Because why not? (Russian)
Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2019 8:23 pm
Hello everyone!
After more than a year of lurking I finally decided to start a log, though I'm not sure I'll write regularly in it
Some background information: I'm 28, I'm Swiss and live in the French speaking part of the country. I started learning languages as a hobby when I was 21 years old ; at the time I was in uni but very bored with what I was studying there (I actually dropped out of it at 22). One day I stumbled on a video of Nanne Grönvall's song Hall Om Mig and it got me super interested in Swedish. For almost a year I worked on this language very diligently and I ended up finding the HTLAL forum, where I discovered endless possibilities in the ways of learning languages - as well as the concept of wanderlust, with which I battled for something like two years before I decided that enough was enough and that I needed to concentrate on three languages max. So for the last... three, four years I've been concentrating my efforts on German, Croatian and Hungarian. The results are... not particularly impressive but I'm still satisfied with it. I can finally watch tv shows in German without the help of subtitles and have now read a few books in it too. Basically I now need to work on my output - easier said than done! German has been a real struggle for years, I have no idea why. Suffice to say that when I noticed that the language had finally *clicked* in my brain (something I had waited for a looong time to happen), I was extremely happy for I knew that the hardest part was behind me and that all I needed to do now was to consume media in the language.
Croatian is coming along nicely ; certainly much more easily than German ever did which is quite a surprise. I've been watching animated movies and children tv shows dubbed in Croatian for the last three weeks (no subtitles available for most of those). It's hard to say how much I actually understand because I'm getting better at the language and not because I actually remember some of the lines from my previous binge watching. Since the beginning of 2019 I've done 7 hours of listening, which is already more than what I've done for the whole of 2018. I really neglected Croatian last year.
Hungarian is definitely the language that gave me the most trouble out of all the languages I've ever studied (even more so than Japanese, which I actually took evening classes for once a week during a year and a half when I was still in high-school). The vocabulary is so different, the word order so unusual... I like that it's so difficult though. It's a real challenge and I want to see if I'm able to teach myself such a language from scrap. Right now I barely understand anything when I watch tv shows with no subtitles - maybe 5 to 10% of what is being said, depending on the complexity of the dialogues. Of course that's much better than it used to be but I still have a long way to go.
I will keep on studying these languages the most during 2019 ; I want to read Harry Potter und der Feuerkelch , then I'd like to log in something like 70 hours of German listening, 70 hours of Hungarian listening and maybe 30 hours of Croatian listening.
As you can see, those are rather small numbers considering I have no special goals when it comes to reading in those languages (except the Harry Potter one). That's because I alternate periods of language learning with periods during which my other hobbies occupy most of my free time. Right now I'm in a phase where I do a lot of language studying but I know that in a few weeks I'll be either busy playing video games or, hopefully, be back to writing my novel, which takes a lot of energy and time. So if I manage to squeeze this total of listening hours during 2019, I'll be satisfied
Other languages:
Next in line for some serious studying : Russian. I have a love-hate relationship with this language, just like I have a love-hate relationship with the country itself. I'm usually not one to learn a language just because it would be useful, I need more than that. To be honest I don't really know why I'm going to learn Russian. I first started studying it a few years ago more out of boredom than anything else. At the time I was already working on Hungarian and in comparison Russian looked quite easy ; I learned cyrilic for fun, then a few words, then had fun studying translations of Russian bands' song. Now the language sounds quite familiar and I feel like it wouldn't be too much effort to actually become proficient in it. I think 20 hours of listening would be a good start - I'll be using some russian youtubers Let's Play videos to get that input. I'm in absolutely no rush with that language which is why I don't particularly want to log in a lot of hours. Also, I have a bilingual english-russian book of compiled fairy tales that I want to read.
Languages that I've studied but are on the back burner for now : Hindi, Japanese. Love those language, especially Hindi and its beautiful script but for now I'll do nothing more with those than listen to songs and maybe watch an anime or two.
Well I think that's enough for today! Now it's time for some German
After more than a year of lurking I finally decided to start a log, though I'm not sure I'll write regularly in it
Some background information: I'm 28, I'm Swiss and live in the French speaking part of the country. I started learning languages as a hobby when I was 21 years old ; at the time I was in uni but very bored with what I was studying there (I actually dropped out of it at 22). One day I stumbled on a video of Nanne Grönvall's song Hall Om Mig and it got me super interested in Swedish. For almost a year I worked on this language very diligently and I ended up finding the HTLAL forum, where I discovered endless possibilities in the ways of learning languages - as well as the concept of wanderlust, with which I battled for something like two years before I decided that enough was enough and that I needed to concentrate on three languages max. So for the last... three, four years I've been concentrating my efforts on German, Croatian and Hungarian. The results are... not particularly impressive but I'm still satisfied with it. I can finally watch tv shows in German without the help of subtitles and have now read a few books in it too. Basically I now need to work on my output - easier said than done! German has been a real struggle for years, I have no idea why. Suffice to say that when I noticed that the language had finally *clicked* in my brain (something I had waited for a looong time to happen), I was extremely happy for I knew that the hardest part was behind me and that all I needed to do now was to consume media in the language.
Croatian is coming along nicely ; certainly much more easily than German ever did which is quite a surprise. I've been watching animated movies and children tv shows dubbed in Croatian for the last three weeks (no subtitles available for most of those). It's hard to say how much I actually understand because I'm getting better at the language and not because I actually remember some of the lines from my previous binge watching. Since the beginning of 2019 I've done 7 hours of listening, which is already more than what I've done for the whole of 2018. I really neglected Croatian last year.
Hungarian is definitely the language that gave me the most trouble out of all the languages I've ever studied (even more so than Japanese, which I actually took evening classes for once a week during a year and a half when I was still in high-school). The vocabulary is so different, the word order so unusual... I like that it's so difficult though. It's a real challenge and I want to see if I'm able to teach myself such a language from scrap. Right now I barely understand anything when I watch tv shows with no subtitles - maybe 5 to 10% of what is being said, depending on the complexity of the dialogues. Of course that's much better than it used to be but I still have a long way to go.
I will keep on studying these languages the most during 2019 ; I want to read Harry Potter und der Feuerkelch , then I'd like to log in something like 70 hours of German listening, 70 hours of Hungarian listening and maybe 30 hours of Croatian listening.
As you can see, those are rather small numbers considering I have no special goals when it comes to reading in those languages (except the Harry Potter one). That's because I alternate periods of language learning with periods during which my other hobbies occupy most of my free time. Right now I'm in a phase where I do a lot of language studying but I know that in a few weeks I'll be either busy playing video games or, hopefully, be back to writing my novel, which takes a lot of energy and time. So if I manage to squeeze this total of listening hours during 2019, I'll be satisfied
Other languages:
Next in line for some serious studying : Russian. I have a love-hate relationship with this language, just like I have a love-hate relationship with the country itself. I'm usually not one to learn a language just because it would be useful, I need more than that. To be honest I don't really know why I'm going to learn Russian. I first started studying it a few years ago more out of boredom than anything else. At the time I was already working on Hungarian and in comparison Russian looked quite easy ; I learned cyrilic for fun, then a few words, then had fun studying translations of Russian bands' song. Now the language sounds quite familiar and I feel like it wouldn't be too much effort to actually become proficient in it. I think 20 hours of listening would be a good start - I'll be using some russian youtubers Let's Play videos to get that input. I'm in absolutely no rush with that language which is why I don't particularly want to log in a lot of hours. Also, I have a bilingual english-russian book of compiled fairy tales that I want to read.
Languages that I've studied but are on the back burner for now : Hindi, Japanese. Love those language, especially Hindi and its beautiful script but for now I'll do nothing more with those than listen to songs and maybe watch an anime or two.
Well I think that's enough for today! Now it's time for some German