Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

[Radioclare]

It's already October, so it's time for a goals update!

Goal 1 - Read 10 books in German
I read two German novels during my trip to Portugal in September. 'Die Falle' by Melanie Raabe and 'Das Joshua Profil' by Sebastian Fitzek. Both were really good thrillers. That takes me up to nine German novels for the year, so the goal is within reach

Goal 2 - Try not to forget any more Esperanto
I'm not having any Esperanto-related goals for 2018. But in fairness I did have some positive experiences via Esperanto during September. Specifically, when my boyfriend and I were in Madrid we met up with a friend who gave us a really cool tour of the national library and organised dinner at a Lebanese restaurant with some other local Esperanto speakers. It's nice to meet up with 'normal' people sometimes and it's also cool when Esperanto enables you to have experiences which you definitely wouldn't have had without Esperanto (if that makes sense).

Goal 3 - Increase my Croatian vocabulary
I'm going through a low motivation phase with Memrise so no, not really any progress here.

Goal 4 - Read at least 4,200 pages in Croatian
Because I had so much free time when I was in Portugal, September was a good month for Croatian reading I've read four novels from start to finish and also finished one which I started in August ('Krstitelj' by Miro Gavran (110 pages of it were in September). The books I read completely in September were: 'Pietr Letonac' - a translated Maigret book (196 pages), 'Farma' by Tom Rob Smith - also a translation (305 pages), 'Vikend' by Bernhard Schlink - this time a translation from German (167 pages) and 'Večernji akt' by Pavao Pavličić (245 pages). That all adds up to 1,023 pages in September which, added to the 4,511 pages from the rest of the year, takes me to 5,534 pages I'm at that stage with learning Croatian where any progress I make is so small it's difficult to measure, but one think I have noticed is that Croatian is now a language I feel happy to read on an aeroplane By which I mean that most of the flights I take are either really early in the morning (eg. leaving home at 3am) or very late in the evening, so I often spend them fighting a losing battle to stay awake. And in the past, I would have put an English or a German book at the top of my hand luggage reading on the plane, because I didn't want anything too taxing. But I've spent several flights reading in Croatian this year, so I think the brain power which I need to devote to understanding the text must be reducing!

Goal 5 - Listen to/watch at least 9,990 minutes of Croatian TV/films/audiobooks
Pitiful. I managed to watch a mere three episodes of TV in September, which equated to 132 minutes. That's partly because I was on holiday (and I never watch TV on holiday) and partly because both before I went and after I got back, work was really busy and stressful, not leaving me much free time to do anything. So I'm only on 7,619 minutes for the year and the reason I am tracking this is because I was trying to complete a double challenge. Unfortunately I'm no longer sure I'm going to be able to achieve that. If I do decide to continue with it, it may have to be at the expense of sacrificing something else (eg. Russian).

Goal 6 - Do better than last year at Croatian output
I've given up on this goal. I need to reconsider whether it's going to be useful for me to have an output goal next year or not, because I don't seem to have found it very motivating this year.

Goal 7 - Learn enough Russian to feel confident enough to take my Mom to St Petersburg.
September was dreadful for Russian too. I had to give up on the 6WC after the end of August because of work (ie. I had so much to do, I had to work at the weekend too) and then although I packed a textbook when I went on holiday, I didn't actually open it. The last two weeks of September one of the busiest times of the year in my profession, so I didn't really do anything in the last two weeks of September either. However, I do feel really bad about this and I'm trying to do better in October. In fact, consulting the spreadsheet I'm keeping for rdearman's study shows that I've already done more minutes of Russian in October than I managed in the whole of September

[Radioclare]

Ashamed by my lack of progress with Russian in September, I have been trying a bit harder in October.

Every Russian word I've ever learned was waiting for me to review when I logged into Memrise after quite a long absence. I have managed to get it down to Memrise zero, but I haven't really felt like adding any more vocabulary at the moment.

I have reviewed the first 15 lessons of Assimil, which means I ought to be able to carry on doing one new lesson a day (though I haven't actually started doing that yet).

I also started again at the beginning of Colloquial Russian and - after much internal deliberation - I've bought a copy of the Kindle book version too. On the one hand that felt like a big waste of money because it's not cheap and I already have the paper book. But on the other hand, there's no point having the paper book if it sits on my coffee table all year without me opening it. I have too much other stuff to carry for me to take a physical book to and from work every day to read on the train, so I ultimately decided it was worth paying for a second version of the book if I meant I had it in a format I was more likely to use. So far I'm happy with the decision; I've spent 185 minutes reading Colloquial Russian since 1 October, compared to zero minutes in the first three weeks of September.

I must say here that I am still struggling to find a way I'm completely happy with to keep track of my time for rdearman's study. It was easy during the 6WC because I just used the stopwatch on my phone, tweeted the study time immediately and then filled in the spreadsheet at the end of the day. Since the 6WC ended, I've been experimenting with using the ATracker app on my phone (which I'm sure I've seen people recommending here). I agree it's easy to set up and use but the problem is I keep forgetting to stop it tracking my time when I've finished whatever task I'm on. So I'm thinking of going back to trying to use Toggl, which has the benefit of putting a reminder in the notifications at the top of your phone, which prompts you to still see it's tracking the time and press stop.

I've also been having a go at the lessons at learnrussian.rt.com. I've completed 8 lessons so far and I've really enjoyed them. There is some really good audio, the person who has written the dialogues obviously has a sense of humour and the exercises are fun. If I could make myself do a lesson a day, I think I'd make a lot of progress

Tomorrow I am going on (sort of) my final holiday of the year; this time to southern Italy. Will this mean I have lots of spare time to spend learning Russian? Who knows I'm hoping that I'll get lots of Croatian reading done anyway

[IronMike]

I also started again at the beginning of Colloquial Russian and - after much internal deliberation - I've bought a copy of the Kindle book version too. On the one hand that felt like a big waste of money because it's not cheap and I already have the paper book. But on the other hand, there's no point having the paper book if it sits on my coffee table all year without me opening it. I have too much other stuff to carry for me to take a physical book to and from work every day to read on the train, so I ultimately decided it was worth paying for a second version of the book if I meant I had it in a format I was more likely to use. So far I'm happy with the decision; I've spent 185 minutes reading Colloquial Russian since 1 October, compared to zero minutes in the first three weeks of September.

I've got a paperwhite Kindle, and I've avoided buying anything textbook-y. Do you have a Fire? If not, how are you finding a language text on Kindle?

[Radioclare]

I've got a paperwhite Kindle, and I've avoided buying anything textbook-y. Do you have a Fire? If not, how are you finding a language text on Kindle?

I've got a pretty old Kindle (4th generation) but I haven't tried this particular book on that yet. I do have the Kindle version of Teach Yourself Croatian, which works perfectly on that device. For Colloquial Russian, I've just been using the Kindle app on my phone, which is fine for 20 minutes or so of study on a train. The only issue I've noticed is that the stress marks don't always display correctly above capital letters (see picture below). In general the main thing I find annoying about using textbooks on a Kindle is that with real textbooks I like flicking backwards and forwards a lot, eg. to reread something from a few pages ago before I attempt an exercise or to look up a new word in a vocab list. That definitely isn't as easy to do on an e-reader, but so far I think not having to carry an actual textbook makes up for that inconvenience

[Radioclare]

Well, there's good news and bad news. The good news is I had an amazing holiday in Italy. The bad news is that I didn't do any Russian at all while I was there. The worse news is that I haven't done any since I got back either

The main places I visited in Italy were Naples and Bari, which are places I've wanted to go for quite a while but been wary of because of the crime rates and general bad reputations. Naples is certainly an experience and very different to anywhere else I have been in Italy. In some ways it felt quite 'Balkan' to me; if you take the gridlock and beeping of horns from central Belgrade and combine it with the complete disregard for road safety in Skopje, you're getting close to how the traffic feels in Naples The level of litter and rubbish in the streets also reminded me of Skopje, although the problem is much more significant in Naples. I was there in October when the weather was pleasant but not too hot and there were still some horrific smells from overflowing bins as I walked down the streets so I dread to think how the city smells in the middle of summer. Perhaps that sounds negative but I actually had some really positive experiences in Naples. The people are really friendly, the prices for food and drink and significantly cheaper than further north in Italy and the scenery is stunning. It's also a really good base for visiting Pompeii, which was the absolute highlight of the trip for me. And in comparison to Naples, Bari seemed like a haven of peace and tranquillity. I could see that there were some streets in the old town which it might not be a good idea to walk down in the dark, but overall it felt (and smelled) fine

I thought I would do lots of Croatian reading on the holiday, but actually I ended up mainly reading in English. The one novel I did read in Croatian was 'Gospodari strijela' (Lords of the bow) by Conn Iggulden. This is the second volume in a series about the life of Genghis Khan. I hadn't read the first book and I also knew nothing about Genghis Khan so I have to confess it took me a while to get into it, where "a while" is about 200 pages. It is actually quite an exciting story though and I genuinely enjoyed the second half.

I got back from Italy on 15 October. Or, to be more precise, I got home at 3am on 16 October and at 07.37 on 16 October I had to catch the first of a series of trains to Reading, where I spent the week working. I used to travel with work a lot but I rarely have to do it these days, so the whole experience of being away for a week and staying in a hotel felt odd. As an introvert, I find spending a day working with colleagues and then having to go out to dinner with them for several hours in the evening quite wearing. I was lucky that due to an admin issue in my office, I was staying in a Travelodge on my own while the rest of the team were staying a Holiday Inn; they obviously had a significantly better hotel, but it did mean that I was able to have breakfast on my own, and that helped save my sanity a bit Anyway, the only reason I'm mentioning all this is that it meant I didn't have the time/space to get any language learning done!

I'm back at home now for the foreseeable future though so I'm hoping that next week will be more productive

On a completely unrelated note, would anyone like a novel in Portuguese or two English-French parallel texts? The Portuguese is 'O estilete assassino' which is a translation of Ken Follett's 'Eye of the Needle'. I bought it for my bf for Christmas, forgot I already had it and bought a second copy in Portugal. The French parallel texts are 'Les Aventures d'Alice au Pays des Merveilles' and 'Sherlock Holmes - Deux aventures'. I bought them in FNAC in Lyon as a Christmas present for my sister who was learning French. Unfortunately she's since split up with her French boyfriend so they would no longer be such an apt present At the moment these books are just gathering dust in my house and I don't think my local charity shop would be thrilled to get them as a donation, so if anyone would be able to get some use out of them please let me know!

[Radioclare]

Another week where I don't feel like much has been achieved. I'm feeling a bit down about my lack of progress in Russian this year and it makes no sense really because it's not lack of progress due to Russian being difficult and me not understanding it, but more lack of progress due to me not spending time on it. And obviously the proportion of my free time that I spend on Russian is something which is theoretically within my control, so if I'm not spending enough time on it then I'm the only one to blame. But then when I'm on the train home from work in the evening and I have a choice between doing Russian Memrise or seeing what I missed on Twitter today, I seem far more likely to choose the latter option and procrastinate the Russian. I've tried to analyse why this is and I think it mainly comes down to tiredness after a day at work, so I'm not sure what the solution is. Perhaps I need to manage my time better at work so I can leave earlier and have more energy to do other things. Perhaps the 6WC will give me renewed motivation from Wednesday. I don't know.

Things I have done this week:

• Revised the first 8 lessons on the Learn Russian website
• Started revising the chapters of Colloquial Russian which I'd studied before I went to Italy
• Dealt with most of my Memrise backlog in Russian and Croatian
• Listened to the first two lessons of Russian Pimsleur
• Read the first 282 pages of 'Na rubu večnosti' (the Serbian translation of Ken Follett's 'On the edge of eternity')
• Watched 5 episodes of the Croatian series 'Zora Dubrovačka'
• Spent hours doing unpaid and unfulfilling work for the Esperanto charity. Not that I'm bitter.

For anyone looking for Esperanto reading material, Marjorie Boulton's book about the life of Zamenhof has been republished this week and is available to buy on Amazon (link to UK Amazon but I think it is appearing on other Amazons too).

In other news, I have been tempted to invest in Russian Glossika (and also the Slovene one) but in the end I decided it wasn't a good use of money this month. I have already had some unexpected expenditure after managing to lose my Fitbit at Stansted airport on the way to Naples I love Serbian Glossika but I've never managed to get to the end of it. I think in general I have a problem with starting courses and not having enough discipline to finish them. So it doesn't really make sense to buy more Glossika.

One of the Croatian bands I like - 'Brkovi' - have released a video for their new song 'Sudbina'. Like all their videos, it's a bit random. Best to avoid if you are offended by pole dancers.

[IronMike]

In other news, I have been tempted to invest in Russian Glossika (and also the Slovene one) but in the end I decided it wasn't a good use of money this month. I have already had some unexpected expenditure after managing to lose by Fitbit at Stansted airport on the way to Naples I love Serbian Glossika but I've never managed to get to the end of it. I think in general I have a problem with starting courses and not having enough discipline to finish them. So it doesn't really make sense to buy more Glossika.

I have the Russian and Serbian Glossikas and bought the Latvian/Lithuanian when it was on sale. Of course when this latest sale came out, I went and bought Spanish, as my wife and I have plans to study that language when we get back to the states. I decided to buy that course now because of the rumors I'm hearing about Glossika dumping that entire part of their products for the online version only sometime in the future. All the Slavic languages are interesting to me, so we'll have to see if they have more and more sales as they get closer and closer to going online-only.

[Elenia]

For what it's worth, I'd say setting aside some time so you figure out how you can better use your work time and streamline your tasks is worth it, regardless of whether it'll leave you with more head space for Russian and languages. Taking care of yourself is important! I don't know what you do, so I don't know how possible it will be to do so, but if you can then you should!

(Related: minimising your Esperanto Association time is also probably a good idea. It seems like a time, energy and joy sink )

[Brun Ugle]

If you do decide you want the Glossika course, now is the time to get it, while they have a 40%-off sale. They will be gone forever after the sale. I'm trying to figure out how much I can afford to spend and what languages I most want. Unfortunately, the answer to that question seems to be, "all of them."

[DaveBee]

Another week where I don't feel like much has been achieved. I'm feeling a bit down about my lack of progress in Russian this year and it makes no sense really because it's not lack of progress due to Russian being difficult and me not understanding it, but more lack of progress due to me not spending time on it. And obviously the proportion of my free time that I spend on Russian is something which is theoretically within my control, so if I'm not spending enough time on it then I'm the only one to blame.

But then when I'm on the train home from work in the evening and I have a choice between doing Russian Memrise or seeing what I missed on Twitter today, I seem far more likely to choose the latter option and procrastinate the Russian. I've tried to analyse why this is and I think it mainly comes down to tiredness after a day at work, so I'm not sure what the solution is. Perhaps I need to manage my time better at work so I can leave earlier and have more energy to do other things. Perhaps the 6WC will give me renewed motivation from Wednesday. I don't know.

Could you procrastinate in Russian instead? Russian twitter, Russian Facebook, Russian celeb gossip etc.?