Radioclare's 2018 log (Croatian/Russian)

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Re: Radioclare's 2018 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby IronMike » Mon Jan 29, 2018 6:41 pm

I've chosen 'Kosovo: A Short History' by Noel Malcolm...


Read this 20 years ago. His short history of Bosnia is also good.
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Re: Radioclare's 2018 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Mon Jan 29, 2018 10:09 pm

Mi forgesis mencii ke ĉi-semajnfine mi aliĝis al la Brita Kongreso de Esperanto, kiu ĉi-jare estas samtempe kaj brita kaj tutkelta kongreso. La kongreso okazos en Aberystwyth (en Kimrio) inter la 13a kaj 17a de aprilo, kaj mi ege esperas ke iam antaŭ la 13a de aprilo mi sukcesos almenaŭ unufoje senerare literumi Aberystwyth :lol:

Mi longe pripensis la aferon antaŭ ol mi aliĝis, ĉar partopreni kongreson ne estas malmultekosta decido kaj mi facile povas kompreni kial multaj homoj elektas ne partopreni. Por ĉi tiu kongreso la kotizo estas £50, kiu estas pli-malpli averaĝa kotizo en Britio lastatempe. Kontraŭ tio oni ricevos teon/kafon dum la evento kaj - espereble - biskvitojn. Pasintjare, kiam mi estis unu el la organizantoj de la kongreso en Skotlando, mi ricevis plendojn pro la manko de biskvitoj en la kongresejo :shock:

Mi vojaĝos al Aberystwyth trajne kaj mi do antaŭaĉetis ankaŭ la trajnbiletojn hieraŭ por certigi ke mi pagos la plej favoran prezon. Mia koramiko vojaĝos aŭte, sed devos esti tie jam je la komenco vendredon posttagmeze, do mi havis elekton: aŭ uzi unu el miaj libertagoj de la laborejo kaj kunvojaĝi aŭte aŭ vojaĝi trajne vendredon vespere post la fino de la labortago. Finfine mi decidis ke tiu estus granda malŝparo de libertago, kiun mi alikaze povus uzi por vojaĝi ien eksterlanden, do pagis plian kvindek pundojn por la biletoj... kaj kompreneble mi ankoraŭ devas trovi hotelon, do tiu estos ankoraŭ plia elspezo. Mi unue atendis ke ĉambroj en Aberystwyth estos malmultekostaj en aprilo, ĉar mi ne povis imagi ke tiom da normalaj homoj vojaĝus al la kimra marbordo dum aprilo. Eĉ dum aŭgusto la kimra marbordo povas esti ege pluva kaj malvarma! Sed ŝajne ĝi ja estas pli populara loko ol mi unue supozis, ĉar mi ĝis nun tute ne sukcesis trovi vere malmultekostan hotelon.

La moralo de la rakonto estas ke Esperanto povas fariĝi multekosta hobio :lol: Mi ne vere intencis fari ion ajn rilate al Esperanto ĉi-jare, sed mi ja ricevis kelkajn Esperantajn librojn por kristnasko do nun mi sentas ke mi devos klopodi finlegi almenaŭ unu el ili antaŭ la kongreso por ke mi povu babili al homoj en Esperanto kaj ne simple elbuŝigu kroatajn vortojn kun o-finaĵoj :lol:
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Re: Radioclare's 2018 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Serpent » Mon Jan 29, 2018 10:44 pm

Wow i understood more or less everything :D good luck!
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Re: Radioclare's 2018 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Sun Feb 04, 2018 5:59 pm

This hasn't been a great week from a family point of view, but language-wise everything is still going pretty well. I have been quite lucky though, because although January is typically a busy time in my industry, for various scheduling reasons my own January has been pretty reasonable. I think the second half of February and March are going to be the true test of whether I can keep up my resolutions (both language and non-language ones).

Croatian
Still doing Memrise every day. I'm toying with the idea of adding audio to some of my Croatian Memrise courses because I'm really enjoying the audio with Russian, but it's a lot of hard work and so I haven't tackled it yet. I am also toying with the idea of making a Croatian - Russian vocab list and turning it into a Memrise course, in the hope that that will make me less likely to confuse a word in one language with a word from another. I was learning some Russian vocabulary for clothing the other day, including that the word for shirt is рубашка and then I woke up in a cold sweat because I couldn't remember the Croatian word for shirt (košulja). Clearly I still knew the word and would have recognised it instantly if I'd seen it/heard it, but I struggled to recall it at that point in time.

I also think that if I manage to visit a largish Croatian city this year then I will try to buy some sort of textbook for Croatians learning Russian. Ideally I would plan a holiday that involves travelling through Zagreb to achieve this, but we shall see :lol: If not, perhaps I will try to order something online. I am hesitant to buy Croatian books online; I've only done it once, and I ended up paying as much in import taxes and shipping as I did for the book itself. But, in fairness, that was before Croatia had joined the EU and perhaps I should try to make use of this brief period when both countries are in the EU to buy something else.

I'm still watching 'Zora Dubrovačka' but I feel like they could have condensed the second series quite a bit. There have been several episodes now where the main plot has revolved around a goat. At least, I think it's a goat. They keep referring to it as a "jare" or "jarić" which isn't the word I had learnt for goat, but it definitely looks like one. Also there's a storyline where one of the characters is being seduced by a mysterious guy who has appeared from nowhere and claims to be a pilot. I guess this is a reference which only UK people of a certain age will get, but it reminds me of Coronation Street in about 1998 when Deidre ended up in prison after getting involved with that conman who wasn't really a pilot :lol: If Deidre's experience is anything to go by, I don't think this is going to end well.

Russian
I've signed up to the 6WC with Russian to help my February motivation. I'm still managing to do 15 minutes of Russian Memrise every day, which seems to be just enough for me to learn all the vocab from a new chapter of Colloquial Russian each week. For various reasons I am looking to try and save more money each month at the moment, and so yesterday I created a spreadsheet of all the things I was subscribed to and tried to assess whether they were worth the money or whether I should cancel (this is the sort of thing accountants do for fun at weekends!). Memrise was one of the things I looked at, as I'm subscribed to Memrise Pro (about £45/year) and I had lost track of what the difference was between this and normal Memrise. I spent a while looking into it and the one thing which caught my attention in particular is that with Pro you have unlimited ability to download courses and use them offline. This swayed me into sticking with it, because there is no phone signal for a big chunk of my commute each day and so if I couldn't use Memrise offline, I wouldn't really be able to study Russian vocab on my way to work.

I've completed 32 lessons of Assimil now, so I'm nearly at the end of the passive phase. It's definitely getting tougher, but I'm trying not to stress out about remembering all the words. I like the course and it strikes me as the sort of thing you can get something out of at different levels. So at the moment I'm concentrating on just moving forward, and ultimately when I get to end I may go back to the beginning of the book and start over, to try and master the nuances that I am missing on my first attempt.

I've also just finished chapter 6 of Colloquial Russian, which I can confirm was a lot harder than chapter 5. The biggest downside of the course for me is that it doesn't have audio for all the dialogues/comprehension texts (there is audio for maybe about two thirds of them). It's not the end of the world in this day and age when I can look up any word I want to on Forvo, but in pre-Internet times this would have been very frustrating. The more chapters I do, the more I feel like I should probably have stuck with Teach Yourself Russian for a more gentle introductory textbook. But as I mentioned last week, I have a terrible tendency not to finish courses so I am trying not to let myself experiment with too many different resources at once. I think I just need to try and progress with this book and not stress over bits of grammar I don't understand yet, because once I'm finished with this one there are lots more courses I can try. Learning a popular language like Russian is a lot easier in that respect than learning Croatian (which has a very limited number of textbooks, so you have to try and make the most of all of them).

Some of the vocabulary in Colloquial Russian isn't terribly useful. My word of the week is фокстерьер (fox terrier). I hope that's not a word I ever need to use in Russia because I can't think of a context in which I would ever use it, except "Please get your fox terrier away from me!" :lol:

In a fit of enthusiasm at the start of the 6WC, I started the Michel Thomas advanced course. I finished the foundation course at some point in the autumn, and I did briefly debate with myself whether I should go back and repeat that as a refresher but I have listened to the first four or five CDs of the foundation course so many times already that I just couldn't face it. The advanced course actually feels a bit challenging right now, so I'm not promising it's something I'm going to keep up every day. I'm glad I started it though because there has been a useful session about verb prefixes, which is one of the things that is going over my head in Assimil at the moment.

Other
I finally finished the book on the history of Kosovo. It was an excellent book and I definitely recommend it. I'm going to choose something a bit lighter (probably a novel in German) for my next book.

I still haven't managed to completely work out which weeks I can have off work this year, so I can't book any proper holidays yet. To console myself, I have been planning my Bank Holiday travels which will be Malta (May Day), Lithuania (Spring Bank Holiday) and Turku in Finland (August Bank Holiday). This will be my first trip to Malta, so I'm quite excited about that, and Lithuania is one of of my favourite countries in the world :) I booked a hotel in Turku yesterday and it cost exactly three times what I paid for similar accommodation in Kaunas and Vilnius. But I've wanted to go to Turku ever since I read an article in an airline magazine about some hapless tourists who ended up there by mistake, having thought they'd booked a flight to Turkey :lol: And from Turku it is potentially possible to do a day trip to Rauma, which is a place that has a certain significance for the Esperanto movement.

My favourite song this week is a new song by an old band: 'Vrijeme' by Parni valjak.

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Re: Radioclare's 2018 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Mon Feb 05, 2018 9:09 pm

Well I started lesson 7 of Colloquial Russian tonight and the lesson is called "Sport", so I'm already predicting this isn't going to be my favourite chapter. You name a sport and I'm bad at it :lol:

I am already confused by this exchange in Dialogue 2:

1. А какая твоя любимая команда?
2. Моя любимая команда Арсенал. Это очень хорошая команда, лучшая в мире.
1. А кто твой любимый игрок?
2. Ну, конечно, Дэвид Бэккэм.


Did David Beckham play for Arsenal??? :?
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Re: Radioclare's 2018 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Serpent » Tue Feb 06, 2018 3:21 am

No, he didn't :lol: One of his sons supports Arsenal though :D

The question doesn't literally imply "who is your favourite player in Arsenal?" though yeah your reaction is quite reasonable :D To make it clear that you're asking "who is your favourite player in general?" I would insert вообще either before or after кто.
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Re: Radioclare's 2018 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Brun Ugle » Tue Feb 06, 2018 8:05 am

Radioclare wrote: I am also toying with the idea of making a Croatian - Russian vocab list and turning it into a Memrise course, in the hope that that will make me less likely to confuse a word in one language with a word from another. I was learning some Russian vocabulary for clothing the other day, including that the word for shirt is рубашка and then I woke up in a cold sweat because I couldn't remember the Croatian word for shirt (košulja). Clearly I still knew the word and would have recognised it instantly if I'd seen it/heard it, but I struggled to recall it at that point in time.

I’m still terrible at switching between languages. Once a Spanish tutor asked me to say something in Norwegian and I couldn’t remember how to say it. I finally managed to say it, but very awkwardly and with a horrible accent. Then suddenly I couldn’t switch back to Spanish. I even have trouble switching between Norwegian and English with most people. I can only do it with people I’m accustomed to using both languages with. If you surprise me with a different language, even one I know well, my mind goes completely blank. I’ve even forgotten English when someone’s surprised me with it out of the blue.

Radioclare wrote:For various reasons I am looking to try and save more money each month at the moment, and so yesterday I created a spreadsheet of all the things I was subscribed to and tried to assess whether they were worth the money or whether I should cancel (this is the sort of thing accountants do for fun at weekends!).

I have a complicated spreadsheet where I keep an account of all my income and expenses. Every month I reconcile it against my bank statements. I also keep a budget, which is basically the same spreadsheet, but filled out ahead of time. I procrastinate a lot with buying things though, so I have to keep moving things forward every month on the budget. I’ve been planning to buy a new phone for three years now.

Radioclare wrote:Some of the vocabulary in Colloquial Russian isn't terribly useful. My word of the week is фокстерьер (fox terrier). I hope that's not a word I ever need to use in Russia because I can't think of a context in which I would ever use it, except "Please get your fox terrier away from me!" :lol:

My own vocabulary learning methods my leave a bit to be desired. In Spanish, I learn three different words for earwig and five for stubborn before learning how to say bowl.

Radioclare wrote:My favourite song this week is a new song by an old band: 'Vrijeme' by Parni valjak.

I like it. Something about it reminds me of Åge Aleksandersen.
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Re: Radioclare's 2018 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby IronMike » Tue Feb 06, 2018 9:11 am

Radioclare wrote:I am also toying with the idea of making a Croatian - Russian vocab list

Years ago I started a Slavic false friends db in excel. Then I found a website where this has already been done. Let me try and find it and I'll share it.


Or I'll share it right now as it was easier to find than I remembered. False Friends of the Slavist.
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Re: Radioclare's 2018 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Ogrim » Tue Feb 06, 2018 4:13 pm

Radioclare wrote:I've also just finished chapter 6 of Colloquial Russian, which I can confirm was a lot harder than chapter 5. The biggest downside of the course for me is that it doesn't have audio for all the dialogues/comprehension texts (there is audio for maybe about two thirds of them). It's not the end of the world in this day and age when I can look up any word I want to on Forvo, but in pre-Internet times this would have been very frustrating. The more chapters I do, the more I feel like I should probably have stuck with Teach Yourself Russian for a more gentle introductory textbook. But as I mentioned last week, I have a terrible tendency not to finish courses so I am trying not to let myself experiment with too many different resources at once. I think I just need to try and progress with this book and not stress over bits of grammar I don't understand yet, because once I'm finished with this one there are lots more courses I can try. Learning a popular language like Russian is a lot easier in that respect than learning Croatian (which has a very limited number of textbooks, so you have to try and make the most of all of them).

Some of the vocabulary in Colloquial Russian isn't terribly useful. My word of the week is фокстерьер (fox terrier). I hope that's not a word I ever need to use in Russia because I can't think of a context in which I would ever use it, except "Please get your fox terrier away from me!" :lol:


Oh yes, that very Russian word фокстерьер ;) Seriously though, I really liked Colloquial Russian but I had the same issue with the audio, and I just could not stand the voice of the English-speaking lady on the CD recordings who would give you instructions ("listen to the dialogue and answer the questions that folllow in English"). But I think you should stick with Colloquial, because although the learning curve is quite steep, most grammar issues are well covered and you are better equipped to move on to more advanced courses or even native material.
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Re: Radioclare's 2018 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Daniel N. » Wed Feb 07, 2018 11:51 am

Radioclare wrote:I am also toying with the idea of making a Croatian - Russian vocab list

You can maybe find these Russian basics (in Croatian) useful: http://ucenje-ruskog-jezika.blogspot.hr ... snove.html

This is more formal, and in Serbian: http://www.osmackat.org.rs/fajlovi/NAST ... matika.pdf

Radioclare wrote:They keep referring to it as a "jare" or "jarić" which isn't the word I had learnt for goat, but it definitely looks like one.

jare is a young goat (kid); it's one of "young animal" neuter nouns, that get -t- whenever anything is added to them; such nouns are:

lane - fawn, young deer
tele - calf
janje - lamb, young sheep
pile - chick
štene - puppy
dijete - child (switches -ije- to -je- in derived forms)
jaje - egg (can behave as a normal neuter noun as well, dva jaja is actually more common than dva jajeta)
etc.

Such nouns (except for jaje) never have regular plural. They often have collective nouns instead, e.g. telad f, djeca f (and the last one has a very special behavior, of course).

In Croatia, such nouns are often turned into masc. nouns, so you have also telić, jarić, janjić (and janjac), etc. Today pačić 'duckling' is more common than pače, mačić 'kitten' than mače.
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