Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

[Daniel N.]

I'm not sure how it's used in English (or BCMS) but in Russian checkmate is split in two words, шах и мат. Mat is when everything is over basically.

The same in standard BCMS. True, in some dialects mat means mother, but these weird Čakavian dialects are barely understood in Serbia, so it's basically game over.

[cjareck]

some dialects mat means mother

Just like mać, but it is used only after the rude word discussed on StringerBell's log.
ku*a mać
By the way, checkmate is from Persian "King is dead" as far as I remember.

[Radioclare]

Thank you everyone for the insights about checkmate, I have definitely learned some things today

It's been years since I've read the book, but another possible for mat is "swearing, cursing" or something along those lines? I know in Russian мат (without the soft sign at the end) is defined as that. Would that make sense in context? Maybe the Serbian is the same? Or maybe a false friend and I'm entirely wrong!

To my knowledge it doesn't have a meaning like that, at least not in Croatian. When I looked it up I got two meanings; one was the chess meaning and the second seemed like it was matt, as in matt paint.

As for the letter ы, don't sweat on it too much. Seriously. Hardly any Russophone will chide you for mispronouncing it, unless they're your teacher. I've always pronounced it as и unless I was in class. I can't think right now of a word that would be different if you pronounced it as и vice ы, so I don't think there would be confusion on the part of a Russophone interlocutor. Kinda like the two дж sounds in BCS or the ч and c'. (I don't have the BCS keyboard loaded, but I'm sure you know what letters I mean.)

This is a huge relief to me because I definitely haven't got the hang of it yet

***

3 February
I spent a fair bit of time today planning my travels in Bulgaria. I must say that I love Bulgarian prices. I just booked a night in a hotel in Burgas for less than the cost of mediocre pizza for two in Iceland I also managed to create an account on the website of the Bulgarian railways while following the instructions in Bulgarian, which gave me hope that learning the basics won't be too hard. When looking at hotel reviews, I'm finding I can get the basic gist of those in Bulgarian and Russian without having to resort to Google Translate, which is also a bit of a confidence boost

Russian
The problem with blocking my social media is that I keep almost forgetting to tweet for the 6WC, but I did have quite a productive day. I did a bit of Memrise in the morning and then spent around 40 minutes watching various Russian videos on Youtube.

In the afternoon I spent over an hour starting chapter 15 of Penguin Russian, which teaches the imperative. I think the imperative is one of my least favourite grammar topics in any language, because it often feels quite pointless as a beginner. I mean, if you are just starting to learn a language you probably don't know any native speakers well enough to start ordering them around So I tend to think that rather than trying to learn all the rules, you are probably just better memorising the imperative forms of verbs you're actually likely to use. About 10 years ago I got locked in a toilet in Poland and since then I've been convinced that "help!" is a very good imperative to master.

I got an email with a 34% discount code for Glossika today so I was tempted... but even with the discount it seems like an obscene amount of money to pay for a year.

Total time = 122 minutes. Streak = 34 days

[vonPeterhof]

I can't think right now of a word that would be different if you pronounced it as и vice ы, so I don't think there would be confusion on the part of a Russophone interlocutor.

Here's a table of и/ы minimal pairs, although, since there are next to no words starting with ы (mostly just proper names of non-Slavic origin, like Ыб, Ылгаз and Ынха), they can all be argued to be just hard/soft consonant minimal pairs.

[StringerBell]

Are you going to spend any time in Sofia when you are in Bulgaria? I loved Sofia and I have a few places to recommend (if you're interested) if you'll be spending any time there.

[Radioclare]

Are you going to spend any time in Sofia when you are in Bulgaria? I loved Sofia and I have a few places to recommend (if you're interested) if you'll be spending any time there.

Yes, I'm planning to spend two nights in Sofia, so any recommendations gratefully accepted

[Daniel N.]

Kinda like the two дж sounds in BCS or the ч and c'. (I don't have the BCS keyboard loaded, but I'm sure you know what letters I mean.)

There's one big difference, though: a majority of speakers in Croatia don't distinguish ć from č (and đ from dž) in their speech, but most Russians - as far as I know - do pronounce y a bit differently...

[IronMike]

Kinda like the two дж sounds in BCS or the ч and c'. (I don't have the BCS keyboard loaded, but I'm sure you know what letters I mean.)

There's one big difference, though: a majority of speakers in Croatia don't distinguish ć from č (and đ from dž) in their speech, but most Russians - as far as I know - do pronounce y a bit differently...

Agree Daniel, but my point is it is not worth stressing about pronouncing ы correctly when there are so many other parts of Russian to worry about!

[IronMike]

I can't think right now of a word that would be different if you pronounced it as и vice ы, so I don't think there would be confusion on the part of a Russophone interlocutor.

Here's a table of и/ы minimal pairs, although, since there are next to no words starting with ы (mostly just proper names of non-Slavic origin, like Ыб, Ылгаз and Ынха), they can all be argued to be just hard/soft consonant minimal pairs.

Love that table, thanks Peter. Still, most of those words can be figured out by context if we non-Russophones mispronounce the ы as only a couple mean something similar to each other. Therefore, I stand by my advice to our mutual friend here to not stress about pronunciation of the vowel ы.

Oh, and in Kyrgyz, there are a crap-ton (seemingly) of words that start with ы. It was weird to see!

[Chung]

Salisbury was the place of my very first stay outside the former Soviet Union, so it was really weird seeing it all over the news all of a sudden. Well, at least I get to claim hipster points for having visited the World Famous Salisbury Cathedral before it was cool

You are obviously a trend-setter It genuinely is a very nice cathedral; I went to an Esperanto conference there about 10 years ago and I remember being surprised by how beautiful it was.

As for numbers, I think Prof Argüelles recommended looking at car number plates and naming the number in your L2?

That's a good idea - thanks I will give it a go!

31 January
I had to go to a meeting in Milton Keynes today, which was a bit tedious and meant that I spent a lot of time sitting on trains, but I ended up having to use most of the journeys for work rather than learning Russian.

Russian
I did do Memrise on my first train of the day this morning, going back to the official Memrise Russian 1 course for a bit. I've just got to the bit where it teaches numbers, so that was good revision. I feel like I'm quite strong at counting to 10 and after that I deteriorate

Once I got home this evening, I watched a couple more Russian Progress videos. One of them was about the pronunciation of the letter ы and I'm hopeful that if I watch this video every day for the rest of my life I might eventually get it. The video was filmed in a Siberian forest and there were mosquitoes, which was a bit unnerving. Just watching it made me feel itchy!

Finally I spent a tedious 38 minutes on the vocab from chapter 14 of Penguin Russian; typing it into Memrise and adding the audio. So it's all ready to start learning tomorrow morning now...

Total time = 76 minutes. Streak = 31 days (I can't believe I've got through a month!)

It's a bit of a shame that Russian is the first language you've run into with the sound /ɨ/. I got lucky because Polish y and Ukrainian и sound the same to me as the Russian ы so I cheat by regularly using those Polish or Ukrainian sounds for pronouncing the Russian letter, even though I've noticed that Russians sometimes merge the pronunciation of ы and и anyway as in рыба or мыши.

Russian и for me is rather like 'ee' in English "beet" but a touch shorter whereas ы is closer to 'i' in "ill" or "inn". There are plenty of short video tutorials to learn the pronounciation of ы, of which this one is a good example. If your boyfriend's already reasonably comfortable with Romanian you could also ask him to pronounce Romanian â or î (or play the audio from his course) as those represent the same sound as ы.