StringerBell wrote:It's like waiting until the learner gets a false sense of security that they kind of have a grip on the language and then BAM! big sucker-punch. I think it would be better to mention the existence of verb aspects early on but not make a big deal of it, and then periodically return to it as a concept until gradually you get used to the idea, even if you can't use them proficiently yourself for a really long time.
Yes, I 100% agree with this! If you don't know it's coming, there's a risk you feel kinda betrayed when you eventually find out that every verb has a secret twin no one told you about
Does Croatian also have 2,000 ways to say go/come/went?
I think Croatian must be a strong contender for simplest Slavic language to learn! (Although if I remember correctly, I think Chung says Slovak is the easiest).
Chung wrote:For comparison here's what I got:
"Colloquial Czech" - Unit 8 (out of 18)
"Colloquial Slovak" - Unit 8 (out of 16)
"Cześć, jak się masz?" (1st ed. - Polish textbook) - Unit 6 (out of 13)
"The New Penguin Russian Course" - Unit 12 (out of 30)
"Teach Yourself Croatian" - Unit 6 (out of 18)
"Teach Yourself Serbian" - Unit 9 (out of 20)
"Teach Yourself Slovene" - Unit 9 (out of 13)
"Teach Yourself Ukrainian" - Unit 7 (out of 18)
Thank you for looking this up! I was thinking about "Colloquial Croatian", which mentions aspect briefly in Unit 2 (out of 20) and then makes an attempt at marking aspect in the vocab lists from Unit 3 onwards. Otherwise it's actually a pretty dire textbook, but I thought this was one positive it had going for it
Daniel N. wrote:Now I have once again that desire to delete everything and start from scratch
Definitely don't do that
Daniel N. wrote:It's just a tall mountain to climb. My idea with Easy Croatian was: give the low hanging fruits first, but don't leave out any essential things such as stress shifts. People need to be told that the stress sometimes moves to negation, that it moves in various cases with some nouns, that they will encounter various pronunciations even on the public TV, etc etc.
It is really successful at this
I've not found any other resource which explains the difference between standard vs western stress at all. I downloaded the pdf again at the weekend; it's one of my new year resolutions to reread!
IronMike wrote:Chung wrote:...
"Teach Yourself Slovene" - Unit 9 (out of 13)
"Teach Yourself Slovene" deviates big time from the other books with which I started, although I have to say that "Teach Yourself Slovene" is exceptionally bad. If it had been designed like the other volumes for Slavonic languages in the series, it would (and should) have been longer - maybe even having 18 or 20 units like the volumes for Croatian and Serbian respectively.
TY Slovene is probably the worst language book I'd ever seen. I'd totally forgotten about that crap book till your post!
So... if TY Slovene is rubbish, do any of you have a recommendation for a better textbook for Slovene? I probably want to make a serious attempt at learning Slovene within the next couple of years. Is Colloquial Slovene a better bet?
StringerBell wrote:I have a difficult time deciding which is worse...
For me it's verb aspects, but only because I haven't figured out how to use them yet, while I do have (a somewhat tenuous) grip on verbs of motion and can use them more or less correctly.
I am really scared about verbs of motion in Russian because I haven't got that far yet
I feel like I have a slight head start on aspect having already tried to learn it once for Croatian. For me the main problem with aspect is that I can read the textbook explanation and understand it, then do the textbook exercises and get them right... but whenever I try to write something myself it seems less clear cut, I confuse myself, second guess myself, end up choosing the wrong verb... Sometimes I resort to googling a version of what I'm trying to say with both verbs and seeing which has the most hits! I have a theory that my attempts at writing in Croatian are more successful after a glass of wine, because I stress about it less and just write what 'feels' right. But my accuracy with case endings gets worse after wine, so it's swings and roundabouts
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15 JanuaryI didn't get as much done as I hoped this evening because I got distracted following Brexit-related news.
RussianI managed 23 minutes of Memrise while on trains to and from a client meeting today. Given I spent the best part of two hours travelling, this doesn't feel terribly impressive. But it was one of those frustrating journeys where you have 10 minutes on one train, then 10 minutes waiting for the next one, then 10 minutes on that, so you can't concentrate on anything for very long.
This evening I learned the dative plural endings for nouns, as well as rules for when the dative should be used, from the Penguin book. I was sad to read that the dative is the least used case, given that it seems to be a mercifully straight forward one.
Total time = 41 minutes. Streak = 15 daysCroatianYesterday I experimented with watching the Nova TV version of 'Dnevnik'. Previously I was watching the HRT one but I started to get a bit confused because the person in HRT whose job it is to upload the programme to the TV on-demand service seems to cut it at different places every day. Some days they cut it just as the sports new starts, which is fine with me because I am not yet so obsessed with Croatian that I've managed to develop an interest in handball. But other days they upload the entire programme, complete with sports news and weather forecast and everything. One day the clip they uploaded started partway through a quiz programme and I had to try and fast forward through this and a surprising amount of adverts before I eventually found the news
I couldn't tell a huge difference between the Nova TV version and the HRT version to be honest. I don't know whether in Croatia one is considered to be more popular/better quality than the other? Or whether there's another channel I should try as well?