Radioclare's temporary(?!) log

[Daniel N.]

Thank you both Today I have learned not just a new word in Croatian, but also in Italian

However, most people living inland would not understand fermati, don't try it in Zagreb

[Radioclare]

If I thought last week was bad, this week has been worse. I can't remember when I was last so busy. I've only managed to watch one episode of Larin Izbor all week

I did listen to about six hours of Croatian music while I was working yesterday though and my favourite new song of the week is "Ruski voz" by Bajaga.

[tarvos]

Ĉu vi festis la Zamenhofan tagon? Kaj faris filmeton nome #EsperantoLives?

[Radioclare]

Ĉu vi festis la Zamenhofan tagon? Kaj faris filmeton nome #EsperantoLives?

Ne, bedaŭrinde mi laboris dum la tuta tago, do ne partoprenis kaj nur nun hejmas kaj povas spekti la filmetojn. Ĝis nun mia plej ŝatata estas ĉi tiu el la slovena asocio...



Sed ankaŭ ĉi tiu en la angla estas tre amuza

[tarvos]

Mi preferas ĉi tiun en la angla:

[Daniel N.]

I did listen to about six hours of Croatian music while I was working yesterday though and my favourite new song of the week is "Ruski voz" by Bajaga

Technically, Bajaga sings in Serbian, kind of you can hear in Belgrade, but he's born in Croatia and a Croatian citizen (as well as Serbian, not an uncommon thing, many people in countries of former Yugoslavia own more than one passport)

[Radioclare]

Where has this year gone?! I've officially finished work for Christmas now and so I've got time to start reflecting on things. I opened one of my Evernote notebooks yesterday only to be confronted with a list of goals and resolutions for 2015 that I wrote this time last year. I haven't really achieved any of them, which initially made me feel a bit down, but then I have achieved other things which weren't on the list (being promoted to manager at work, for example). Language-wise it feels like it's been a bit of a mixed year; the downside of things going well for me at work is that I've had reduced time and energy to spend on things outside of work.

How did I do against my goals for this year? (as quoted at the start of my 2015 log on the old forum)

(1) Improve my writing skills by writing an average of 50 words in Croatian per day. I know that other commitments will mean I don't ultimately write 50 words every single day, but I'm aiming for an average of 350 per week. That will be 18,000 words over the course of the year if I can pull it off.

I stated this goal before the idea of the Output Challenge came into being because I knew that writing was the main thing I needed to practise in Croatian to improve overall. A year later, that's very much still the case and I've signed up for the Output Challenge again for 2016 to hopefully give me a much-needed kick up the backside. I feel like I have failed miserably with this goal in 2015 but, ironically, my mega-document of Croatian writing now contains 17,660 words, which is almost the figure I was aiming for at the start of the year. I think the failure comes from that fact that most of those words were written in frenetic bursts of Output Challenge activity and I didn't succeed in making any sort of output a regular habit throughout the year. That said, I must have learned something from writing 17,660 words.

2) Improve my grammatical accuracy by revising some of my existing textbooks and finishing those which are still in progress.

This has been half-hearted at best. I started the year by making some grammar notes from my BCS textbook, but I lost motivation by March. I need to pick this up again in 2016 because my grammar could still use a lot of improvement.

3) Increase my vocabulary by using Memrise more regularly.

I didn't do anywhere near as well with Memrise in 2015 as I did in 2014. Memrise tells me I've only used it for 81 days out of the past 365. Must try harder.

4) Develop Cyrillic handwriting which is legible at least to myself and read my first adult novel in Cyrillic.

My boyfriend bought me some handwriting paper (the sort small children use when learning to write!) and I had hours of fun in the first few months of the year practising my Cyrillic handwriting. My writing is still inconsistent - and terribly slow - but it is definitely legible to myself now and I think with more practise it can improve even further. Thanks to Serpent for linking me to some nice examples of handwriting to copy

I didn't succeed in reading an adult book in Cyrillic, mainly because I only had one and it turned out to be so obscure I don't think I would understand it even in English. But I did read some children's books: 'Три Мускетара', 'Чаробњак из Оза' and 'Књига о џунгли'.

5) Continue to participate in the Super Challenge, but reduce the amount of time dedicated to this. My new goals are to read just 50 pages and watch 60 minutes of television per week. I won't complete a double challenge at that rate, but I've decided there are more important things in life.

Ha. Well, I certainly reduced the time I was dedicating to reading in Croatian, but I'm not sure if this was a good thing. In general I've felt too stressed to be able to relax and read for a lot of the year and I haven't replaced the time I spent reading with anythng more productive. I read 2,697 pages in Croatian this year, spanning 11 different books, and miraculously that does just about work out as 50 pages per week.

In terms of television, I've watched over 10,000 minutes this year which is more like three hours per week than just one, so I guess that goal has been surpassed. I did complete the Double Challenge, of course; saying I wasn't going to complete it seemed to help me The increase in my stats can largely be attributed to:

(1) Watching all three series of the Montenegrin soap 'Budva na pjenu od mora'. As well as improving my listening comprehension, I learned loads about the features of Montenegrin which distinguish it from the language spoken elsewhere in the region and also about the culture of Montenegro.

(2) Having discovered the Croatian TV-on-demand subscription service OYO, I've now watched 150 episodes of the telenovela 'Larin Izbor' and the improvement in my comprehension has been astonishing. I've already written my thoughts on the Super Challenge before so I won't go into details again, but over the course of the challenge I have gone from painfully trying to pick out words I understand to watching a series entirely for pleasure. That's the achievement I'm most proud of

6) Ultimately I hope that I will feel my level is B2 by the end of the year.

Hmm. Debatable. I did get a nice mark in the Online Diagnostic Assessment for Serbo-Croatian, but I think a lot of my ability to improve now comes down to confidence and confidence is something I lack. I wish I was more like tarvos

The goals above relate entirely to Croatian, but I guess now might be the time to make some comments on my other languages also...

German
Poor German - another year of neglect. I didn't have much opportunity to practise my German this year and the most I spoke was when I spent a day in Zernez in Switzerland, followed by a couple of days in South Tyrol. I have had German as a Tadoku language a couple of times though and read the following books in German this year:

'Enigma' by Robert Harris (obviously this is an English book, but I read a German translation)
'Schutzpatron' by Volker Klüpfel and Michael Kobr (this is the sixth book in a fabulous series about a Bavarian policeman called Kluftinger)
'Herzblut' by Volker Klüpfel and Michael Kobr (this is the seventh book in the same series)
'Die Zeit, die Zeit' by Martin Suter (One of my favourite German-language authors. You should learn German just to read him)
'Allmen und der rosa Diamant' by Martin Suter (See above!)
'Das Parfum' by Patrick Süskind (I'm quite squeamish so I've procrastinated reading this book for years, thinking it would make me feel sick. It was actually way classier than I expected and I really enjoyed it)
'Die Tore der Welt' by Ken Follett (a German translation of 'World without end'. This was around 1200 pages and took me months to get through!)

I've been indulging in some German music nostalgia by buying mp3s of music I used to listen to when I was younger. 'Die Toten Hosen' have probably been my most listened to German band of the year but I've also been enjoying some songs by 'Die Ärzte'. 'Die Toten Hosen' have given me a new default song to listen to if I feel like crying:



My plans for 2016 are to keep up a similar level of reading in German. It would be nice to make an active effort to improve my German, but I'm not expecting to have time.

Esperanto
I didn't read any books in Esperanto this year. I rarely read novels in Esperanto to be honest; "Librojn legu la verkisto, estas mi Esperantisto" Of course I do read "stuff" in Esperanto almost every day, but it's mainly online stuff, and somewhat perversely, the majority of the work I do for the Esperanto cause is in English. This has been a year in which I tried to limit my involvement in the Esperanto movement. As far as I remember I only attended one event, which was the British Esperanto Conference in Brighton, and I may have spent as much time sitting on benches and watching the sea as I did listening to Esperanto lectures by eminent people. Are there any positives about Esperanto this year? I succeeded in finding Esperanto monuments I didn't know about in Gothenburg, Kaunas, Prague, Rijeka and Zagreb. I remember sitting beside lake Locarno on a brilliantly sunny day in June, being pleasantly drunk and having a long Esperanto conversation with my boyfriend where we completely lost track of time... but I can't remember what it was about In general though I am completely burned out with Esperanto and I can't see that changing for the foreseeable future, so I don't really have any plans for 2016. I'm going to attend the British Esperanto Conference, which is in Liverpool in March. It looks like for the time being I'll be keeping my treasurer role. That's probably all.

Macedonian
Last January my stated goal was that I wanted to acquire some basic tourist-level Macedonian this year. I started off as well as I could, given the constraints that work places on my time in the first quarter of the year. I practised my Cyrillic handwriting, started some courses on Memrise and began working my way through the big Macedonian textbook I'd had for Christmas... But then partway through the year I deliberately abandoned my goal. It wasn't anything to do with lack of time or lack of Macedonian resources, but more because of the political situation in Macedonia last spring. It all seems a lot calmer now but the way a lot of the media were reporting in the Spring it sounded like the country was teetering towards civil war. What happened in Kumanovo was horrible. I fell in love with Macedonia when I visited in 2014 but in 2015 I felt like I had to cut it out of my life because I couldn't trust it to behave rationally. Macedonia is still very high up on my list of destinations I want to return to and the Macedonian language is still very high up on the list of languages I want to learn in my lifetime, but I think a change of government there would have a big impact on my motivation to learn. Well, we can't talk about Balkan politics here, but I do feel sorry for Macedonia; it is such a beautiful country and it deserves some better luck.

I read an interesting book about Macedonian history in English this year:

'Macedonia and the Macedonians' by Andrew Rossos.

Just be aware if you read it that it is a book with an agenda; the author is definitely not impartial on the subject of Macedonian national identity.

Other things that went well this year?

(1) I discovered some really cool music. I started the year with a massive obssession with the band 'Brkovi' when I discovered their song 'Nisam ja za tebe' on Youtube.



I love the sound of their music in general and I can't help being a fan of any band who call an album 'Balkanski Esperanto'

(2) I wrote a fairy tale about a dragon called Boris. I blame rdearman.

(3) Having basica around on the forum was a big boost to my motivation over the summer, and I was particularly grateful that he introduced me to the idea of Glossika, although I haven't achieved his level of discipline with it yet. I've also benefited from advice from Robierre, Nikolić and Daniel N, but it's sad that Chung hasn't been around for a long time. I hope he is okay.

This forum is of course about languages, but language experiences and travel experiences are often interlinked so I will try to get away with talking about travel here a bit as well, because travel has undoubtedly been one of the most positive things in my 2015. I didn't visit any new countries this year, but I returned to lots of countries that I love and I visited new places within those countries.

Places visited in 2015

Belgium - Brussels, Ghent, Bruges, Waterloo
France - Lille, Nîmes, Avignon, Arles
Sweden - Gothenburg, Ljungskile
Italy - Turin, Domodossola, Tirano, Bolzano, Merano, Trento, Trieste (twice), Pisa, Florence, Bologna
Switzerland - Locarno, Lugano, Zernez
Lithuania - Kaunas, Ignalina, Vilnius, Trakai, Marcinkonys
Slovenia - Koper, Piran, Ljubljana, Kamnik, Maribor
Croatia - Pula, Rovinj, Brijuni, Opatija, Rijeka, Cres, Zagreb
Czech Republic - Prague

Croatia was obviously the highlight of my travels and I had some really great experiences, which are already documented in this log. They include:

- Some spontaneous conversations that I couldn't possibly have rehearsed in my head, like when shortly after having landed in Pula I asked a waiter at the first restaurant we went to whether this (a handful of dishes) was all they had on the menu, only for him to burst out in hysterical laughter. It turned out some of the menu pages had been stuck together and the restaurant had an enormous selection of food. I spent the rest of the meal apologising profusely.

- Listening to the Croatian-only commentary on the funny little tourist train that runs around the Brijuni islands. Also the Croatian commentary on the tourist bus between Opatija and Rijeka.

- Drinking two glasses of rakija and then managing to walk the coastal path from Opatija to Lovran and back without falling into the sea. This may actually be my most impressive achievement of the year because that stuff is seriously lethal! As an aside, Dubioza Kolektiv have a really funny song (in English) which mentions rakija:



- Making my first phone call in Croatian. It wasn't a very long phone call, but doing this at all was a huge deal for me because I have some sort of social anxiety around making phone calls.

- Getting a Croatian person to move out of my reserved seat on a bus by telling them in Croatian that this was my seat The achievement was not the relatively simple sentence in Croatian but the fact that they actually moved!

Overall...

I think there has been a tangible improvement in my Croatian this year but there is still a way to go before I would be confident in moving it to "speaks" on the forum. I still need to finalise my goals for next year and I will probably put those in a new log. I'm hopelessly behind with reading the forum at the moment so I'm not even sure if there's going to be TAC in 2016 (guessing not?) but I've signed up for the Output Challenge at least. My biggest goal for next year is to make a slow start on learning Russian. I need to find a way to balance the demands of my day job and Esperanto-volunteer work with my desire to learn Russian and continue improving my Croatian. I guess I'll talk about that more in a new log after Christmas.

Until then, Sretan Božić svakome

[rdearman]

You're blaming me for a good thing? Hum... that is different than the way it normally happens to me.

[Radioclare]

You're blaming me for a good thing? Hum... that is different than the way it normally happens to me.

Haha, well I meant you could take credit for it really It's not something I would ever have done if you hadn't suggested fairy tales for the Output Challenge and it was a fun idea. I just regret that I didn't get through all the other monthly challenges - perhaps you can reuse some of the ideas next year!