A language learners’ forum

StringerBell wrote:Any chance this title has something to do with being at a border? It looks a lot like Polish "na granicy" (at the border, though I know it also has some other slightly different meanings like "on the verge").

I'm glad there is one phrase at least which is comprehensible between Croatian and Polish; I haven't managed to understand any Polish in your log yet But yes, it's a comedy show about a group of people smuggling tobacco across the Bosnian/Croatian border.

9 January
Slightly better day at work. The thing I was annoyed about yesterday resolved itself without me having to do anything, and there's probably a moral there about not getting unnecessarily stressed about work stuff outside of working hours and letting it affect your motivation for learning Russian

Russian
I managed 8 minutes of Memrise followed by 8 minutes of Clozemaster on the train this morning, which is quite good by my standards. This evening I wrote out all the new vocabulary from chapter 11 of the Penguin course by hand, to see whether that would help me memorise it. I mean, that's how I used to learn vocabulary in the old days, before all these whizzy apps, although I probably had better concentration back then. I have deleted all my social media apps again, after indulging in them over Christmas, and that does definitely help with concentration. Anyway, once I'd written all the words by hand, I then typed them up into Memrise. My next task is to type them all into Forvo, download the pronunciations and upload those to Memrise, but I got bored and didn't feel like that this evening. Tomorrow!

Total time = 50 minutes. Streak = 9 days

Croatian
I watched Dnevnik again last night and I enjoyed it a bit more. I guess it's more interesting to hear about a story for the second time than the first time, because second time round you're already a bit familiar with the content.

My favourite new song of the day (okay, maybe my only new song of the day) is 'Ovaj grad' by Mia. Quite a sad song, but she's got such a beautiful voice that it would sound good if she sang the phone book

Radioclare, I haven’t read all of your log yet, but have you gone through the grammar exercises on learnrussian.rt.com? I highly recommend it. It gave me a good base from which I could start plowing through literature.

Ps, I advise you to skip the children’s books. They use a lot of unimportant words for adults and there’s not much to gain (at the beginning). I’d focus on simple adult dialogue and then move to Wikipedia articles or something. After that maybe young adult and adult novels. Then for completeness maybe run through a million fairytales and poetry. That’ll cover quite a bit haha.

aronald wrote:Radioclare, I haven’t read all of your log yet, but have you gone through the grammar exercises on learnrussian.rt.com? I highly recommend it. It gave me a good base from which I could start plowing through literature.

Ps, I advise you to skip the children’s books. They use a lot of unimportant words for adults and there’s not much to gain (at the beginning). I’d focus on simple adult dialogue and then move to Wikipedia articles or something. After that maybe young adult and adult novels. Then for completeness maybe run through a million fairytales and poetry. That’ll cover quite a bit haha.

Everything that @aronald says, except for the fairytales. Ugg. Does anyone today really need to know how Russians use to say ox-drawn carriage?

IronMike wrote:

aronald wrote:Radioclare, I haven’t read all of your log yet, but have you gone through the grammar exercises on learnrussian.rt.com? I highly recommend it. It gave me a good base from which I could start plowing through literature.

Ps, I advise you to skip the children’s books. They use a lot of unimportant words for adults and there’s not much to gain (at the beginning). I’d focus on simple adult dialogue and then move to Wikipedia articles or something. After that maybe young adult and adult novels. Then for completeness maybe run through a million fairytales and poetry. That’ll cover quite a bit haha.

Everything that @aronald says, except for the fairytales. Ugg. Does anyone today really need to know how Russians use to say ox-drawn carriage?

Hence the “completeness” haha. I don’t see myself reading them but you never know! I’m not

Thanks for the advice, both

I did start going through the learnrussian.rt.com lessons a while ago... maybe it was at the start of last year... and I did find them really good. I stopped at some point because I felt like I was using too many different resources and that it would be better just to focus on one course, finish that, then move on to something else. But maybe I should go back to them now The only thing I found frustrating was that sometimes when I got an answer wrong, it was really hard to work out what the correct answer should have been.

The children's books I've got are very short; they're for children who are just learning to read. So I don't think I would spend very long reading them once I start, but I appreciate the point you're making.

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10 January
Does anyone else feel like it's already been January forever? I was looking forward to working from home tomorrow, and so having a lie in, but at the last minute something cropped up that necessitates me going into the office so now I'm annoyed!

Russian
I managed a whole 30 minutes of Memrise today I started doing it on the train, then realised I only had seven words due for review and there was no point me trying to start learning the new words from chapter 11 because I hadn't added the audio yet. I feel like it's dangerous to learn new Russian vocabulary without knowing how it's supposed to be pronounced. So in the end I downloaded Memrise's "Russian 1" course and started working through that. I did complete it and move onto "Russian 2" at some point last year, but then I deleted both courses in an attempt to rationalise my Memrise. They are really useful courses though and I'd forgotten how good they were for using on the train, because the audio is really nice and clear so you can hear it properly even when there's background noise (as opposed to my audio downloaded from Forvo, which is always a bit mixed in quality).

This evening I have downloaded/uploaded all the Forvo audio for my new chapter 11 words anyway, so I can make a start on learning that tomorrow morning.

Total time = 49 minutes. Streak = 10 days

Croatian
After three episodes of 'Dnevnik' I am starting to get hooked. I am looking forward to tonight's episode to get an update on the Croatian government's attempts to buy fighter planes from the Israelis (this has been the lead story for three days in a row). Last night the story was all about how the Croatian president was denying ever having seen a "non-paper" which apparently suggested this was never going to work out. My mind was blown - what on earth is a "non-paper"?! It sounds like a word out of 1984 or something like that and to start with I figured the Croatians must have made it up But then I googled it and Wiktionary says it is a proper word. So I guess I just managed to learn a new English word by watching Croatian news

Morgana wrote:https://www.explaura.net/learnrussian-rt-com/ Answers for the RT course, I’ve seen it linked in a few places but haven’t used it myself.

Thank you!!! I am definitely going to have another go at it now

Morgana wrote:

Radioclare wrote:I did start going through the learnrussian.rt.com lessons a while ago... ... The only thing I found frustrating was that sometimes when I got an answer wrong, it was really hard to work out what the correct answer should have been.

https://www.explaura.net/learnrussian-rt-com/ Answers for the RT course, I’ve seen it linked in a few places but haven’t used it myself.

You beat me to it. Without the answers some of them would have driven me out of my mind.

IronMike wrote: Does anyone today really need to know how Russians use to say ox-drawn carriage?

In the "Pictures at an Exhibition" by Modest Mussorgsky such a carriage is mimicked by a tuba with 6 valves in the orchestral version.The word used for the relevant movement is however Bydło, i.e. a loanword from Polish. Apart from that I have no idea what the the thing is called in Russian, and I don't need to know it. But because the thing has been mentioned here I'll remember it if I ever see a word in Russian for it.

Radioclare wrote:My mind was blown - what on earth is a "non-paper"?! It sounds like a word out of 1984 or something like that and to start with I figured the Croatians must have made it up But then I googled it and Wiktionary says it is a proper word. So I guess I just managed to learn a new English word by watching Croatian news

It's a kind of technical term, like Howya doin, btw you won't get them planes, drop us a mail to fix things and so on. Non-paper

BTW did you get my PM?