IronMike, that is easily the best thing I've read all week But I am feeling very scared about motion verbs. I'm hoping I don't get to them anytime soon!
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18 January I do have a cold, but that is probably better than an allergy; at least colds go away in a fairly predictable manner. Unfortunately I had to go into the office for a client meeting today, so I spent most of the morning trying to look interested in a very boring conversation while simultaneously not coughing uncontrollably. Fun.
Russian With various technical problems, I feel like I'm behind where I ought to be with learning the vocabulary from chapter 12 of Penguin Russian on Memrise, so I've spent a whopping 37 minutes on Memrise today in an attempt to get back on track. Russian spelling is harder than Croatian spelling. I know this is a bit rich coming from an English native speaker, but I don't like it when words are pronounced differently to how they're spelled The word which I have misspelled the most times in my Memrise course is пирог (I keep spelling it пирок). The more times I misspell it, the more times Memrise asks me to spell it and then every time I get it wrong I want to hit myself over the head with something for being so stupid, but I mostly can't because I'm on the train.
I felt too tired to do Penguin Russian tonight so I've been doing more of the 'LearnRussian' lessons online. I did lesson 9 (Adverbs and adjectives), lesson 10 (Accusative case) and lesson 11 (Future tense). I really love having the audio for these lessons because the huge downside of the Penguin course is the fact that there's no audio.
Total time = 80 minutes. Streak = 18 days
Croatian I really felt like watching some crappy TV this evening, but my series still hasn't restarted after Christmas so I had to watch Dnevnik again instead. After a week or so of watching this, I'm starting to recognise some of the names/faces of key politicians and remember which party they're from. But the handball commentary is still going over my head
I was just listening to an episode of Podcast Italiano where Davide was explaining (in Italian) his history of learning Russian. He hated the way his university taught it, and ended up studying a lot on his own. He mentioned that he heavily used the videos by Russian Progress, a fairly small YT channel. There are a bunch of videos and they all all have transcripts (there's a link to click under each video that brings you to the website with transcript). I'm not learning Russian, but I thought it was a such a great resource and immediately started thinking of who I could mention it to. So, just in case you don't know about it and might be interested, here it is:
StringerBell wrote:I was just listening to an episode of Podcast Italiano where Davide was explaining (in Italian) his history of learning Russian. He hated the way his university taught it, and ended up studying a lot on his own. He mentioned that he heavily used the videos by Russian Progress, a fairly small YT channel. There are a bunch of videos and they all all have transcripts (there's a link to click under each video that brings you to the website with transcript). I'm not learning Russian, but I thought it was a such a great resource and immediately started thinking of who I could mention it to. So, just in case you don't know about it and might be interested, here it is:
Thank you so much StringerBell, this looks really useful I have just been watching some of them and found a little playlist of videos for beginners which was just right for my level. They've got subtitles in Russian too, which is really cool
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19 January I thought I was going to get lots done today, but I didn't. The good news is that after a long lie-in I feel loads better than during the week, but my boyfriend and I spent multiple hours trying to declutter our house earlier, which took up some of the time I might otherwise have spent on Russian. It was worth it though; we filled a bin and the house now looks a lot roomier
Russian It took over 30 minutes, but I managed to learn the rest of the chapter 12 vocabulary on Memrise. That means I'll have a lot of reviews tomorrow, but I should also have lots of spare time tomorrow to deal with them. I've got a new bug in Memrise where it always looks like I've got 14 words outstanding to review, but when I click on them they're not there. Very odd.
I worked through another RT lesson. This one was lesson 13 which mainly focussed on the difference between потому что and поэтому. I was a bit vague on what поэтому meant previously, so that was useful. The next few lessons look like they are going to be about numbers and the genitive, so that will be something to look forward to
I wanted to finish chapter 12 in the Penguin course, but I drank half a bottle of red wine with dinner so I can't do anything terribly productive now. I watched some of the videos StringerBell linked me to instead, which was fun. I watched a couple of them with my eyes closed first to see how much I could understand, then a second time with the subtitles. I can definitely understand a lot more with the subtitles
Total time = 74 minutes. Streak = 19 days
Croatian I did watch Dnevnik again last night. There was some interesting coverage of Putin's visit to Belgrade and a warning that the police in Split are cracking down on jaywalking. Also an item about the lack of seasonal workers for the Croatian tourism industry now that so many people from Slavonia have emigrated to better jobs elsewhere. Interesting as all this was, it didn't feel like the most fun I could have on a Friday night so I started browsing through OYO, the TV OnDemand service I use, to see what else I could watch that was a) available from the UK and b) didn't involve committing to 100+ episodes. There wasn't actually that much and I ended up watching something truly dreadful called 'Jadranske igre'. If you've ever watched the gameshow 'It's a Knockout' it's a bit like that, but slightly sportier and with most of the games revolving around a swimming pool. Some of the games gave me nervous flashbacks because in the UK, 'It's a Knockout' has now become a popular format for corporate team-building events and I've worked for the same company for so long that I've suffered the entire gamut of corporate team-building events and actually had to participate in 'It's a Knockout' twice. If it happens a third time, I'll know I've worked there too long and need to sort my life out But anyway, from a language point of view, the most interesting thing about 'Jadranske igre' was that the teams competing were from different central European countries, including teams from Slovenia and Macedonia who were interviewed in their own languages (and subtitled to Croatian). That was quite cool; sometimes they would say a sentence that was so similar no subtitles were required, and sometimes I wouldn't have understood a single word without the subtitles. There was also a Hungarian team but they made them speak in English What I watched was the first semi final, so technically I could still watch the second semi final followed by the final itself, but I don't think I'm likely to do this. At least, not until next time I catch a cold
I've been working my way through the playlist of music which Daniel linked me to at the end of my old log. Today I came across this cover of the Hladno Pivo song 'Zimmer frei'. This was one of the very first songs which I ever listened to in Croatian. In fact, I think it must be the first song I bought in Croatian and I only chose it on iTunes because the title was in German so I figured there were at least two words in the song that I'd understand That must have been back in 2013 and six years later this is still one of my favourite songs
Radioclare wrote:I've been working my way through the playlist of music which Daniel linked me to at the end of my old log. Today I came across this cover of the Hladno Pivo song 'Zimmer frei'. This was one of the very first songs which I ever listened to in Croatian.
Sadly, after the today episode of my favorite music show, there's only one episode left. One of today guests were Detour who performed a song which mentions "a plagiator wrapped in a flag" so I suppose one of the most popular Croatian musicians will always remain ignored by that show, which featured almost everyone who matters in Croatian music...
The playlist is constantly growing, as they add more videos after each Saturday show.
0 x
Check Easy Croatian (very useful for Bosnian, Montenegrin and Serbian as well)
Oh wow, there were some good songs today! I love Psihomodo pop, and a great cover of 'Teške boje' too
Daniel N. wrote:One of today guests were Detour who performed a song which mentions "a plagiator wrapped in a flag" so I suppose one of the most popular Croatian musicians will always remain ignored by that show, which featured almost everyone who matters in Croatian music...
That's my favourite Detour song Mainly because of the male vocals, but I like the lyrics too. Especially "Glupost je k'o ljubav, neuništiva"
As for the other musician... I guess we just have to agree to disagree!
Radioclare wrote:Oh wow, there were some good songs today! I love Psihomodo pop, and a great cover of 'Teške boje' too
Yes, Vjekoslav did a great job with it. BTW they put only like 1/2 of songs to YT - each program is a two-hour show - but you can watch entire shows on hrti.hrt.hr - however, I'm not sure if they are accessible from abroad. They should be...
1 x
Check Easy Croatian (very useful for Bosnian, Montenegrin and Serbian as well)
Daniel N. wrote:BTW they put only like 1/2 of songs to YT - each program is a two-hour show - but you can watch entire shows on hrti.hrt.hr - however, I'm not sure if they are accessible from abroad. They should be...
Unfortunately when I try to watch it I get a message saying "Nalazite se izvan zemljopisnog područja na kojem je dopuštena reprodukcija" So frustratingly, I'm restricted to whatever they put on YouTube.
20 January Definitely a more productive day, although I did waste a fair bit of time this morning looking at flights to Finland for next Christmas.
Russian My Memrise reviews weren't as painful as I'd anticipated; I got through them all in just under 10 minutes I think timing all these activities I'm doing for Russian is actually quite useful, because it stops me being able to tell myself that something was really boring and went on forever, when clearly it didn't
I spent some more time on the RT lessons. I got confused with my numbering yesterday and it was actually lesson 12 which I'd done (about потому что and поэтому). So today I did lesson 13 (Numbers and quantity), lesson 14 (Nouns in the genitive case) and lesson 15 (Prepositions with the genitive case). I'm saving lesson 16 (Genitive case plural) for a day when I feel strong The exercises are definitely getting harder now and there were a couple in these lessons where I had to consult the answers (thank you again to Morgana for the link!) because I just couldn't get it right. One of the lessons was about family relationships, which I think I've said before is definitely a weak point of mine.
I finally finished lesson 12 in Penguin Russian. It took me about an hour to get through the dialogues at the end of the chapter, although mainly because I was writing them out by hand and my handwriting is still quite slow. I also had a skim read through chapter 13, which is about aspect in the past tense. It feels like the first chapter in ages where there aren't new case endings to learn, which is quite refreshing As ever with aspect, everything I read in chapter 13 made absolute sense in theory but I'm sure all my knowledge of the theory will fall apart as soon as I try to write my own sentences. My plan for the rest of the week is to work through chapter 13 properly. It seems like one week per chapter is about the right speed for me in terms of content, even if I do wish I could move faster.
Russian I had to stand on the train this morning, but it wasn't so crowded that I didn't have enough personal space to do Memrise. I managed to clock up an entire 36 minutes of Memrise today
This evening I made a proper start on Chapter 13 of the Penguin Russian course, studying the various rules and tips it gives for the use of aspect in the past tense. I took pages of notes, in the hope that this will help me to remember everything The rest of the chapter is about reported speech, which I'll maybe tackle tomorrow.
Total time = 85 minutes. Streak = 21 days
Other I'm reading a novel in German at the moment; 'Agent 6' by Tom Rob Smith. It's a translation from English but it's the third book in a series, and I've read the entire series in German. The series is set in Russia in the 1950s so while it may not exactly be helping me learn Russian, at least it's atmospheric
I got fed up of being blocked from various Croatian TV programmes and am experimenting with a VPN. Not 100% sure whether we're allowed to talk about that here It enabled me to watch the news programme on RTL, which is definitely more amusing than on HRT. The good news is that the series I was watching before Christmas is finally coming back to TV on 28 Jan, so I only have to get through one more week of finding alternative programmes to watch
But I am feeling very scared about motion verbs. I'm hoping I don't get to them anytime soon!
I have just been watching some of them and found a little playlist of videos for beginners which was just right for my level. They've got subtitles in Russian too, which is really cool 
So frustratingly, I'm restricted to whatever they put on YouTube.
It enabled me to watch the news programme on RTL, which is definitely more amusing than on HRT. The good news is that the series I was watching before Christmas is finally coming back to TV on 28 Jan, so I only have to get through one more week of finding alternative programmes to watch