Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

[Radioclare]

I've also read that you watch Russian Progress, so I would be curious to know if you understand it well and how you would assess your current level, after almost 3 years (the search engine of the forum shows that you started in 2016).

Yes I really love the Russian Progress channel and I think it's just at the right level for me at the moment; I understand it well enough to enjoy it and for the videos to be interesting, but I still learn lots of vocabulary from it. I think my ability to understand it is mainly due to the fact that Artem speaks so beautifully clearly Whenever there's a video which involves interviewing another person, I find it a lot harder and have to rely on subtitles.

Did I really start in 2016? I think in 2016, 2017 and 2018 I had new year resolutions to start learning Russian, but ultimately failed miserably. In the whole of those three years, I think all I achieved was getting through Michel Thomas and learning to type on a Russian keyboard I've only really started learning properly/in a disciplined way over the past few months and I would definitely still describe my level as "beginner".

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24 April
I had a meeting in a place that's really difficult to get to today and so it feels like I spent half the day travelling there and half the day travelling back. Unfortunately this didn't result in extra time for studying Russian because I spent most of the time trying to firefight crises in my work emails.

Russian
My caffeine hadn't quite kicked in while I was on the train to work, so I spent the journey watching some Russian Youtube videos rather than doing Memrise.

I did do some Memrise on a subsequent train in a lull between email disasters.

I was also more disciplined today and forced myself to do lesson 11 of Pimsleur 2 during various walks to/from stations.

Total time = 61 minutes. Streak = 114 days

[Radioclare]

25 April
A frustrating day at work, made worse by transport problems getting home.

Russian
I felt more awake this morning so I did all my Memrise reviews on the way to work. I did a little bit on the way home too, so got to over 30 minutes of Memrise in total.

I also did lesson 12 of Pimsleur 2 on the way to/from the station. This lesson added Saturday to the repertoire of days of the week; I'm waiting to see how many more lessons I need to get through before covering Wednesday, Thursday or Sunday

That's about it; I got home pretty late after my train was cancelled and then spent some time doing Esperanto-related work. This coming weekend is going to be completely taken up by an Esperanto trustee meeting, so getting my 30 minutes of Russian in on Friday, Saturday and Sunday may be a challenge.

Total time = 59 minutes. Streak = 115 days

[Radioclare]

26 April
I was working at home today, which is never great for language learning, and then in the evening I had to travel to my trustee meeting.

Russian
Today has not been productive. I got a little bit of Memrise done while waiting for a drink in a pub and otherwise had to wait until I got back to my hotel room after an evening of socialising. No one said you need to be sober for your 30 minutes, did they? Today is definitely a good example of a day where I wouldn't have studied if it wasn't for the challenge. I did eventually get to 30 minutes though and finished learning the vocabulary from chapter 15 of TY Russian.

Total time = 36 minutes. Streak = 116 days

[Radioclare]

27 April
Today was a looong day of trustee meetings.

Russian
I was determined to do a bit better today than yesterday, so I grabbed a few minutes in breaks to get some Memrise reviews in rather than making small talk. In the end we unexpectedly finished with enough time to go back to our hotel rooms before dinner, so I was able to spend some time reading TY Russian Grammar. This was good but unfortunately I was at the chapter about animate accusative plurals, followed by the chapter on the genitive, and this felt quite hard to take in when tired. I perked up a bit by the time I got to the dative, although coffee may have had something to do with this

Total time = 49 minutes. Streak = 117 days

[Radioclare]

28 April
Trustee duties were finished by mid-afternoon, but by the time I got home I felt completely exhausted. I think I need another weekend to recover from this one

Russian
I did 15 minutes of Memrise this evening, although it was one of those days where I felt like I was getting half of my reviews wrong. I also watched some short clips from Russian Progress about Easter, which was quite fun.

I've then spent half an hour or so on LWT. I'm still stuck somewhere in the middle of the seventh chapter of Twilight and I haven't devoted much time to it recently. I think I got a bit discouraged because I started this chapter with over a thousand 'unknown' words. But I'm down to 490 now and I'm going to keep trying to chip away at it this week

Total time = 54 minutes. Streak = 118 days

[Radioclare]

29 April
I couldn't believe it was Monday when the alarm went off this morning

Russian
I wasn't in the mood for Memrise this morning but I forced myself to spend 15 minutes of my train journey on it in return for allowing myself to spend the other 15 minutes on something more interesting

As I was working in Birmingham today, I also had enough walking time to get through lesson 13 of Pimsleur 2. It's weird, because when I think about specific Pimsleur lessons I don't really feel like I've learned anything, but then when you put it all together you realise you actually have learned quite a lot. Some of the responses involve quite long sentences now.

I'm disappointed if the 6WC isn't happening in May, as I feel like I could do with that as a bit of a boost to force myself to do some more formal studying in the evenings.

Total time = 63 minutes. Streak = 119 days

Croatian
Somehow I've ended up over a week behind in my series, so I watched two episodes tonight to try to catch up. Some of the characters were playing a game they referred to as "balote". That was a new word for me, but the game itself looked quite familiar; it's one of those where someone throws a small ball thing and then other people have to try and get their ball as close to it as possible. Well, it's possibly a bit more sophisticated than that, but that's the general gist

[Daniel N.]

Croatian
Somehow I've ended up over a week behind in my series, so I watched two episodes tonight to try to catch up. Some of the characters were playing a game they referred to as "balote". That was a new word for me, but the game itself looked quite familiar; it's one of those where someone throws a small ball thing and then other people have to try and get their ball as close to it as possible. Well, it's possibly a bit more sophisticated than that, but that's the general gist

It's also called (depending on the region) buće or boće; the verb is boćati (se). There's even a sport hall in Zagreb called Boćarski dom with 4 tracks. The game is played in coastal regions, but migrants brought it to Zagreb. There's one track very near my apartment in Zagreb. It's also popular in other countries (Wikipedia)

In Croatian northern Adriatic, the track for this game is usually called jog (Istrapedia).

Some tracks in Zagreb
Article on Croatian Encyclopaedia

[Radioclare]

30 April
Today was one of those days where you wake up thinking it's going to be really bad and then it doesn't quite live up to expectations

Russian
I did some Memrise on the train and got through lesson 14 of Pimsleur 2 on the way to work. This lesson taught "Thursday" which was exciting I reckon it's going to be another 5 lessons at least before it completes the days of the week.

This evening I spent half an hour or so on LWT. I'm still progressing slowly through chapter 7 of Twilight and this feels like a chapter in which not a lot happens; it's basically a 2000-word description of Bella googling "vampires". Although in fairness, she only had dial-up internet so I guess it would have taken her a while I got my unknown words below 350 anyway, so I'm slowly making progress.

Total time = 86 minutes. Streak = 120 days

It's also called (depending on the region) buće or boće; the verb is boćati (se). There's even a sport hall in Zagreb called Boćarski dom with 4 tracks. The game is played in coastal regions, but migrants brought it to Zagreb. There's one track very near my apartment in Zagreb. It's also popular in other countries (Wikipedia)

Thank you Daniel, that's interesting I'm sure I've come across "boće" somewhere... maybe in a book I've read... but I didn't realise it was the same thing.

[Radioclare]

1 May
Oh goodness, how is it 1 May already?!

Russian
I worked from home but finished by about 7 so had quite a long evening. I started with a bit of Memrise before dinner and I've actually finished learning all the TY Russian vocab I've input into my course, so I need to get my act together and start typing up more vocab.

I spent half an hour or so reading TY Russian Grammar and finally(!) got to the end of the chapter about nouns. I'm looking forward to the next chapter, which is about adjectives. Well, at least it will be a change

Then I decided to do LWT and it may have taken 90 minutes but I finally finished chapter 7 of Twilight

Total time = 181 minutes. Streak = 121 days

[cjareck]

Well, at least it will be a change

Since the adjectives are declined together with nouns, I wouldn't expect the change to be significant