Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

[Serpent]

It turns out this chapter is only about the nice future tense, not the horribly difficult one, so that cheered me up.

I'm guessing the horribly difficult one is сделаю? But it's basically the present tense. I can see how attaching a prefix makes it difficult though The good news is that you can pick any perfective form you know and usually it will make sense. Much of the time you can also replace it with закончу делать (писать/читать/etc), or закончу/сделаю/доделаю + noun.

Через пять минут я закончу играть с котом.
В субботу я доделаю каталог книг на эсперанто.

[Radioclare]

I'm guessing the horribly difficult one is сделаю? But it's basically the present tense.

Yep, that's it! Knowing how to conjugate a perfective verb correctly is much harder than just sticking an auxiliary verb in front of an imperfective infinitive. And having a simple future tense (simple in the sense of not being a compound tense, rather than being easy ) causes confusion for me when reading as a beginner. If it's a verb that I'm not familiar with, I don't necessarily know which version is imperfective and which is perfective, meaning that I can't always tell whether a sentence is written in the present tense or the future tense. For me this is one of the things which is making Russian grammar significantly more difficult than Croatian grammar.

30 July
I had a client meeting today but it didn't start until 10am and so I got a lie in until 07.30 And then I worked from home for the afternoon and got through a couple of challenging tasks.

Russian
My meeting required two short train journeys. I used the time to do Memrise, clocking up 35 minutes in total which is more Memrise than I manage most days. For some reason I had a shocking amount of reviews waiting for me today, so I needed that time to get through them.

This evening I wanted to make more progress with Colloquial Russian, but I got annoyed with something in my inbox and had some alcohol to wind down. Wine and serious grammar study don't really mix, so instead I watched another Russian Progress video interviewing polyglots about their experiences of learning Russian.

Total time = 56 minutes. Streak = 210 days

[Serpent]

If it's a verb that I'm not familiar with, I don't necessarily know which version is imperfective and which is perfective, meaning that I can't always tell whether a sentence is written in the present tense or the future tense.

Umm I think some affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are only possible in perfective verbs and others in imperfective... as a native I don't know how well the rules work
Imo you shouldn't think of them as different versions of the same verb, but simply related verbs. There are generally multiple perfective forms based on the same root, some of which can be converted back to imperfective with more affixes

[Radioclare]

31 July
I was at a client today, but it was fairly local so it just involved my normal commute. And they locked up at 5, which was good news

Russian
I did Memrise on the train and fortunately I didn't have as many reviews as yesterday so was able to learn some new words. I think I'm about two thirds of the way through the Russian 3 course now.

While walking to the client I had enough time to do lesson 17 of Pimsleur 3. There were some pretty long sentences in this one, so I got a bit lost at times. Funnily enough, after me complaining about the perfective future yesterday, that's part of what I was practising today. I guess that was useful.

This evening I tried a bit more writing in Russian. Still painful

Total time = 100 minutes. Streak = 211 days

[Radioclare]

Why did none of you tell me that I can't count?!

28 July
Total time = 54 minutes. Streak = 209 days

29 July
Total time = 98 minutes. Streak = 209 days

[cjareck]

Why did none of you tell me that I can't count?!

Because we can't count either

[Radioclare]

1 August
I had to go to Milton Keynes for a meeting today, so spent quite a lot of time travelling.

Russian
I did Memrise on my normal train to Birmingham. I needed to work on my second train, but over the course of all today's journeys I got through lesson 18 of Pimsleur. It wasn't ideal, because I did it in small chunks of less than 10 minutes at a time when walking between different places. I feel like I get more out of it if I can do most of a lesson in one chunk.

This evening I finished chapter 9 of Colloquial Russian. There were so many exercises in this one! I counted that in total there were 41 sentences, all of which were given in the present tense and had to be rewritten in the past and future. Some of them were easy but some of them were really hard (and I got them wrong ). It occurred to me halfway through that it would probably have been quicker to type my answers rather than write them out by hand, but never mind. I'm looking forward to starting chapter 10 because I feel this might be around the point I quit Colloquial Russian last time, so the next chapter may be new

Total time = 88 minutes. Streak = 213 days

[IronMike]

...so spent quite a lot of time travelling.

OMG! You discovered time travel?!?! Holy crap, please share!

[Radioclare]

OMG! You discovered time travel?!?! Holy crap, please share!

I wish - I'd like to time travel forward to a point where I can already speak Russian and don't have to spend all my time learning it

2 August
I worked from home today which was good generally but bad for getting language learning done.

Russian
When I'd finished work for the day I managed to get about 15 mins of Memrise while waiting for a file I'd been working on to upload onto my work network (it was a really big file!). I guess ordinarily I would have just spent this time staring at the screen and being annoyed that it wasn't uploading faster, so doing Memrise was more productive.

After dinner I read a short article about Russian rap music on the Russian Progress site and then listened to some Russian on Youtube. Listening does feel like it's getting easier, it's just everything else that is the problem

Total time = 52 minutes. Streak = 214 days

[Radioclare]

3 August
I spent most of today at an Esperanto event.

Russian
I managed to fit 6 minutes of Memrise into a small gap in the morning, but couldn't get any serious Russian studying done until I got home in the evening. Once I did, I started chapter 10 of 'Colloquial Russian', which does feel vaguely familiar so I think I did start this chapter last time around. I read through all the dialogues and texts at the start of the chapter, but gave up when I got to the start of the grammar points and realised that this chapter was about verbs of motion

Total time = 35 minutes. Streak = 215 days

Esperanto
This must have been one of the first times in years that I enjoyed speaking Esperanto I mean, I don't speak Esperanto very often these days and when I do it's at the annual Esperanto conference, which is an event that has lots of negative connotations for me. But today was quite nice I was sort of gatecrashing a course for intermediate speakers, but given how rusty my Esperanto feels at the moment, that didn't seem unreasonable. We had a discussion about a couple of straightforward topics (interesting facts and things we don't like about Esperanto grammar) and then did some grammar exercises which were really, really hard. The first set was about the accusative and I didn't do too badly on those. The second was on the use of "da" and it brought home to me that I've probably never even tried to learn the rules about the proper use of "da". I managed to get some of the sentences correct, but based only on instinct as to whether something sounded right or wrong rather than any actual understanding of the rules. So I definitely learned something today. Perhaps one of these days I should actually make time to read my boyfriend's Esperanto textbook

4 August
I was out of the house for most of today as well, so I didn't get as much language stuff done as I hoped. I haven't done any Bulgarian all weekend But I did get quite a bit of logistical planning done for my upcoming trip to Romania and Bulgaria.

Russian
I ignored Memrise today, so my reviews will be horrible tomorrow. Instead I concentrated on 'Colloquial Russian' and started making notes on verbs of motion. 34 minutes was only enough to get through about half of the grammar points so I'll have to come back to it tomorrow evening.

Total time = 34 minutes. Streak = 216 days

Croatian
I've started reading 'Pakao u Madridu', which is a Croatian translation of 'Winter in Madrid'. I read this in English years ago (at which point I'd never been to Madrid) and was really excited to get it in Croatian for Christmas. I actually wanted to read it straight away when I got it, but managed to restrain myself with the thought that it would be better to read it over the summer, ahead of going to Spain for a weekend at the end of August. That trip may no longer be happening because of airport strikes, but now still seemed like a good time to start the book