Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Thu Jul 11, 2019 9:13 pm

11 July
Today may be the first time I've ever regretted not speaking Italian, as we got a guided tour of the churches of Naro from the lady we were renting a room from. Luckily my boyfriend translated the key points into English for me. I found I was able to understand more than I expected though, I think partly helped by vocabulary similarities with Esperanto and partly helped by the fact that I was familiar with the religious subject matter.

Russian
It's been a really full day of travelling so I didn't do any Russian until after 10pm. I got through my Memrise reviews, which were quite short after all the practicing of difficult vocabulary I did yesterday, and then moved on to Colloquial Russian. I'm still in the middle of chapter 6 and I spent nearly half an hour just now doing exercises on the dative. There are more exercises than I remember in this book and they seem really useful. I was hoping to finish the chapter but when I got to the end of a group of exercises which I felt must surely signal the end of the chapter, I found there were a few more grammar points to come, so I gave up. Maybe tomorrow!

Total time = 39 minutes. Streak = 192 days
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby IronMike » Thu Jul 11, 2019 10:36 pm

Radioclare wrote:...
Russian
I was hoping to finish the chapter but when I got to the end of a group of exercises which I felt must surely signal the end of the chapter, I found there were a few more grammar points to come, so I gave up. Maybe tomorrow!

In Russian, grammar never end. ;)
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby rdearman » Fri Jul 12, 2019 5:53 pm

IronMike wrote:In Russian, grammar never end. ;)

Nor English it would appear....
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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Sat Jul 13, 2019 9:00 pm

12 July
Lots of fun exploring the mountainous interior part of Sicily today. And luckily I remembered I needed to do 30 minutes of Russian before I went to bed.

Russian
I finished chapter 6 of Colloquial Russian and read some of the dialogues at the start of chapter 7. The bit of grammar I'd saved the other day was about pronouns and I realised that I wasn't really on top of pronouns in the prepositional case. I'd learned them at some point in the distant past, then later learned the dative pronouns and somehow managed to convince myself that the dative and prepositional pronouns were the same, which is a lie. So I spent a lot of time staring at prepositional pronouns, trying to rectify that error :lol:

Total time = 32 minutes. Streak = 193 days

13 July
A seaside day in the beautiful town of Cefalù.

Russian
I did my study tonight while sitting on a terrace watching the sunset over a vineyard, which I think is about as good as Russian study gets :lol:

I moved onto chapter 7 of Colloquial Russian and I remember this chapter well from whenever I last tried to use this book, because this is the chapter about sport. There is one dialogue which gives the confusing impression that David Beckham used to play for Arsenal. Other than that, it's mainly about the past tense.

Total time = 47 minutes. Streak = 194 days
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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Mon Jul 15, 2019 9:44 pm

14 July
My final day in Sicily. It was a brilliant holiday, but flying home from Catania airport was completely chaotic. I think it might be the first time I've flown from an airport without having time to sit down at any point; it was literally 2+ hours of queuing, through check in, security and passport control.

Russian
I had hoped to get my 30 minutes of Russian done while waiting at the airport, but that obviously didn't work out, so I made sure I did it on the plane instead. I continued working on chapter 7 of Colloquial Russian and did some exercises to practise trickier bits of using the past tense. The next part of the chapter deals with the instrumental and I think the instrumental is one of my weaker cases, so I started making notes of all the various endings. I think I'll need to go over them again another day.

Total time = 33 minutes. Streak = 195 days

15 July
Oh the joy of being back at work! I'd only missed 132 emails, which I think is fewer than when I was in Russia, but I still spent most of the day trying to answer them.

Russian
I devoted my train journey to work completely to Memrise, because I hadn't logged into it for a couple of days. As I expected, there were enough reviews to keep me occupied until I got to Birmingham.

I didn't do any Pimsleur while walking to the office because I didn't feel like it. That's a slippery slope, so if I say it again someone needs to hit me :lol: My justification to myself today was that I wanted to psyche myself up for going back into the office, so I listened to some angry music instead.

I was going to do more Memrise on the way home but I ended up standing in a bit of the train carriage where there was nothing to hold onto, so I had to devote all my energy to balancing instead.

While I was on holiday I didn't really have strong enough wi-fi to watch any videos, so this evening I had a week's worth of Russian Progress videos to catch up on. There were three in total, the most interesting of which was about different verbs on the theme of sleep. Sleeping is my favourite thing, so I found this useful :D

Total time = 61 minutes. Streak = 196 days

I'm glad I managed to keep my streak while on holiday, but it wasn't easy. Because I was completely out of my normal routine, I didn't have any of my normal prompts to remind me to study Russian, so it was more luck than any particular virtue that I didn't forget to study on one of the days. I guess it might have been easier if it had been a more laid back holiday, but there was quite a lot of travelling (we were sort of on a road trip, staying in a different place each night) so despite not being at work, I didn't end up with loads of free time every evening to do extra study. At the start of this year I was tempted to sign up to the challenge with Croatian as well, i.e. to aim to do 30 minutes of Croatian and 30 minutes of Russian every day. With the benefit of hindsight, I'm glad I didn't do that because I think I would definitely have failed by now. Squeezing in 30 minutes is just about possible even on a really busy day, squeezing in an hour feels like it would be a lot harder!
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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Tue Jul 16, 2019 10:17 pm

16 July
The novelty of being back at work has worn off :lol: But I've nearly finished answering all my emails now.

Russian
I couldn't face Memrise on the train this morning so I rewatched some of yesterday's Russian Progress videos instead. There was an interesting one about Russian text abbreviations.

Once I got to Birmingham I was virtuous and did lesson 10 of Pimsleur. It's trying to teach case endings a little bit at the moment, so this lesson spent a lot of time practising the difference between "на Тверскую улицу" and "на Тверской улице". I was really excited when I was in Moscow that I finally got to see Tverskaya Street, because Pimsleur has spent so many lessons harping on about it :lol:

I was going to do some more Colloquial Russian this evening, but I didn't get around to it. I've decided to start blocking my social media again from tomorrow; I unblocked it a while ago with the intention of only checking it occasionally, but I feel like it's started creeping back a bit more than I intended.

Total time = 46 minutes. Streak = 197 days
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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Wed Jul 17, 2019 10:21 pm

17 July
After three mornings of the alarm going off at 6am, I'm ready for another holiday :lol:

Russian
I did Memrise on the train to work and I think I'm on top of all my post-holiday reviews now so tomorrow I might even be able to learn some new words.

I had all sorts of problems with my train home being delayed, but in the midst of the chaos I managed to watch a Russian Progress video twice (once with subtitles, once without). This one was a vlog walking around the Arbat area in Moscow, so one of those with background noise where I benefitted from the subtitles.

I thought I would have loads of free time this evening once my social media was blocked, but actually a combination of my train delays, outstanding holiday laundry and some Esperanto correspondence meant that time felt limited. I did open Colloquial Russian though and revised the instrumental endings which I studied on the plane the other day. I also made notes on the subsequent section, which was about uses of the instrumental, but I gave up before doing any of the exercises.

Total time = 69 minutes. Streak = 198 days
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Thu Jul 18, 2019 9:42 pm

18 July
It was pouring with rain on the way to work this morning. I am missing the Sicilian sunshine!

Russian
Good progress with Memrise on the train. I'm nearly halfway through the Russian 3 course now.

I did lesson 11 of Pimsleur 3 while walking to work in the rain. As well as more case ending practice, this one introduced the verb называться. This reminded me why I like using lots of different resources at the same time, because this verb was also explained in a recent chapter of Colloquial Russian. Sometimes when you're using different courses it feels like you've started everything and finished nothing, but I find I need to be told something multiple times in multiple different ways before it really sticks for me, so I love it when something I've partially learned in one course crops up in a different place :-)

I did have more spare time this evening, so I continued with chapter 7 of Colloquial Russian. I worked through a page and a half of exercises on the instrumental case, which took about half an hour. I'm still not quite at the end of the chapter, but I decided to leave the rest for another day.

Russian Progress published a new reading text today with stress marks. I read it briefly on the train and there were quite a few words I didn't know and couldn't guess, so I decided to be diligent and go through it properly on LWT this evening, looking up all the new words. This seemed like a good idea at the time, but I hadn't thought through the implication of the stress marks. LWT didn't like them (basically it split each word in two at the stress mark) so I had to go through the text deleting them before I imported it. That must have wasted a good twenty minutes, so I don't think I'm going to be virtuous enough to do intensive reading with these texts in future.

Total time = 137 minutes. Streak = 199 days
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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Fri Jul 19, 2019 11:20 pm

19 July
I worked from home today so was able to set the alarm for 8am. Bliss! I also finished work early because, rather unusually for me, I had Friday night plans.

Russian
I had a very brief window between finishing work and leaving home to do some Russian. I used it to work though the final part of chapter 7 of Colloquial Russian, which was about the declension of чей. This was the bit I'd saved yesterday, because the declension of чей has never been high on my list of priorities. I had enough time to make notes and finish the final exercises in the chapter before dinner, but this didn't take me to 30 minutes.

After dinner, my boyfriend drove me to Bedford, where we were going to see a play with an Esperanto link. We had time for a drink in the hotel bar before we went to the theatre and I used the time to get up to date with my Memrise reviews. Memrise goes faster with wine.

Total time = 33 minutes. Streak = 200 days

Esperanto
The play we went to see was called Wesele and there was actually more Polish in it than Esperanto, but that was quite interesting for me because I was able to see how much Polish I could understand (more than I expected) :-) It was about a Polish wedding and throughout the performance, shots of vodka were handed round to the audience at regular intervals. By the time I'd had three shots I was very glad I hadn't left my 30 minutes of Russian until I got back to the hotel :lol:
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Re: Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby cjareck » Sat Jul 20, 2019 8:17 pm

Radioclare wrote: It was about a Polish wedding and throughout the performance, shots of vodka were handed round to the audience at regular intervals.

That's true. Polish weddings are mostly full of vodka. I had to drink it even on mine ;) But it is hard to avoid it during weddings, and in my profession, during banquettes after academic conferences...
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