Radioclare's 2019 log (Croatian/Russian)

[cjareck]

I really wish I had the discipline to do this! I normally set my alarm for 06.00 and don't manage to get up until 06.45

So, you waste 45 minutes of your sleep on fighting with an alarm clock and you claim that you need more self-discipline to sleep longer?

[Radioclare]

I'm just really not a morning person So even if I set my alarm for the last possible moment, I'm not sure I would have the discipline to actually get up on the first attempt!

9 November
I went to London with my sister today and visited Kew gardens. It poured with rain all day, so I got rather wet, but I saw some really beautiful autumn trees.

Russian
I managed to get 10 minutes of Memrise reviews in before I got home. No opportunities to do any study while I was in London - and I was quite tired by the time I got home - so this evening I've just watched another travel video in Russian. This one was about Iceland, which was quite cool as I went to Iceland last year, so I was able to recognise a lot of the places and get the general gist of it

Total time = 70 minutes. Streak = 313 days

[Radioclare]

10 November
My boyfriend is in Poland at the moment so I had a pretty quiet day at home. I had some accounting work to do for the Esperanto charity, so I used the time to get through that.

Russian
Given that I hadn't done any 'proper' studying for the past couple of days, I decided to make more effort today. I got through the whole of chapter 8 in Penguin Russian, which was mainly about nominative plurals. Not the most difficult topic in Russian grammar, but there were some useful exercises to practise the more irregular ones.

Total time = 42 minutes. Streak = 314 days

Croatian
I was hoping to use the 6WC as a catalyst to spend more time on Croatian, but I'm only having limited success. I am still reading the Bill Bryson book I mentioned a while ago and making slow progress. I am very lazy about looking words up when I read but today I was forced to look up the word "opeka" when it threatened to stop me understanding an entire chapter about fashions in building materials. A google image search (sophisticated, I know ) suggests that it means "brick" which makes perfect sense in the context of what I was reading. The only thing confusing me is that I'm sure I've previously learned "cigla" as brick, so I'm not sure what the difference is between "cigla" and "opeka" (if indeed there is a difference).

For variety, I've also started reading a small book of fables which I bought in Herceg Novi a couple of summers ago. They are in Serbian Cyrillic, which is still quite painful for me to read, so I've been putting it off for a while. I was interested to see whether having spent so much time on Russian this year would make it easier to read Serbian, and I think my conclusion is "not really" Well, I think it has helped a bit in that I am obviously now a lot more comfortable with the alphabet in general, which is not hugely different between Serbian and Russian. But I still have the problem of not recognising the shape of the Serbian words in Cyrillic and having to sound them out like a child; I think the improvement is probably just that I can sound them out quicker now

[cjareck]

The only thing confusing me is that I'm sure I've previously learned "cigla" as brick, so I'm not sure what the difference is between "cigla" and "opeka" (if indeed there is a difference).

Here
https://www.ikoma.hr/hr/gradjevinski-ma ... nace-4409/
they sell "opeka (cigla)". Even Croatian Wikipedia says that they are the same: https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opeka

So the difference may be just technical or regional. There is also a possibility that "opeka" cames from something like Polish "opiekać" (to grill) since you have to burn the clay for it. BTW in Polish "cigla" is "cegła" (pronounced like "cegwa"). Reading your log proves me all the time how similar the Slavic languages are

[Brun Ugle]

You should try learning Kurmanji. It’s not really entirely standardized and it seems that there are a lot of dialects. So, I’ll learn a word in one textbook and another textbook has a different word, UTalk might have yet another word and my boyfriend says something completely different. It’s driving me nuts.

[PfifltriggPi]

You should try learning Kurmanji. It’s not really entirely standardized and it seems that there are a lot of dialects. So, I’ll learn a word in one textbook and another textbook has a different word, UTalk might have yet another word and my boyfriend says something completely different. It’s driving me nuts.

No official standardization? Check
Spread across four countries? Check
Multiple orthographies? Check
Two main dialectical families? Check
Crazy grammar? Check
Loanwords from all over the Middle East? Check

Yep, that would be Kurdish, chaotic, strange but very interesting.

[Radioclare]

The only thing confusing me is that I'm sure I've previously learned "cigla" as brick, so I'm not sure what the difference is between "cigla" and "opeka" (if indeed there is a difference).

Here
https://www.ikoma.hr/hr/gradjevinski-ma ... nace-4409/
they sell "opeka (cigla)". Even Croatian Wikipedia says that they are the same: https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opeka

So the difference may be just technical or regional. There is also a possibility that "opeka" cames from something like Polish "opiekać" (to grill) since you have to burn the clay for it. BTW in Polish "cigla" is "cegła" (pronounced like "cegwa"). Reading your log proves me all the time how similar the Slavic languages are

There is a Croatian verb "opeći" which means to burn, so I think you are right

I've looked both words up on the Hrvatski jezični portal now and opeka is defined as "građevni materijal dobiven pečenjem gline", while cigla is defined as "građevinski materijal oblika kvadra dobiven pečenjem gline". Those definitions sound pretty similar!

Interestingly, the website also says that "cigla" comes from German "Ziegel", which would never have occurred to me in a million years!

You should try learning Kurmanji. It’s not really entirely standardized and it seems that there are a lot of dialects. So, I’ll learn a word in one textbook and another textbook has a different word, UTalk might have yet another word and my boyfriend says something completely different. It’s driving me nuts.

I don't think I could cope with this level of uncertainty at all

[cjareck]

Interestingly, the website also says that "cigla" comes from German "Ziegel", which would never have occurred to me in a million years!

As well as a Polish "cegła". But it is more interesting. Germans also have term similar to "opeka": https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauerziegel#Backstein there is explicitly said that that name is from baking bricks in the fire.

[Radioclare]

11 November
I was working from home today, mainly because I was too lazy to go to the office. Well, my boyfriend is away and he normally gives me a lift to/from the station, so if I'd gone to Birmingham today I would have had to get up extra specially early to walk in instead.

Russian
I did go out for a walk at lunchtime and I listened to a Russian podcast. It was a Christmas special (but for last Christmas ). The weather wasn't very good today and the wind was so strong in places that I kept having to turn the volume up to be able to hear properly.

This evening I didn't do a lot of studying because I had other tasks I needed to do. I did start chapter 9 of Penguin Russian, which is about the genitive and do the first two exercises, which were about the genitive singular. The rest of the chapter is about the genitive plural so I decided to leave that as a treat for tomorrow

Total time = 71 minutes. Streak = 315 days

[Radioclare]

12 November
Today I had a meeting so I did have to get up early and walk to the station. But the day surpassed my expectations by not raining

Russian
I listened to a podcast while I walked to the station. It was early enough to be quiet on the roads so this went quite well. I could have listened to another one while I was walking home in the evening but I was too lazy and just listened to music instead.

This evening I felt too tired to face the genitive plural, so I didn't open Penguin Russian. There was a new Russian Progress video about Russian superstitions released today, so I watched that instead.

Total time = 57 minutes. Streak = 316 days