Today I visited a small village called Bonțida where there is a beautiful ruined castle. Unfortunately my two weeks of travel are now over and I'm flying home tomorrow afternoon. Already dreading how many emails will be waiting for me at work on Monday morning
Russian
There was a lot of travelling involved in today and I didn't get back to my accommodation until quite late, so I haven't done much studying.
On the train home from Bonțida to Cluj, I listened to some more Russian Progress podcasts. When I then went out to dinner in Cluj, I was incredibly rude and did Memrise reviews while waiting for my food to arrive rather than making conversation with my boyfriend So I got to my 30 minutes, but that's all.
Total time = 37 minutes. Streak = 257 days
Croatian
I finished reading the Moriarty translation on the train home. It's a really good novel; I knew there was a big twist towards the end but I couldn't remember what it was, so when it came it really shocked me. I continued to find the language a bit challenging, though. A new word which I had to look up today was "kanda".
Iversen wrote:As for the Bulgarian verbal system I still haven't quite grasped the semantic difference between perfectivity and the semantics of the aorist. I did a synopsis on the verbal forms in my log thread last week, but that didn't really go into the actual use of the forms listed.
Wow, that's all really interesting. I've bookmarked your post to come back to some time when I'm more awake!
overscore wrote:Finally last thing, BCS has a pitch-accent system (in addition to the typical slav stress system) that is pretty difficult to master.
True, but I don't think people should let this put them off starting. I know I haven't mastered this properly, but if I started obsessing about it when I began learning, I don't think I'd ever have got anywhere. And honestly, if I get to the stage where this is the only thing I need to work on, I'll be really happy
But yes, I think it does help to be interested in the region in general when learning the language. I have learned so much about the history of south eastern Europe in general through studying BCS and I've found it really rewarding... much more rewarding than studying Russian verbs of motion... but getting your head round all the different problems and sensitivities is a big investment of time in itself, and not necessarily one which everyone would want to make.