Radioclare's 2018 log (Croatian/Russian)

[tarvos]

Oh you're alive! Thought you'd disappeared to somewhere. Maybe I am smoking acid again.

[Radioclare]

I guess I should update more often!

Russian
The 6WC is helping a bit with motivation. My boyfriend was away for a few days this week at the World Esperanto Congress which resulted in me doing a bit more walking to/from work than usual. This gave me the opportunity to start listening to Russian Pimsleur again. I had to start from the beginning, because I couldn't remember where I'd stopped this time. I don't think I am ever destined to get past lesson 8 on Pimsleur

I logged into Memrise and found a hideous number of reviews waiting for me, so I took the advice people have been giving me for years and quit all the Russian courses I was doing except the one which I actually want to focus on right now. Hopefully that makes it a bit less demotivating to log in to the app every day.

I've had the unusual luxury of a weekend spent completely at home with no other obligations and so I have finally had time to some proper studying. I'm using my very battered copy of the Penguin Russian course, which I do love. I acquired a pdf of the book a while ago and I did experiment with studying it on my phone on the train, probably during the last 6WC, but I think that honestly I'm quite old-fashioned and I learn best if I take notes with pen and paper, so that's what I've been doing yesterday and today My Russian handwriting is not exactly a thing of beauty, but it's functional enough for this now. Again, I couldn't quite remember where I got to last time I gave up, so I started again at the beginning and I'm partway through chapter 5 now.

Croatian
I finally finished watching 'Zora Dubrovačka' (Spoiler - everyone lives happily every after!) I wasn't sure how long it has taken me to get through this series, but I just checked my log and it seems like I started watching it at some point in May 2017, so approximately 15 months. There were 161 episodes, so that averages at 10-11 episodes per month, which doesn't sound like a lot. In reality, I've watched it in fits and starts; sometimes not watching it at all for over a month and sometimes watching three episodes in one evening. I think it's fair to say that this series didn't grip me quite as much as 'Larin izbor'; the plot just wasn't as compelling and I never managed to really care about the relationship between the two main characters. But some of the subplots involving the more minor characters were quite exciting and I found it interesting that a few actors I've seen in other programmes, but didn't really rate, were actually extremely good in this. I did pick up a few useful language points too. So I cautiously recommend it, even if I do think it could have been about 50 episodes shorter

Now I need to choose a new series to watch, which feels like a big decision if it's going to be my only TV for the next 15 months or more! In reality there are probably only about five series to choose from which are accessible from outside Croatia on the TV subscription I have.

I've also started reading a new novel 'Na osami blizu mora' by Zoran Ferić. I read another of his books last year and really enjoyed the prose. I'm only about 50 pages into this one so far, so it's a bit early to comment, but so far so good In a fit of virtue, I've been noting down words I've read and not been able to understand at all. So far the most interesting ones are:

kormilo - rudder (I don't feel bad about not knowing this one!)
šlauf - in the context of this book at least, this seems to be like an inflatable that a child who hasn't learned to swim yet would wear to go into the water. I'm imagining it as being like a rubber ring.

I'll leave you with a song called 'Ljubav krvari' (Love is bleeding) by Goran Bare. This is the exact opposite of an uplifting summery song, but it's somehow become one of my favourites over the past few weeks

[IronMike]

Kiel placxas la UK al via koramiko?

[Radioclare]

Kvankam li estis en Lisbono dum kelkaj tagoj, li oficiale partoprenis la UK-on dum nur unu tago; li iris tien nur pro tio ke oni invitis lin partopreni kunvenon pri la katalogado de bibliotekoj en Esperantujo. Sed laŭ mia kompreno la kunveno estis utila kaj li ĝuis la sperton renkontiĝi kun malnovaj amikoj.

Ĝenerale nek li nek mi emas iri al la Universala Kongreso. Ni partoprenis nur unufoje (la kongreson en Pollando en 2009) kaj mi tute ne ĝuis ĝin. Laŭ mi la evento simple estas tro granda, do eĉ kiam oni jam konas sufiĉe multe da homoj, estas malfacile trovi iujn el tiuj homoj en la kongresejo. La kotizo estas tre multekosta kaj la programo plejparte ne interesas min; ĝi ŝajne plenplenas de enuigaj jarkunsidoj ks. Tamen laŭ tio kion mi vidis ĉe Facebook pasintsemajne, multaj homoj malsamopinias kaj ege ĝuis la aferon

[IronMike]

...la katalogado de bibliotekoj en Esperantujo.

Cxi tiu tre interesas al mi...cxu li havas notojn, aux versxajne la UK publikigos libron pri tiu?

[Radioclare]

Cxi tiu tre interesas al mi...cxu li havas notojn, aux versxajne la UK publikigos libron pri tiu?

Laŭ mia kompreno, la celo de la kunveno ĉe la UK estis eki projekton per kiu oni kreos tutmondan malferman katalogon por Esperanto. Nuntempe ĉio estas en tre frua fazo kaj mi supozas ke ankoraŭ ne estas granda progreso por raporti.

Tamen se vi interesiĝas pri bibliotekoj, mi scias ke ekzistas gugla grupo kie homoj publike pridiskutas Esperanto-bibliotekojn.

[Radioclare]

Some days this week have been productive, others less so. I tend to spend more time on language stuff on the days when I commute and this week I had two days working from home (which is great because it means I don't have to get up until 8am, but the time I spend sleeping is the time I would normally spend doing Memrise etc ).

I haven't chosen a new series to start watching yet, but to make sure I did get some audio in this week I decided to watch a film. I figure I should try to watch at least one film per Super Challenge, even if the only thing I learn from it is that I don't like watching films. I don't like watching films Or, at least, I don't think they are very educational compared to watching series. It still takes me a while to get into the swing of following a new accent. With a series, I think it takes me a few episodes to be able to watch it comfortably without having to strain and concentrate to catch words. With a film, I might just get to the stage where I can understand what everyone is saying and then it's over.

So I am not going to make a habit of watching films. But this one I watched was actually quite good. It's called 'Sonja i bik' (Sonja and the bull) and it's a romcom about an animal rights activist called Sonja who is protesting against bull-fighting. She causes outrage in the countryside amongst a group of villagers who organise/participate in bullfights, and one of them sends his son to Zagreb to fetch her and dare her to stand in front of a bull if she loves animals so much.

It was an amusing story and definitely made me laugh in places I didn't choose it deliberately - I just searched Youtube to see what I could find. I've found the best way to find films on Youtube is to search for "cijeli film" or "ceo film" and then you tend to get hits with full films rather than just trailers. I assume the film is not on there legally so I won't link to it, but here is a trailer with English subtitles



Apart from that, I'm still reading the Zoran Ferić novel (188 pages now). It's a bit dark, but very good.

My 6WC stats show that I am not spending as much time on Russian as I should be. I intended to spend more time on it this weekend, but got sucked into a vortex of planning my upcoming holiday to Iceland, which more or less involved me crying into cups of coffee about how expensive everything is.

I'm going on a residential training course this week ( ) and I can't decide whether bringing my Russian textbook is a good idea or a waste of baggage space because I won't get time to open it.

[Radioclare]

It turned out that bringing my Russian textbook on the training course was indeed a waste of luggage space I could have read it on the train journey down on Monday morning, but I had a backlog of emails to clear. I could have used it on Monday and Tuesday evening, except that I worked until bed-time trying to catch up with all the emails I'd missed while being in the training. And theoretically I could have read it on the train home on Wednesday evening, but by that point I was too exhausted. I really hate residential training courses!

Anyway, I have finished reading 'Na osami blizu mora' in Croatian, which gave me 341 pages for the Super Challenge. I'm up to 33 'books' now. I really, really enjoyed the writing, but I recommend the book with a bit of caution, especially to female readers, because there's a chance it will destroy your faith in men and make you want to become a nun The storyline is about a group of young men growing up on the Croatian island of Rab during the 60s/70s. I don't know what a good way is to translate the Croatian word 'galebovi' in this context, but they are basically men whose main goal in life is to seduce large quantities of pretty female tourists. They are almost clinical about it; they have strategies for where/when to approach the girls and different techniques that they use. Some of them arrange a rendez-vous with a different girl on the hour, every hour, to try and fit as many in as possible The character who disgusted me the most was the one who had a local girlfriend, split up with her in the spring, spent his summer chasing tourists and then got back with the local girl in the autumn. Why would anyone go out with a guy like that?! The only consolation really was that none of them particularly seemed to prosper in later life

The title of the book is a phrase from the song 'Galeb i ja', sung here by the famous (and recently deceased) singer Oliver Dragojević.



The weekend has been a bit more productive than the week anyway. I finished chapter 5 and am most of the way through chapter 6 of the Penguin Russian course and I've also done a reasonable amount of Memrise. Next weekend I'm going to be in Finland though, and then the following weekend I'm off to Iceland (eek! so excited!) so I'm not making any promises to myself about building up a habit of regular study!

[Radioclare]

Oops, I forgot to update for quite a while

I've been a bit busy. I went to Finland for a long weekend towards the end of August. That was really good fun; I visited Turku and Rauma, the latter being especially cool because of its associations with the Esperanto movement as well as being a very attractive place to visit in its own right. Then I was ill for a while, and then for the first 10 days of this month I went to Iceland which I am seriously considering declaring the best holiday of my life.

Iceland is absolutely amazing; both amazingly expensive and amazingly beautiful. I normally complain about how hideously expensive Finland is, but Iceland is in danger of making Finland seem like good value In fact, Iceland makes Geneva and Oslo (which I reckon are the most expensive places I've been previously) feel like good value too. We basically made it affordable by trying not to eat, and even so I have never spent so much money on a holiday and I probably never will again. But Iceland is so incredibly beautiful that it was definitely worth it Unfortunately I didn't have time to learn anything about Icelandic before I went. I had a look at the pronunciation guide at the back of one of my guidebooks, and was put off when it started by saying that "unfortunately Icelandic is not as phonetic as English" So I am unable to pronounce the names of most of the places I've visited, which makes me feel rather ignorant.

You can never have too many holidays, so in 3.5 weeks I'm going to Greece. Very excited about this because a) I have high expectations for it being warm and dry (compared to Iceland which was fairly wet and windy) and b) I've never been to Greece before, so this is another new country for me. Sadly, I forgot that I was supposed to be learning some Greek in advance of this. I did genuinely start trying a while ago, signing up for Duolingo Greek and a Greek alphabet course on Memrise. I got fed up of the Duolingo course extremely quickly because I felt like it was teaching really random words. And I think I deleted the Memrise course from my phone in some sort of over-enthusiastic Memrise purge I had a while ago, plus I've forgotten whatever I learned from it already so right now my only knowledge of the Greek alphabet comes from my maths degree. I got a brief glimpse of a discussion about Greek materials on garyb's log the other day, so I plan to go back and reread that properly at the weekend (and maybe try language transfer??). Obviously I know that Greece is not a country which is a stranger to tourism and I'm sure there must be plenty of English in tourist hotspots, but I wanted to try and learn a bit because my plans involve travelling round various bits of the Peloponnese by bus and I thought it could be useful to try and understand bus timetables.

So apart from being on holiday, what have I done since I last updated? Erm... I've read quite a few books... that may be it... I was going to sign up for Tadoku which I had the impression should be happening in September, but when I checked the bot still seemed to be broken.

I've read 4 novels in German since my last post. One was just a translation from English. Another was a translation into German of an Icelandic detective story; I'd been saving it all year to read while I was in Iceland Two were original German novels: 'Achtnacht' by Sebastian Fitzeck and 'Tod und Regen' by Stephan Ludwig. The former was a mind-blowing thriller about a psychological experiment which gets out of control. A contest is posted on the Internet where people can nominate someone they would kill if there were no repercussions. Of all the names submitted, two are then pulled from the hat and released to the public, with a huge financial reward for anyone who manages to hunt them down and kill them in a specified 24-hour period. The story follows the experience of the victims as they try their best to stay alive. It's all very sinister. The second book was a more traditional police procedural novel, but I particularly enjoyed it because (rather unexpectedly!) the key to the plot twist turned out to be a Croatian word. I can't really explain it without ruining who the murderer is for anyone else who reads it, but it was very good

I've only read one novel in Croatian, unfortunately: 'Božji gnjev' by Josip Mlakić. This is part of a series called 'Balkan Noir' and there was definitely a lot of 'noir' in it It's set in the Bosnian war, in the bit when the Croats were fighting the Bosniaks, and the main character is a Croatian solider whose brother has been killed in a mysterious secret operation. The plot follows him as he tries to investigate exactly what his brother was involved in when he died. It was very sad in places and did a good job of conveying the pointlessness of the whole war, but it was also very exciting.

I haven't chosen a new Croatian series to watch yet, but I've been listening to an audiobook. It's a Serbian translation of 'Partners in Crime' by Agatha Christie. I think it's about 6 hours in total and I've listened to about 4 of them. I started when I was in Finland because I had a few bus journeys to fill. I'll hopefully be able to get through the rest of it on my commutes over the next few weeks.

Russian? I did take my Russian book to Iceland with me. I may not have actually opened it though

Edit - typo.

[Radioclare]

I've spent a fair bit of time this weekend on Greek. I experimented with a few ways of learning the alphabet and eventually settled on using GreekPod101 videos, which are really good. The alphabet didn't actually feel tooooo bad; there are a lot of letters which are recognisable either from the Latin alphabet or sometimes from Cyrillic, even if the sounds aren't necessarily the same. The main thing which is blowing my mind is the letter H, which in Greek seems to have an 'i' sort of sound. Ever since I started trying to read in Serbian Cyrillic, I have a mental block with this letter and occasionally read it as a "n" sound in unknown English words. An example is the shop called "HEMA" which opened an outlet in my train station a while back. Never having encountered the shop before, I spent about six months under the misapprehension that it was called "Nema". So I am slightly concerned that Greek will scramble my brain even further

I did try Language Transfer, but I couldn't focus on it. That's probably me at fault rather than it; I struggle to concentrate on audio courses unless I'm walking at the same time, and I was trying this at my computer.

Anyway, I feel reasonably happy about the alphabet now and "just" need to learn some actual words. I spent a lot of time on Saturday trying to firm up my travel plans and encountered some bus websites with timetables in Greek only, so I had some practice at reading place names and trying to work out which letters corresponded to which days of the week. My impression based on the research I've done so far is that Greece makes Montenegro look like a paragon of organisation when it comes to buses It's so confusing that we're actually considering hiring a car instead, although I imagine driving in Greece could be a stressful experience too. Part of the confusion is because one of my guidebooks was published before the worst of the financial crisis, so it refers to the existence of trains which have long since been discontinued.

Anyway. I have started reading a new book: 'Sarajevo, plan grada' by Miljenko Jergović. The author was born in Bosnia but lives in Croatia now. I'm not sure whether it's supposed to be written in Croatian or Bosnian There are some words which aren't familiar to me, but it's more of a lack of cultural knowledge rather than not understanding because a 'Bosnian' word has been used instead of a 'Croatian' one. It's a bit hard to describe what the book is about, because so far (55 pages in) it doesn't seem to have a plot. It's like a series of essays about the layout of Sarajevo, which probably doesn't sound very exciting. But the author is describing Sarajevo, street by street, giving insights into the history of each street (eg. the different names it's had through history and why it had those names) but also little stories about people who lived on those streets. The writing is beautiful and paints a vivid picture of the city, although I would probably get a lot more out of it if I'd been to Sarajevo myself.

I haven't found a lot of new Croatian music to listen to recently, but one summery song which has got stuck in my head is 'Rose' by Mjesni Odbor. It's a song in praise of rose wine. Part of me wonders whether it's supposed to be ironic? At least in England, I think rose is often considered to be a 'girly' wine, so I can't imagine a group of men here willingly singing a song about it