Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

[Expugnator]

Russian in exercises definitely doesn't explain or allow for a proper understanding of the verbs of motion. I have to find an external source for getting this down eventually. Reminds me that I have yet to study Modern Russian Grammar: a practical guide. Will probably come after Russian in Exercises. I was leaving it for when I had better passive skills, and this happened.

Finished "Mon père est femme de ménage". A cool film, the type that could develop into a sitcom. Now I'm going to watch the classical animated movie "Le roi et l'oiseau".

I'm finally done with Yabla's In Chinese video subset. Now I'm back to normal videos entirely in Mandarin, I hope.

What Нюхач has been called by some traditions as 'psychometry'.
It's a cool series, anyway.

The Kypros course is coming to an end and I need something to do next regarding my Greek. The most natural choice would be resuming Greekpod101 at the Intermediate level, but it's still slightly over my head. I need to make a transition into native materials (which I might try as earlier as when I finish the older Assimil edition, in some months). Ideally, an intermediate Assimil would do the job wonderfully. There's also tha cool podcast by the Hellenic American Union which I have to throw on Google Translate each time. They're suitable for a listening-only period, too, so I'm indecisive. There's Language Transfer new generation, but that could probably replace Assimil. There are DLI and FSI and Cortina which I haven't used so far because I was avoiding old spelling, but these would include a lot of reviewing.I have several readers for upper-beginners in Greek, but they are not suited for a cheating and consolidating approach because they are not OCRed for Unicode. So, for the time being, Greekpod that is. When I reach a higher level, I'll have plenty of audiobooks, anyway.

Studying Modern Hebrew makes me total wanderlust for its cousin writing systems where emphatic consonants and other signs are still on the play, like the Nestorian script for Syriac, as seen in the defunct site Assyrianlanguage.com .I'll have a good headstart with Hebrew and might finally make sense of these other abjads, I hope.

[Expugnator]

The last book of Narnia is interesting, but language-wise it has too many long narrative and descriptive sentences and fewer dialogues. I'm not so much in the mood for going through all those sentences in text, so I just listen while reading the translation.

I don't know if it's my love for the Norwegian language, the story that is interesting or my level that is improving, but I'm finding Råta much more fun to follow than Odinsbarn.

Started watching "Le roi e l'oiseau". A masterpiece, indeed. It has its unique atmosphere.

Today's Russia reading was mostly longer periods and fewer dialogues. It's really getting better. Also, the double subtitles for Нюхач work as wonderful comprehensible input. For the first time I'm having almost n+1 input for Russian, which means my vocabulary has been enlarged considerably.

My languages evolve in pairs. Norwegian and German progress alternately one faster than the other. Russian's pair is Georgian. They're not linguistically but geographically related . Now that I see Russian improve, Georgian is a bit stagnated, at least when it comes to listening - reading is ok but more slowly than Russian.

[Expugnator]

What I like about the Õnne 13 soap opera is how they're successful at describing different personalities. There are a couple of characters which are simply annoying - not bad or good, just annoying. At today's episode, the mayor received the visit of an old lady who just wanted to let off steam about old times, doesn't have a clear speech. Actually this is very recurrent, characters that speak confusingly in the sense of not knowing what they want to say, not being assertive. This is realistic because we're surrounded by people like that.

The main character at Skam har flyttet fra Bergen.I knew she had something different! She just said 'dokker' for 'dere'.

I started watching the second episode from Captain Future in German dubbing. No subtitles for this one. I still can't understand enough.

Looks like my next Greek resource will be Corina's method. I'll be using the method for the first time. The lessons seem to be long, so it will be an appropriate replacement for the Kypros course.

Finished one hour earlier (actually on the usual time), but wasn't much productive rightafter.

[aravinda]

Hi Expug,
I have been following your log (especially how you have been studying Russian) with great interest. Very impressive.
I have studied Russian off and on and only have a very basic knowledge of Russian.

Russian in exercises definitely doesn't explain or allow for a proper understanding of the verbs of motion. I have to find an external source for getting this down eventually...

Regarding verbs of motion, have you tried Russian Verbs of Motion for Intermediate Students by William J Mahota?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Russian-Motion ... +of+motion
Of course, I haven't used it as it is way beyond my level but it looks like a useful book.
I apologise if you already know about the book (which is more than likely considering your experience).

[Expugnator]

Hi Expug,
I have been following your log (especially how you have been studying Russian) with great interest. Very impressive.
I have studied Russian off and on and only have a very basic knowledge of Russian.

Russian in exercises definitely doesn't explain or allow for a proper understanding of the verbs of motion. I have to find an external source for getting this down eventually...

Regarding verbs of motion, have you tried Russian Verbs of Motion for Intermediate Students by William J Mahota?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Russian-Motion ... +of+motion
Of course, I haven't used it as it is way beyond my level but it looks like a useful book.
I apologise if you already know about the book (which is more than likely considering your experience).

Thank you, aravinda! Though you're better off following the logs of more dedicated learners like neofight78, Xmmm, blaurebell, Arnaud, MamaPata and others I can't recall now, as Russian isn't my main focus and it is taking me rather long

Thank you for the tip about finding a specific book! I don't have this one but I have two others. I checked my sources today and I think the best coverage so far is at the Modern Russian Grammar: a pratical guide which I was already planning to do next, so I'll leave those books for later if necessary. The Princeton course also seems to cover the verbs in depth, but it has hundreds of lessons and maybe it's not worth going through them at my stage.

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Yesterday I resumed the French audiobook "Les écureuils de Central Park sont tristes le lundi", by Kathérine Pancol, the third in the trilogy. The past two days I was leaving the office after 8 pm, exhausted. This third audiobook is read by a different narrator than the first two, and I like this one less. The first narrator was really keen at raising empathy for the characters. I should check more novels read by her. Besides having a different narrator, the 3rd episode also has lower sound quality and lower volume. I should regret spending so many euros on it (and 4x as many reais), but I know I wouldn't be reading the novel in the near future, so it's nice that I got the audiobook and just kept listening on my commue time.

The Spanish (and also Papiamento) word 'reto' keeps popping up in the texts I read. It is a false friend with Portuguese, and it means challenge, though some of its usages still remain challenging for me to understand.

At 'In The Name of People', I've successfully adjusted the English subtitles and now I have double subtitles on screen (the Chinese being hard-coded ones). Always more effective to have it that way.

[aravinda]

Thank you, aravinda! Though you're better off following the logs of more dedicated learners like neofight78, Xmmm, blaurebell, Arnaud, MamaPata and others I can't recall now, as Russian isn't my main focus and it is taking me rather long

Thank you for the tip about finding a specific book! I don't have this one but I have two others. I checked my sources today and I think the best coverage so far is at the Modern Russian Grammar: a pratical guide which I was already planning to do next, so I'll leave those books for later if necessary. The Princeton course also seems to cover the verbs in depth, but it has hundreds of lessons and maybe it's not worth going through them at my stage.

Of course, I do follow all of them (and few others, I think). All these logs (including yours) are fun to read, informative and so inspiring I am seriously tempted to take up Russian again.
I too have the Modern Russian Grammar and the accompanying Workbook by John Dunn & Shamil Kairov. I have read a bit of the Grammar here and there and really like it. By the way, it has few typos. As you are planning to study it, here are the most important errata (kindly sent by Shamil Kairov himself):
Misspelled Russian words:
Я бы ходил в бассейно пощаче (should be почаще, p. 403)
Они (should be она) понимает по русски лучше меня (p. 430);
Wrong stress:
за полтора годА (should be гОда, p.189);
подкрашивАет губы (should be подкрАшивает, p.190);
вО время (should be во врЕмя, p. 205).

And I am looking forward to their forthcoming book, Russian-English Thematic Dictionary of Phrases and Collocations.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Russian-Englis ... il+Khairov
Cheers!

[neofight78]

And I am looking forward to their forthcoming book, Russian-English Thematic Dictionary of Phrases and Collocations.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Russian-Englis ... il+Khairov
Cheers!

I hope it'll be as good as it sounds!

[Expugnator]

Thanks for the follow-up, aravinda. I'll keep an eye open for the typos. As for the Dictionary of Phrases and Collocations, I don't know if I'd get down to reading a dictionary, even if it as informative as that one that is being planned. Having it just as a reference work is perhaps a luxury. I'm looking forward to that, too, as well, though.
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Travelling again last weekend. Not much done language-wise, but the good news is that I can download the files of the Estonian soap opera again. I've filled up for the week. I was willing to start Indonesian but I still haven't be able to organize my files in order to get more. I got a 'full disk' message when downloading the Cortina Greek audio files! I need a calm weekend at home to take care of all this.

Today I had a course in the afternoon, so I had to invert all my studies, doing the ones that required listening and the computer earlier. i'm surprised as to how I got to do everthing, despite half the available time on a lecture about search engine optimization.

Today's lesson from Hebrew Alphabet Made Easy was a review and a prompt for writing words. I didn't do bad at reading and I'm starting to write along as well. It's harder to come up with the correct spelling. Hebrew has several consonants that merged in pronunciation (so did some pairs of niqqud).

[Expugnator]

The pair выйти and войти seems to be slightly less confusing. I had no clue about them and I'm sorting them out now, that is, until new forms come.

The latest Slow German episodes have turned into low German, and I don't mean the language variety: as I play the files the volume goes very low, to bare audible. I checked and other sound files are at the normal volume.

I got a bit sleepy while reading in German and Georgian (both girls were coughing last night, so I'm tired), but when it came to watching German and Chinese it was particularly productive and I noticed my comprehension wasn't that bad. Even the native Georgian series had some improvement.

Started Cortina Greek. My first on the series. Before the actual lessons, there is a long warm-up with sentences that are so many that'd go over the head of any new learner. The language seems particularly old, but I can get around. Let's see how the actual lessons will come along.

[Expugnator]

After some proper rest, the mind is sharper and I was more productive with the Estonian soap and both the Mandarin and the Norwegian listening-reading.

I'm also in peace with Slow German; the last two episodes are louder and I could also listen at the car and when walking through less noisy streets.

G.L.O.S.S.'s Hebrew lessons are dotted! At least the one I browsed, at level 1. I still haven't become familiarized with the GLOSS format, though, so as to insert it on my routine.

My impression on Cortina Greek's first lesson. The audio is boringly slow. The dialogue is quite rich. Too much info for a first lesson, but I'm not a fresh beginner, so I hope it will serve me well as a transition into native materials. It reminds me of Linguaphone, only that it has translation.

I suspect Clozemaster is helping me tell Norwegian and German apart, which is particularly helpful to my active German, miles behind my Norwegian one (which isn't that further either).