Expug's 2018 Log - Sustainable Dabbling

[Expugnator]

I'm at one point at my Estonian studies where I need more comprehensible input in the sense of having fully and properly translated sentences, preferably with hyperliteral translations as well, so that I can improve my overall understanding and parsing of syntax.

Reading about Russian diminutives. The word for 'card' as in credit card is карточка, and it comes from карта which means card, map. It is a diminutive. In Portuguese, the word for bank card is 'cartão' which is the augmentative of 'carta', which in Portuguese means 'letter' (it could also mean map or menu in some contexts). Well, it makes more sense to form the word for 'card' from the diminutive as in Russian, because a bank card is usually smaller than a map (or a letter, thinking about Portuguese).

When I say 'double subtitles', I don't mean soft subtitles on top of hardcoded ones. Well, at least this is easy to solve. I've just started "L'écume des jours", which seems like un drôle de film. Il est basé sur le roman homonyme surréaliste de Boris Vian.

It''s great to be finally reading the book "Becoming Fluent". It does sound like science, made by modest scientists who know they still don't have all the answers or even all the questions, unlike some YT celebrities who write language-learning self-help. It's almost like reading Cainntear's posts. Oh, and the book is even witty.

On the series I'm watching, in the future they have an edible translator with which you can speak and understand any language.

Finally finished another Italian novel. This is rather a "meta-novel", the sort of a romanticized, fictional making of of the novel "Scusa ma ti chiamo amore". Not much fun to read even though it had many new words, which means I almost never bothered looking those new words up. I read most extensively while sitting on the bus. Now I'm sticking to the genre by reading more from another author who is more accessible and which gave me good results.

I finished another level of Indonesianpod101, the Lower beginner stage. It's been productive in terms of understanding grammar, but there is too much vocabulary left off which makes any following lesson go over my head. I need to start anew from a more systematic textbook approach and get back to pod101 eventually. That means Indonesian learning is getting serious now! Just for a change, I checked Assimil Indonésien, and while it's not reputed as being learner-friendly and having a steep curve, the first 6 lessons seem easy and even the 8th one seems acceptable, at a comprehensible input level. That means I've learned a bit from the pod101 lessons. I can parse the structure of the Indonesian sentence, while during my first attempt, with Assimil, several years ago, I got lost on syntax and learning wasn't being productive. Moreover, even though Assimil is regarded as very formal, I'm reading many words I've seen on Indonesianpod101 as well.

That said, I want a more 'guided' approach and so I decided to go with The Indonesian Way. I won't be obsessed with completion, though. If the lessons start to become too hard, I'll put it on hold for Assimil and then come back as well as include pod101 in the rotation. I want to use Méthode d'Indonésien afterwards as a warm-up for Linguaphone and then native materials, and I might as well use DLI. I hope I won't be short of materials before reaching basic reading fluency, which is a goal I cherish more for Indonesian than for the average language I learn. I want to take advantage of Indonesian using the latin alphabet so I can learn an Asian language quicker than, say, Mandarin, and I'm also concerned about register. I want to be able to follow TV shows and I know there is not much available in terms of subtitles.

Also, if any of the fellow learners could share names of podcasts with lessons like pod101 and The Indonesian Way or even could share the materials themselves, I'd be really glad.

That's all for today, folks. I started greatly in the morning with a good headstart, but my car started to present some defects and I had to take it for repair, losing a good hour and a half. So I just made it to the normal post-schedule. No Russian dubbing or Greek audiobook but still a very productive day.

[jeff_lindqvist]

I finished another level of Indonesianpod101, the Lower beginner stage. It's been productive in terms of understanding grammar, but there is too much vocabulary left off which makes any following lesson go over my head. I need to start anew from a more systematic textbook approach and get back to pod101 eventually. That means Indonesian learning is getting serious now! Just for a change, I checked Assimil Indonésien, and while it's not reputed as being learner-friendly and having a steep curve, the first 6 lessons seem easy and even the 8th one seems acceptable, at a comprehensible input level. That means I've learned a bit from the pod101 lessons. I can parse the structure of the Indonesian sentence, while during my first attempt, with Assimil, several years ago, I got lost on syntax and learning wasn't being productive. Moreover, even though Assimil is regarded as very formal, I'm reading many words I've seen on Indonesianpod101 as well.

Here are my thoughts on the pod101 series. The occasional lesson builds on a previous one, but there's no continuity in the "story" sense, mostly a bunch of phrases on a given topic. I just use them as a kind of exposure to the language(s), and then I hope that it will eventually stick (through Anki reviews and other material). I could force myself to drill a 3-minute lesson back and forth during en entire week, but then it would be overlearning really limited material. Now I'm "underlearning" a lot of content instead. By the end of the study (i.e. next week!) I'll probably listen to some of the older lessons - now and then, I follow a "path" where the lessons have dialogues, and those are available on separate tracks.

How thoroughly do you study a lesson on pod101?

Regarding Assimil, the curve is indeed steep. When I leafed through my courses the other week, I knew some parts very well (e.g. I could translate some dialogues word-for-word aloud, and in the different voices), while some lessons seemed totally new. No doubt, the earlier lessons are easier and the later more difficult (or just longer). For me, this is a reason to review an Assimil course now and then.

[Expugnator]

Here are my thoughts on the pod101 series. The occasional lesson builds on a previous one, but there's no continuity in the "story" sense, mostly a bunch of phrases on a given topic. I just use them as a kind of exposure to the language(s), and then I hope that it will eventually stick (through Anki reviews and other material). I could force myself to drill a 3-minute lesson back and forth during en entire week, but then it would be overlearning really limited material. Now I'm "underlearning" a lot of content instead. By the end of the study (i.e. next week!) I'll probably listen to some of the older lessons - now and then, I follow a "path" where the lessons have dialogues, and those are available on separate tracks.

How thoroughly do you study a lesson on pod101?

I don't overlearn, just like I don't overlearn anything else. I've always treated pod101 as dabbling, not surprisingly I use it as my dabbling resource. I try to make sure I understand the short dialogues but I don't cram vocabulary, because I know I'm going to review them in proper textbooks later, and when I do they will actually look less unknown. That is a powerful headstart and motivator for when real learning starts. I can also get this effect from Clozemaster, or both combined when I have plenty of time on a day.

So I just go through the dialogue once with translation, then listen to the normal repetitions the lesson provides (two right away and one in the end) while reading the lesson notes more or less attentively, trying to skip what is just generic language-learning observation.

Regarding Assimil, the curve is indeed steep. When I leafed through my courses the other week, I knew some parts very well (e.g. I could translate some dialogues word-for-word aloud, and in the different voices), while some lessons seemed totally new. No doubt, the earlier lessons are easier and the later more difficult (or just longer). For me, this is a reason to review an Assimil course now and then.

Some Assimils are more steep. The Indonesian one is regarded as such, and in my opinion the Norwegian one definitely is (though you have no way to assess given your background). Regardless, I find Assimil too well-set and motivating to waste it on my earlier stages. I'm mostly leaving it for an A2ish stage, almost like a pre-reader. I only started it with Hebrew because a) there are two editions and b) the newest edition is much more learner-friendly than the other resources, with vowel marking and transcription on all lessons (though not in the exercises which already give me enough trouble). I think this attitude will be rewarded with Indonesian too. My point is to use the best resources for when you can make the best out of them. If I'm still learning stuff that gets presented in whatever resource, I don't mind going through not so fun textbooks which I don't feel obliged to overlearn, and I'd rather leave the best textbooks for a stage where I can definitely take advantage of the details and features that make them superior to the others. This is critical for not so commonly learned languages and it prevents me from having to review textbooks, which I find boring.


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I got a ride from work yesterday, so no French audiobook. I got another ride to work this morning, so I could barely listen to 2 minutes of the Argentinian podcast while starting the computer.

"L'écume des jours a Audrey Tatou. Qu'est-ce qu'on pourrait vouloir de plus?

I got another ride from work to have lunch at home. Then another from home to the bus stop (all those 4 times it was actually my wife). As a result, I didn't listen to the Italian audiobook because I usually do it during lunchtime, as I walk from work to pick my car which remains parked near my children's kindergarten. You see, not having one's car changes the routine. Actually the issue with my car is quite serious, I inadvertly had the engine be washed because I was afraid of the damage from the salt, from the 5 days we spent at the beach. It turned out to the worse, because many small parts and components got rust due to the water. It's been three weeks since I had it washed now, and yesterday it simply started losing torque and I could barely bring it to repair. Today the mechanic called me and said they are still searching for a main damaged component, but can't seem to find one. They have cleaned and dried a bit more but what I'm really afraid is that the car won't get back to 'normal' again. It's a quite new car, with a very low mileage and it's like it will have got old by 10 years due to that rust. I'm devastated. We just bought it so selling is not an option at the moment.

As one of those striking coincidences in life, after discussing the car issue with some co-workers I picked the book "Becoming fluent" to resume reading it, and got to the page about low self-efficacy where the authors use the example of having low self-efficacy for internal combustion engines and how you might feel dreaded about a visit to the repair shop, never knowing if you're being presented with the actual solution to your car's problem.

More seriously than that, self-handicapping definitely applies to my language learning (and I dare say to any spheres where progress comes from habits, like exercising and studying in general). Self-handicapping is when you don't do your best, your 100%, you deliberately step on softly on the brake pedal because you are afraid of failing at your full throttle and thus acknowledging you can't actually do it. So, if instead of doing your best you only do 70% of your best (or 90% or 40%, any figure might apply) you might feel relieved because if you don't succeed (or you don't progress as quickly as your ideal or as someone else who is your roling model) you can always have the excuse that you weren't playing your best. I'm personally guilty of that as I know that for each of my languages there are a couple of activities I could be doing which would boost my learning and I decide to hold on, because if even with those activities I still don't seem to be learning much faster, it ends up confirming that I'm a slow learner. I even wrote a post on this already at the new forum, where I listed what I could be doing for each language in order to progress more quickly.

On the other hand, the self-handicapping habit may even be an effective strategy in the long term, because I'm never pushing myself too hard and tend to gravitate towards realistically achievable goals, even if modest given my experience, time and resources available.

So the car engine is not compromised after all. Just the replacement of some pieces that should be replaced anyway had I put it to maintenance when I bought it. There's a critical component that is also more expensive and comes in sets of 4 and might cease to work. The mechanic told me to keep watching how the car functions in the next weeks, and if necessary it might be replaced, and it's actually the one that might have been affected by the water. I'm relieved now because the damage either wasn't so serious or definitive or it will come in parts/installments. Moreover, I seem to have found a repairshop I can trust.

Finally started The Indonesian Way. The authors claim you need a tutor even if from italki, but I think it's still suitable for self-study in a world with Google Translate. I like the way they emphasize that learners should focus on learning 'the Indonesian way' (pun intended) instead of trying to say the same thing as in English with Indonesian words. It's a disclaimer that serves for most non-IE languages especially the Asian ones, and while I probably wouldn't need it, it could same many learns of frustrations.

The lessons are rather long, so I'm aiming for 10 pages a day instead of one complete lesson. I was just dabbling until yesterday and I can't afford 30 min a day on Indonesian now (the authors even claim 1h30 would be necessary).

Having to talk about the car took me one good hour, so I remained at Indonesian today. No Spanish reading or any further activities. Let's hope things get back on track.

[Expugnator]

Yesterday I could get on track with the French audiobook. At least one listening. This morning I listening to around 12 minutes of the Argentinian podcast while arriving at work and preparing the computer. I might pick my car today.

I had one Russian lesson this morning. It was nice. I watched another video on airport procedures before the class and noticed I could understand more from that one. I'm focusing on airport because I might need to say something in Russian, but I believe everything will be in English as well as in any airport. During the class, we focused on eating on a restaurant, fortunately a topic I can already survive at. I still didn't get to talk much, though, because of lack vocabulary and of proper grammar and also because of the format of the classes where I still have to learn a massive number of sentences and ask about many cultural references. Regarding the cultural references, I think the class is being quite productive, even if conversation is not exactly improving optimally.

I got my car back but the day turned into a non-study one. The repair shop is far from home where I went to have lunch and not exactly conveniently accessible throug public transportation on a day with school holidays and a reduced timetable. It took me 1 hour and a half to get there, then some 40 minutes to come there from work before dropping by to repair a flat tire punctured by a nail.

I was already much behind schedule because I was helping a co-worker who wants to know how to activate her English. I couldn't read much while standing on the street waiting for the bus (which is worse than just spending a lot of time on a bus, where I can read comfortably). So I decided to go slowly.

Russian started going through prefixes for verbs. It's too much information to memorize. The usage is very similar to that of Georgian (which also has motion verbs, but surprisingly easier than Russian).

To finish a hectic day, a thick tree branch fell on two cars at the same block where my car was parked, near work. Fortunately to me my car was at the beginning of the block, and the tree fell downhill. Or else I'd have the car destroyed just after having brought it from the repairshop.

[Expugnator]

The weekend had no study. I did manage to attend the Polyglot Meetup, where I finally managed to speak longer in a language other than English, it was French. I talked to other learners who are at a lower level, but even so I managed to force myself out of my confort zone. I really need more practice. While I was leaving, another founder asked me to level up by saying a couple of sentences in each of the languages I study.

On Sunday morning I had a Norwegian lesson on Skype. I have mixed feelings about it. The lesson went on entirely in Norwegian, natural native-speed, and I only had to ask for repetition twice, while saying words in English myself 4 or 5 times. The teacher placed me in the B1 range, which might hold true but it is still frustrating after over 5 years. I might be doing something really wrong - or not doing something right that is essential.

Apart from that, only 1 episode of I Provinciali. At this rhythm I will never finish watching it, for there are 5 new episodes each day. I shouldn't worry, it might come to an end someday. I read the forum a lot, but I believe I'll only envisage reading or doing vocabulary practice again at the weekends when I've finally caught up with older posts.

Yesterday after lunch I started to feel really ill. I don't know if it's food poisoning or just having eaten too much sugar and salt since the previous evening. The consequence was that this morning I couldn't go to the gym and I'm feeling sleepy all day long, which is harming my studies. I was busy with a translation in the morning and got even more delayed as a result. I only didn't call sick and stay home after lunch because I was feeling worse there with the heat, adn the girls were noisy. When coming back to work, the heat from the sun was so strong that I thought I'd pass out.

At last I have a sign of progress in Russian. I've started to attempt to translate into Russian whatever catchy pop song I hear more often. I usually do this for songs i'm B1 at, for earlier stages I can't even begin a sentence. Once I reach a higher level, I notice I manage to translate at least 1-2 sentences from the chorus completely, which means my vocabulary has improved.

Another Hebrew lesson completed. Assimil is introducing the cursives, and I haven't mastered writing either form, though I can usually recognize the written form.

The day didn't turn out that bad. I managed to finish the lesson from The Indonesian Way I had started last Friday. The lessons are long, like I said, so I left the exercises for today, just in time to finish them. The exercises are useful, a bit Teach Yourself-like with some fills in the blank but still consistent. The fact lesson 1 has been so comprehensive and that there are over one hundred of the type is both an encouragement and a challenge for my Indonesian studies. I'll stick to this course just as long it proves optimal in terms of pace of learning. I won't hesitate to take a detour through another course. Former me would stick to a course till the end and so waste so much good material that wasn't learned in the proper way, due to the material itself having a steep curve and to the learner here not overlearning and thus lacking the necessary vocabulary for the most challenging lessons.

[Expugnator]

Today's and yesterday's mornings had two hours each occupied with a tricky translation. I was supposed to translate a text about the local Carnival written by a friend into English and French. My translations are probably full of mistakes and not so idiomatic sentences, but acceptable, I believe. Anyway, now I have to run and catch up with the time spent in the mornings.

I'm finally over the first part of Modern Russian Grammar: a Pratical Guide. Part B is much more practical, as it is about Functions. I still have to review everything when doing the exercises, which I left for later.

The italian audiobook is finally past the most critical scene. I was so thrilled and excited about it that I was almost preparing to listen to it only at full concentration times, back to my normal routine. My Italian is good enough to allow for some minor distractions and still understand what's going on effortlessly.

Ever since I finished Captain Future and started a dubbed series with subtitles in German instead, I'm paying full attention to it. As a result, I'm not doing Clozemaster simultaneously. That's good, after all. I'm trying to pay full attention to all of my videos. Still hard with the Georgian soap opera which has no subtitles, but that's no big deal since I also watch dubbed series in Georgian on a daily basis.

I finally managed to read Italian intensively again. Not many words to look up at this particular book, but the ones I did proved to be quite useful.

Today I could finally breathe. I managed one full lesson from The Indonesian Way. I'm really fine about the amount of resources for Indonesian, even if I might need to reinforce my stock for informal Indonesian (I wonder if I can find stuff in Dutch?). The Indonesian Way is consistent as well as recursing, with words from lesson 01 being reviewed in lesson 2 explicitly and not just as a feature of them being highly frequent words. The genre of exercises still annoys me a bit and I might let go of some 'fill-in-the blanks' ones when they become too cumbersome. Anyway, now there is GT for instant translation of whatever word is left untranslated. I had real trouble with Georgian before there was GT as I used textbooks that didn't have translations for the texts, only individual words in the glossary. Fortunately for Indonesian GT works satisfactorily.

[Expugnator]

January is coming to an end. It took long, which was not that bad, because it is the least busy month at work. I had to end my vacation much sooner than expected, but I could also profit from those calmer days. They weren't that calm on other spheres, as I had to deal with household stuff, visit the doctor, the repairshop, work on translations and catch up on some pending requests. So I didn't get much more done language-wise. Yet I'm optimistic about the coming months, because I'm much better at reading now, especially Georgian and German, and so even when I'm lagging behind in the morning I can still catch up in the evening.

I still have to decide what to do with whatever free time I get at the end of the day. My priority is watching dubbed series in Russian, for at least 10 minutes. Then 1 page from an audiobook in Greek. But then I need to get going on urgent tasks that require more involvement rather than just passive watching (because if I were supposed to just fill in my time with reading and watching on just my currently studied languages, simply following my multi-track chriteria of having intensive+extensive reading, then native watching+dubbed watching - for languages that have it - 24 hours a day wouldn't be enough). I need to finish a pending task, which is not essential but I need to discuss its relevancy and in order to do so I want to be up-to-date on it first; I want to work on material for helping Brazilians learn Norwegian; I want to work on my language islands; probably write more detailedly about my language learning process as well; plus some other pending tasks or personall challenges I keep forgetting.

I was ahead in time but I couldn't help searching for more audiobooks in Mandarin. I'm not even 10% in Jo Nesbø's book, but I want my next one to be something else. I found García Marquez' as well as The Kite Runner and Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant, among many others including some classics. I still haven't found the genre(s) of novels that would work optimally for Mandarin at this stage, but it's relieving to know there is enough for moving on. Anyway, I still made it till Indonesian almost on overtime.

[Expugnator]

It was too good to be true. Jo Nesbø's audiobook was so well-produced that when I got to the 6th part it turned out to be blocked inside a pay-wall. It took me so much time to figure out that I couldn't play it any further. I lost so much time on it. Fortunately I managed to find another source. A more reliable one, actually. Only the audio seems to be slower, which means I'm spending more time on Mandarin L-R each day (which is still going to be much less than the hour I spent today).

For the days I have to catch up, I do the following: I start playing the audiobook while I'm still opening the texts or checking some important task. That saves me important minutes during the day, which allows me to work on yet another task for another language. It also helps training listening-only for languages I still don't do so.

I always thought that the acronym FAO - Food and Agriculture Organization was self-evident at some subconscious level. Today in Greek's lesson it finally fully clicked: FAO reminds me of -fago, a Grek-based root which can be found at φαω, a form of "I eat" in Modern Greek. The association came before I started learning Greek, so it's related to the Greek root presented in Portuguese words which have their direct cognates in English, like phagocyte.

Maybe as a warm-up for the day I finally work on an FSI course, today I took some substitution drills at The Indonesian Way. They have their merits, but they get bothering and full of obtuse sentences too quickly.

Some matching exercises can be dangerous. For example, you have pictures followed by words, but they are scrabbled and you have to reorder them correctly. The issue is that just seeing the wrong word close to a picture is quite counterproductive and is worse for learning. It's like those exercises when you have to spot errors. The mere sight of an ungrammatical or out-of-context sentence is enough to harm a delicate memorization process. It's difficult to 'tell your brain' that you're seeing that sentence in a foreign language, but it's wrong. For a learner of an opaque language, nearly all vocabulary association seems random. Therefore, trying to teach the word for egg as telur throughout the lesson and then having a picture of boiled eggs followes by the word 'pisang' (which means 'banana') is sabotaging your brain's hard-work, even if it is meant well, as an exercise.

I was done with Indonesian some 15 minutes earlier but there was no time for starting any more elaborated tasks.

[Expugnator]

Today's Mandarin L-R was much more smooth. I like Snømannen better than other books by Jo Nesbø so far. I have to play the soundfile's URL from a Chrome instance on my email on my phone, which is less practical than an app, but at least it's working and it's fast to load. I even have another source for the same audio, and I'm going to research for whatever audiobook I want to read in both these audios and Ximalaya. I have García Marquez and The Kite Runner lined up, but nothing beats contemporary urban fiction (Jo Nesbø being an example, though I tend to find krimis too boring) in terms of useful vocabulary and relevancy of the conversation and the registers employed. I expect to learn quite a bit from this book and I dare say my comprehension already improved after some 4 chapters.

Rainy days tend to be chaotic. As the rain seemed to keep falling, I decided to come back by car.It would be a wise decision if it hadn't taken me another 20 minutes to find a parking lot on the street. The problem is that I obviously can't read my daily non-fiction while driving, and so I arrived much behind at schedule. The past days have been more about trying to catch up with the ordinary schedule than about trying something new.

So, it's sorted out. If by the time I finish the 3rd volume from A series of unfortunate events there is no volume 4 ready in Georgian, I'll proceed to reading the series in Russian. It will be my ultimate attempt to read something I enjoy in Russian.

At today's Greek lesson, I ran into the word περιπέτεια , meaning 'adventure'. In Portuguese, peripécia came out to meaning something related to adventure but more like in an unpredicted, almost incredible sense, or the deeds of someone who is used to getting into trouble and coming out safe and sound.

Hebrew is going over my head again. At lesson 20 of Assimil, my vocabulary retention is pretty much low, compared to that of Indonesian, which I started even later. The new Assimil has shorter lessons, but they don't get repeated throughout the lesson often enough for an opaque language. As I still need a resource with full vowels, I'm stuck between Assimil and pod101. I need to review the alphabet video lessons as well as add some vocabulary at Mond.ly . Some other resources have only transliteration, which will have to do.

Once again I could barely make it to Indonesian. I have barely touched the Spanish novel this week. And even for Indonesian, since it was a review lesson I skipped the final exercises. I don't want to turn this into a habit.

[Expugnator]

About the weekend
I did get some learning done. I listened to two episodes from the Italian podcast. I could gather some important resources, including audiobooks in Russian that will finally bring some more fun and effectiveness to my L-R sessions (I hope). And I started two languages on Duolingo: Hebrew and the reverse tree for Russian (Spanish).

Duolingo Hebrew might be what I need now: working slowly on vocabulary, consolidating the alphabet. It doesn't show niqqudot, which might be a good thing. I'm typing on the Hebrew keyboard on my phone!

The reverse tree for Russian in Spanish might also work quite well: I'm forced to input in Russian, I'm breaking the ice, bringing in more confidence. The 'target' being Spanish makes it less boring than English. I'd recommend doing reverse trees for those critical cases of languages one is completely stuck at despite all efforts. It's an attempt to do something different.

This short experience with Duolingo reminded me how important it is to learn, to keep practicing, to have a 'learning track' where you study intensively at the sentence level. That I shouldn't ditch Clozemaster altogether (have been doing only Mandarin and Norwegian lately most of the days, seldom going as far as Modern Greek). After all, for most of my languages this sentence study is my only intensive-reading activity, needless to mention output activity for those I do text input. I have to find a way to include these on my routine.

As a matter of fact, I don't know if it's because the girls are sleeping better now (and so I am), or the weather or the fact I'm not that busy at work yet, but I'm comfortable about going to bed about an hour later, I'm still not tired at all either mentally or physically by the time I used to fall asleep before. That means I should be doing something productive. So far those moments - as well as the weekend - have bee filled with reading the forum. Realistically, I'm only going to re(start) any constructive reading or app-studying after I'll have caught up with the forum. There's not much left now, I read more during the weekend than what is posted, so it's just a matter of keeping reading even if I can't read during the week (except that Carnival is coming and thus 4 days with no internet connection). Some of the topics I leave for reading at the desktop so I can download and bookmark important recommendations on resources, and those keep left behind. Anyway, my short-term goal is to put reading and app-studying back into my routine, this time with no streak-stress at all, just making sure I order my priorities accordingly.

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I didn't think the rules for the nominal predicate in Russian could be so tricky! I knew the instrumental could be used as well, but when it comes to adjectives it is even more complex than that.

Finished the audiobook Ragionevoli Dubbi, by Gianrico Carofiglio. A great find! Interesting novel, well-read by the author, good for my Italian. I still have some more audiobooks lined up, but when they're over I will certainly get back to this author. Enjoying the story helped me develop more automaticity to my listening.

I had an appointment at the ophtalmo which delayed my studies considerably, so I just made it a little further than the Russian listening-reading (more listening than reading).

The Estonian translation of Aghatha Christie's novels sometimes has some blanks, half-chapters skipped. It makes it harder to follow the story and match it with the Portuguese translation, not to mention that there is less bilingual content to compare. Other than that, it's a good exercise.

I'm considering some severe changes on my schedule, but I'm going to reflect upon it for a while before I decide to implement them.