Instead he wants/feels like getting naked etc. Exactly the opposite of the recent hit "Ona gola a meni se ne da" ... .

Ne da mi se... may mean I don't feel like...because I am lazy, tired or the thing is pointless. It could be an answer to an invitation to a drink or a way of ending an unsuccessful discussion. "I dont feel like" is often the safest translation. Meni se... at the beginning of this sentence underlines the main idea. Ne da mi se constructions are sometimes also translated as "I don't want to".

The translation "I can't be bothered" bothers me here. If the authorities were slow at processing a request, I could traslate "ne da im se" with they couldn't be bothered. I also cannot be bothered to continue with this post.

[DaveBee]

My favourite new musical discovery this week is a song called "Sve će biti u redu" (Everything will be okay) by Psihomodo Pop. I want people to watch this video and tell me which band they remind you of, because they definitely remind me of something - and it's not something Balkan - but I can't think what.

I find myself thinking of The Jam, The Pretenders, and Blondie at different moments. Something late 70s early 80s.

EDIT
I think The Undertones My Perfect Cousin is there somewhere too.

[reineke]

I have finished reading 'Ponos i predrasude'

Can't stop laughing every time I see "ponos".

Cowboy Jimmy
iz guzice mu dimi...

In my local lingo cara [kara] means "shlong" which puts an interesting turn of meaning on expressions like "qué cara tienes", "un cara duro", "cara a cara" and "mia cara".

I think I have always tried to experience the target language directly and I could never find these comparisons very funny.